Windoze Nightmares...

[Bob in a quantum-state-of-faith]

Well, I had about decided that my bad (old) hard drives were destined for the trash heap-- and not a minute too soon (and possibly too late for one).

So I have me two new 1tb drives, with pretty good specs:  64mb cache, 7200rpm, 6gigabits/sec, SATA 6 and so on.  I even got a really good price on the retail boxes, which included some nice perks.

Anyway, using my trusty Linux (more about that later... maybe), I finally got the disks sorted like I wanted.

I had me some problems with the old 500gb storage unit-- and that saga is still far from over-- I only rescued about 40%.  Once I figure out how to boot from a USB stick into a rescue Linux, I'll have another go.

But back to Windoze Nightmares.  

I really don't remember why I got started down this trail... but something or other made me look at the indexing service on my machine.  Now, from habit, I'd activated the built-in indexing, to speed up searches & stuff.

But something I read made me go look, and it wasn't running.  Trying to stop & restart had zero effect.  In digging, I found a dependency, Windows Search, which wasn't running either.  

But wait-- it's worse-- Windows Update was also down.  

... WTF?  Yep-- I was no longer getting updates.   Digging deeper, Windows Security Essentials was also hosed-- it could not update either.  

Curiouser and curiouser.. I almost wished I had some shrinking cake, so I could go deep inside that computer & scope it all out...

What to do?  Try Microsquish's hit-or-miss website.  Several lovely tools that would allegedly fix me right up, if I'd only let them-- all being pushed by Microsquish.   Why not?  I tried at least a dozen, many multiple times.  None had any effect.  

Dig deeper:  I found several manual processes, which I painstakingly copied & pasted into a BATCH file, to run in an elevated command prompt*.   I tried them all.

I felt like a medieval wizard casting complex and obscure spells, and invoking mysterious daemon-powers of the greater darkness.   I briefly considered donning a pointed hat...

... alas, none of that worked.

Okaaaay... the next thing to try, obviously, is the rescue CD I'd made earlier.  I let it do it's thang, but it was a waste of time too-- no joy.  Still had no indexing, no update, and by this time, no Security either-- I had uninstalled it, intending to re-install & hopefully fix what was ailing it.  Alas, it would happily uninstall, but failed to re-install, even from an elevated prompt...

So.  One page suggested an "in place update"... a complicated process whereby you use your original CD/DVD, and run setup, but choose "update from the latest whatsit from the intertubes" or words to that effect.

I tried that, with mild trepidation--even though it promised it'd preserve my stuff.  

It preserved it all right-- 2 hours later?  Right at the last step, when I was kinda thinking, "this ought to be it", it stopped everything.  And then informed me it could not proceed, that my hardware was too impressive for it's puny brains to understand, and it would now proceed to unwind everything I just did... which took about 45 minutes... and I was back to... yep... no index, no search.. and more importantly?  NO UPDATES.  

... meh.  

I did get to finally watch the last episode of The Lost Girl, and was informed season 3 would start in January.  Yaaays!

Dig deeper-- I kept coming back to the only spell I had not cast yet-- on multiple threads, even.    And that was to install a driver from Intell, called a Rapid Drive Transit Authority Whatsit (or something like that).  

I had been ignoring it, because I did not have the hardware it was supposedly supposed to fix-- it was on an HP website, for HP drives & computers.   I had neither.  

But one post encouraged me to try it anyway:  one bloke also mentioned he was using a non-HP disk (mine are Segate), but figured he had nothing to lose at this point:  the next step was nuke from orbit & re-install on bare metal...

... a step I was coming to think I'd have to do, too... (several mentioned having cast this most destructive of spells, but with only mixed success...)..

So.  I activated "recovery" on my new C: drive-- for some reason, it was off.  I do not remember why or how that happened, but it's on now.

Next, I downloaded that from HP, and cast the spell--erm--installed the Rapid Train Transit Drive Thingy-whatsit.    It wanted a reboot.  By now, I could time those with my eyes closed...

.. but I did anyhow.  

.. and held my breath...

... and opened Windoze Update ... and....

.... I decided to go into the kitchen for a sandwich, and perhaps a movie...  

... ... no, I didn't.  The Windoze Update was green-- it was working!  Yaaays!  I then immediately went to my elevated command prompt & tried again to install Windoze Security Guard, replete with virtual shovels & rakes & other implements of destruction.   It installed!  Yaaays!   (and a sigh of relief-- I so did not want to go hunting for a replacement...)

I haven't yet looked at indexing & windoze search-- those will wait for another time.  I'm just happy my pc is now back on the update train.

The good news in all this, if there is any, is that I didn't miss any serious updates-- I was apparently only off the train since Friday.  

My Security Essentials (with virtual tools of viral destruction, and 24 8 by 10 color glossy pictures with arrows and such pointing to the ... nevermind) just completed it's scan.  All is clear--no bad guys invaded while I was fenceless.  

If there is a moral to this story, I have no idea what it might be.  

I have no idea why an obscure Intel driver would fix what was clearly broken on my pc, simply from putting (bit by bit-- that's a powerful Linux ability, which is why I did it that way) Windoze on a more roomy space.

-----------------

There was an amusing bit in all this-- Windoze decided I was now on hardware it didn't authorize, and had de-activated my Win7 install.  I was on a 5 day grace period.  But re-activation was quite painless--I'll give Microsquish that one-- I simply clicked on the little box what complained about me being unactive (Computer---> properties ---> near the bottom, under Windows Activation), and chose "activate using Al Gore's Intertubes", and it trundled a bit, and said I was just peachy-keen.   I suppose it had to update the Big Brother database somewhere deep in the bowels of Microsquish.  I'd like to think a little green gnome had to get up, and make an arcane note in a large, leather-bound book, in a deep dungeon, but I expect it was just some bytes on a server somewhere or other-- maybe in China.  Isn't everything in China nowadays?  But I'm good, now.


Next week or so, I'll try connecting that ailing 500gig to a USB thingy, and see if I can coax more files from it's innards.   Or perhaps, I'll let Linux have a go-- it has a lovely bit-by-bit recovery tool I might try....

....


Edit:  I ought to mention why I activated recovery-- if the new driver did not fix anything, it'd be simple to recover-back to before.



______

* no, it's not a command view from the top floor, it's the good old CMD.EXE program, a kind of pseudo-DOS, but run as an administrator.

[Sibling DavidH]

Well, you seem to be getting there now, Bob. Good luck with the rest.  Nothing in Windows was ever gained without much pain and sacrifice.  

[Bob in a quantum-state-of-faith]

Oh, indeed--indeed.

To misquoth a famous British politician?

"Windows is absolutely the worst of the worst of all the operating systems...ever.  Apart from all the alternatives."

[Griffin NoName]

Drivers seem to usually be the cause of dire issues. Updating via MS search online always shows mine are up to date when they are not, because MS is behind. Manufacturers show latest, but then say go to PC manufacturers for drivers, (Sony in my caase), but manufacturers often dont have the drivers and it is totally impossible to work out if the PC manufacturer has altered the drivers or not and therefore the driver manufacturers site is appropriate for the download, or not. So it's not just MS that are at fault here. Really when they sell one a PC they should include a list of drivers they have altered.

I am being told I need to install a Xerox printer -------------- I have no Xerox printer and never have had. Can't for the life of me work out how this message comes about. I don't know what version Xerox printer it wants either.

MS search for indexing slows my machine down too much so I switched it off.

I am getting lots of:
driver caused a delay during standby while servicing a device
but always different drivers and sometimes not drivers but applications

Drivers appear to be up to date, and I don't think that's the problem as it's applications too.

Have done sfc scan, about to do chkdsk.

It's a never ending battle. I am not surprised that most consumers just buy a new machine when the old one slows down!

[Bob in a quantum-state-of-faith]

Indeed.  My old mantra for Win98 and older, was re-install to a bare metal drive, the os from CD's, every 6 months at a minimum. 

But, back then, it was dirt-simple to "reinstall" programs you'd saved-- simply copying the program over into the correct folder & creating a shortcut to it was sufficient.  Back in those days, software either used built-in Windoze DLL's or else had their own stored along side the program(s) in the same folder, or a child folder of the program's.

Registry?  Did not matter, back then, all that much.

Not so much these days.  meh. 

But I'm leaning towards a bare-metal reinstall on mine-- I messed with windoze search & indexing, to no avail.

----------------------

In brighter news?  I was able to successfully convert the DVD to a bootable FLASH/THUMB drive.  Much better & faster, if I do decide to reinstall.  I'll copy the key credentials over to a private folder on that flash drive, along with a careful selection of specific things I wish to backup/keep.   The drive is 8gig, and windoze only needs 3.3gig of that, so I've plenty of room for such extras.

I may even simply copy the USER folders over there-- by way of a temp folder, so I can delete temp junk first (such as internet history, etc).   

But that's for another day.  Today?  I'm just happy the UPDATE is working.