Alan_B

On this particular Flash Drive :- Is this problem unique to this particular Distro, or does this Flash Drive have no success with other distro's ? I have limited experience of this, but in the past I found that utilities such as Macrium Reflect would create Bootable Recovery Flash Drives, and some devices booted but others failed It appeared to be a problem specific to the Flash Drive that I used, and that some tools were able to "fix" the drive so that then Macrium could succeed. Since than I have encountered SuperFloppy Flash Drive, and these I think are unbootable unless you convert them to conventional MBR style. The "benefit" of a superfloppy format seems to be that almost all its cells are "available space" for user data, whereas a conventional MBR format excludes from "available space" all of the fictional (and non-rotating) "Track Zero" reservation. I have just Googled the term These results may give you further clues on what to do with an unbootable Flash Drive http://www.supergrubdisk.org/wiki/SGD_Howto_make http://reboot.pro/topic/4560-tool-to-see-if-superfloppy-or-harddisk-usb/ http://forum.acronis.com/forum/27035

Without screen-shots of Windows Disk Management we are flying blind, but I suggest that any partition other than C:\ (e.g. Recovery partition or D:\ etc.) could be almost as important as C:\ My Acer Windows XP Laptop had many partitions on its solitary HDD. A partition table accident happened and I had zero partitions - no boot, no nada. Minitool Partition Wizard Boot Recovery CD fixed things for me. Initially it allowed me to select all previous partitions, but totally failed to restore any. By trial and error I found the first 6 partitions could be restored if I abandoned the last one. I had not used the last partition for a couple of years so was happy to discard it. I restored all partitions - BUT IT STILL FAILED TO BOOT. Then I realised that getting an external HDD for Acronis Partition Image backups was the reason I had stopped using the small Acronis "Secure Zone" for that purpose, BUT it was possibly still involved in the startup of Windows. I then used Minitool Partition Wizard Boot Recovery CD to "Repair MBR" and avoid dependence upon the absent "Secure Zone" partition, and then Windows booted o.k. Hard experience suggests that Windows may stutter and give grief when it cannot find special partitions that appear of little use.

Some applications can be UPDATED successfully most of the time, but sometimes that fails and you need to fully remove the old for a CLEAN INSTALL. If you UPGRADE an application and get extra bells and whistles it could require Registry Keys that are NOT available until a total removal of the old and then a CLEAN INSTALL of the new. If that does not work for you it might be better to get the PRO support you paid for direct from the developers, and not from this "best efforts self-help" forum.

Sorry but I have no relevant and good experience of SFC. It never worked for me on an old XP Laptop because it insisted upon using installations disks - which were never supplied by Dixons - a store that also sells television sets. It I think that SFC /Scannow sounds like a reasonable and quick repair option. Personally I have never used clones. I always used Images which avoid any danger of the cloned disk powering up and crashing as a result of the presence of two disks with identical Signatures, Though I think I recently read that Macrium no longer makes a precisely identical clone but tweaks the Disk signature to avoid such problems. The only chaotic restoration that I experience was when I thought I could "Dual Boot" without using the official techniques. After a fresh install of Windows 7 on a new to me SSD, the previous installation remain available on a primary HDD, along with other applications in other partitions. One day I used the BIOS controls to force booting from the 100 MB partition of the HDD. instead of the default of booting from the 100 MB partition on the SSD. I successfully launched the HDD 100 MB boot code, BUT unfortunately instead of transferring control to the 25 MB partition C:\ on the HDD, it stumbled into the 55 MB partition C:\ on the SSD. All I knew at first was that Windows was not working as I expected. Drive Letter C:\ gave me no clue of what was wrong, but having an extra 30 GB of free space pointed me in the correct direction. I recognise that for the current problem the Toshiba HDD does not see the bad HDD so that sort of chaos does not apply, but from my experience I found that the Macrium Recovery CD has options to fix the MBR and any other strange start-up issues when a restoration fails. It is possible that this might be able to deal with clone failures in addition to restoration failures. Regards Alan

If your original System HDD was in perfect health but CONSISTENTLY misfired on startup due to software corruption, I would expect a perfect clone to behave in exactly the same fashion. Since your original System HDD was NOT in perfect health, Were its recent start ups always consistent ? If not I would expect a perfect clone to consistently start-up with the whatever original HDD problems happened to be captured at the time of cloning.

@derboo I am surprised - Path length was a problem in the past, but I thought it had been recently taken care of. I suggest you try the solution I created before the Recuva updates which I understood to fix the problem. http://forum.piriform.com/index.php?showtopic=38909 That should tell you which files have path lengths that cannot be recovered and should be excluded from saving.

I had perfect success recovering all the files in all the partitions of a GPT style Disk which Windows insisted was MBR style, and Windows saw the first 2 partitions as RAW and all the others were seen as Unallocated Space. This is the freeware which recovered what all the other tools were unable to handle http://www.softpedia.com/get/System/Back-Up-and-Recovery/Lazesoft-Data-Recovery-Home.shtml It includes a help file that concludes with the developer's email address for any extra help

Alternatively you could try using iCacls to take ownership of any file that Windows thinks it really needs That has a good chance of removing such files and allowing you to discover that Windows was right and it really needed that file I prefer that CCleaner continue to play safe - not many CCleaner users have the skills to repair damage by super access tools. But as ever, the developers will choose what suggestions to accept.

I have total trust in Nirsoft. If an A.V. warned me of Nirsoft I would assume the A.V. was wrong until I found majority support from other testers.

I have an easy potential solution to the problem. Do not delete the files but replace them with short files that have the same names. It is possible that even zero length files might be acceptable replacements. I suggest testing this potential solution by replacing one of the unwanted files first, and if that does not break the installation try replacing all the unwanted files. If you identify an installation that benefits from the above, then a BAT script could be implemented that would automate removal whenever the application is updated and language files are re-installed. Below is a part of simple BAT script that eliminates unwanted Lang folders from the Foxmarks extensions of my Palemoon Browser before it launches CCleaner. A totally new and more complex BAT script would be needed to replace large files with small files instead of zapping the unwanted folders and contents. I am too busy with other projects to engage with this at the moment, but there are experts available and willing to quickly produce complex scripts if you register and ask at http://www.dostips.com/forum/viewforum.php?f=3 FOR %%a IN (Alan User) DO ( CD /D C:\Users\%%a\AppData\Roaming\Moonchild Productions\Pale Moon\Profiles\*.default\EXTENS~1\FOXMAR~1.COM\chrome\locale\ IF EXIST F* ( DIR | FIND "/" SET ANS=N & SET /P ANS="PURGE from "%%a" Profile all above except en-US ? P(urge) / N(o) :- " IF "!ANS!"=="P" ( ECHO PURGING C:\Users\%%a\AppData\Roaming\Mozilla\Firefox\Profiles\ ... FOR /D %%X IN (*) DO IF NOT %%X==en-US ECHO -RMDIR- /S /Q %%X FOR /D %%X IN (*) DO IF NOT %%X==en-US RMDIR /S /Q %%X PAUSE ) ) ) I test whether the "F*" file exists to determine whether a fresh installation of all languages has occurred. That test takes far less than one second, but if the unwanted stuff has arrived it takes somewhat longer to list all targets so I can abort if for some reason it is about to inflict collateral damage, and then after I authorize Purge they all go. NB I do not hate the French - but any application with foreign languages will include French.

Although they were more ignorant their hospitals did not spread MSRA. I believe they had elegance and Brass handles on operating theatre doors, and I recently read that Copper/Brass has sterile/antiseptic properties which are absent from Chrome/Stainless Steel. Join the dots

How about using "Send To compressed (zipped) folder" That neatly avoids any possibility of moving the original file and crippling what remains of an operating system, and allows you to backup up a much larger amount on an external device. I am using 64 bit Windows 7 Ultimate, and have portable 7Zip which also supports the non-portable option to "Integrate 7Zip into the shell context menu". I am guessing that this would work on XP also. Regards Alan

Thanks, I do believe that you have seen this. That works for me I have not seen this because I do not have a spare HDD to "waste" as a clone, and I chose to avoid selecting my principle archives internal HDD in-case I accidentally authorised a destructive clone whilst searching for an "Advanced Options"

For starters there is Inadequate protection by Avira and Malwarebytes permitting damage by Virus to the Operating System and or some part of the Application in question Incorrect removal by Avira and Malwarebytes of code needed for correct operation of the Operating System and or some part of the Application in question But seriously, my advice was purely general and referred specifically to symptoms and not problems that cause those symptoms. There are so many ways that Windows can "throw a wobbly", and some causes are more applicable to Windows 7 (subject of this topic) and not applicable to your XP system, and perhaps the converse is true for other symptoms. Please start your own topic. This topic belongs to SorroSorro and his problem.

When making a Macrium image backup :- All of that is true only when making an Advanced Options "Intelligent sector copy" None of that is true when making an Advanced Options "Make an exact copy ..." N.B. Using "Intelligent sector copy" will allow restoration of the backup to EITHER the original size of the partition you backup, or to any size down to the absolute minimum that you can shrink the partition after unfixing any the files which may be locked and unmoveable. When making a Macrium CLONE :- I would EXPECT it to effectively default to "Make an exact copy ..." and I CANNOT see any "Advanced Options" that might effectively implement "Intelligent sector CLONE". Sorry, but "probably" would not work for me Regards Alan

There can be many DIFFERENT causes that result in what appears to be the same consequence. You only succeed in "muddying the water" when you hijack another person's topic. Starting another topic with the same title should be no problem - if the forum software objects then append your User Name to the topic.

Changes are made to enhance cleaning. Sometimes the consequences may prove to be unfortunate. Regrettably the only ways to avoid an unfortunate result are :- To never update CCleaner.exe nor Winapp2.ini; or to closely examine the ANALYZE results and understand potential consequences before they occur; or to create backups to fall back on when it goes wrong.

The "FULL" version version is the same as the FREE version. What you get for the Professional licence is direct support from the developers who have greater understanding than us users of how to use the product. You have many potential targets so target drive means nothing to me. I guess you want to select the flash drive as the DESTINATION for any attempted recovery - that should be no problem. Others may be able to advice how to select the partitions on your server.

I fully agree that if it is true that Windows 7 will only remove the restore points that it is booted into, and avoids touching the restore points that the alternative boot system is responsible for, then CCleaner should not be allowed to transgress that boundary. If CCleaner actually has the ability to delete the restore points of the alternative system then it is a bug that causes functional damage to the system If its ability is restricted to displaying them I would classify it as cosmetic damage to its own presentation. I will however point out that experts appeared to agree that it was dangerous to expose the alternative system to damage by assigning a drive letter, and I suspect there are many other third party system maintenance utilities that are prevented by Windows protection from damaging its own system components, such as WinSXS, but might allow it to perform equivalent damage on the alternative system so that when it becomes time to boot the alternative it will crash. I see nothing in my last post to suggest that removing a drive letter is a bad idea. My problem was NOT that partition E became inaccessible due to the loss of is assigned letter, BUT THAT THE ENTIRE 7200 R.P.M. HDD WAS A USELESS SPINNING WASTE OF SPACE, and hence Pagefile.sys was totally lost I will admit to a confused memory. For 9 months I have lived with Windows 7 running on my SSD and using a new 27 GB partition E:\ on my 1 TB proper and true MBR HDD. At the time of the disaster, when Windows stuttered and spluttered into a sort of form of life :- ALL partitions were inaccessible on the 1 TB proper and true MBR HDD ; and ALL partitions were useless on the 600 GB original GPT and horrendously distorted MBR hybrid HDD, and all that Windows could see was two apparently empty partitions at the start of the disk - and all the rest of space was "unallocated", and that was because Windows stupidity cancelled the "fake protective MBR" but failed to create a secondary partition table to reference the half dozen partitions that followed. The fact is that Windows was running on an SSD and accustomed to using a Pagefile.sys located on the 600 GB HDD, Due to Windows stupidity both HDD were useless and all their partitions were useless, so Windows wanted to waste 8 GB of SSD before it allowed me to login in to my account. Once I had control I easily changed the hexadecimal value of the Disk ID of the 1 TB drive, and resurrected its partitions, and created a new 27 GB partition E:\ on this 1 TB HDD to replace what had been on the 600 GB GPT-MBR HDD, and created an 8 GB Pagefile.sys in the new E:\ and deleted the 8 GB Pagefile.sys from the SSD, but to cover future Windows stupidity emergencies I created a 16 Megabyte Pagefile.sys (minimum it would accept on 64 bit system) I will agree that Windows will be unhappy if you remove the drive letter of a partition that holds its Pagefile.sys, but I have reasonable confidence that regardless of its proven stupidity, Windows is unlikely to allow you to remove a drive letter from an essential system partition. I have never encountered a situation where changing or removing a drive letter prevents you from subsequently restoring the original letter. Regards Alan

@Login Thanks for the info. Disc 1 is a standard MBR Bootable style of HDD and is used by your XP system Disc 0 is GPT style which includes a "protective MBR" which protects the GPT partitions from modification/damage by a GPT UNAWARE operating system. I guess that your XP system is not able to safely do anything to the GPT hence it refers to the 3 separate partitions as a single "GPT PROTECTIVE" Your Windows 7 system can see the F:\system volume information\ - which is where XP restore points live. Can CCleaner running under Windows 7 see the Restore Points on XP ? If not it could be that your situation is different due to a different organisation of Restore Points that are somewhere within S.V.I. CAUTION :- G.P.T. is bad news, especially when used with M.B.R. Disks on SATA connections. MickeySoft has published a KB acknowledging that SATA connected disks are numbered in order of enumeration. That is snake oil salesman speak for an uncontrolled race hazard that users must live with. In practice :- upon start-up after a prolonged shut-down, my GPT HDD is Disk 0, my MBR HDD is Disk 1, and my MBR SSD is Disk 2; upon a Restart the numbers 0,1 and 2 are allocated differently. One consequence is that any utilities such as Hard Disk Sentinel that logg the performance of drives, may maintain logs based upon volatile Disk numbers rather than fixed consistent values such as System Volume Names. When SATA was first released on an unsuspecting world, one of the first casualties was image backups. I think Macrium Reflect was the first image backup utility that was fixed to cope with variable Disk numbers. My bitter experience :- Upon upon entering the BIOS very briefly after a prolonged shut-down, the GPT HDD and MBR HDD had a race and neither won. Without knowing exactly how and why Windows went so bizarrely wrong, the results were :- The GPT disk had its GUID style Disk ID replaced with an exact copy of the hexadecimal number Disk ID of the MBR style Disk Windows saw two disks with identical numbers and rectified an illegal situation by putting the original MBR disk Offline Windows coughed and spluttered because it had no pagefile.sys nor any %TEMP%, which had been held in E:\ on the original MBR Disk that was now offline; All my Macrium Reflect image backups were now on the GPT disk that was being WRONGLY accessed as MBR, and Windows just cannot see all the GPT partitions when it stupidly thinks it is seeing an MBR style Disk. I was easily able to change the hexadecimal value Disk ID to a different hexadecimal value and then I put the Offline Disk back on-line and that restored access to my browser profiles and once more I could release my SSD from the burden of Pagefile.sys and %TEMP% Unfortunately due to the GPT disk NOT having a GUID but a Hexadecimal number, the partition holding my Macrium Backups was perceived as part of unallocated space, so all backups were lost. Unfortunately I have not found any way to change a hexadecimal identity to a GUID, Had both my HDD used the same style, either both MBR or both GPT, this stupid Mickeysoft error would have been a minor 5 minute inconvenience that I would have forgotten within a week. Fortunately most of my backups were duplicated onto an eSATA connected external drive. and after testing a large number of data recovery utilities I think I have rescued all my files - and the Macrium backups all validate perfectly. SUGGESTION for those with a mix of GPT and MBR If you can reliably boot up from a prolonged shutdown - be thankful. If you can reliably restart - be ecstatic but do not push your luck and pause briefly in the BIOS before launching into Windows - if you pause just long enough perhaps you to will spend 9 months looking at a GPT disk as if it was MBR.

@Login When you are running XP, what are the drive letters which Windows explorer shows for the XP partition and the Windows 7 partition ? I strongly suspect that XP cannot see the Windows 7 HDD because it has no drive letter assigned to it, but you can use XP to run W.D.M. and add a drive letter and then it WILL see your Windows 7 partition. When I dual booted XP + Win 7 they could each see the other one - until I received and accepted expert advice. I now actually have two versions of Windows 7 The first is on the original HDD. The second is on a recent SSD When Windows 7 was installed and then launched on the SSD, it ran as C:\ and assigned a new and different letter to the old C:\ partition on the HDD. Due to advice I accepted from experts I then removed that new and different letter from the SSD perception of the HDD. Via the BIOS it was possible to launch the HDD version of Windows and it still saw itself as being C:\, and perceived the SSD as some other drive letter.

Plugins have no problem - things like FLASH are installed on the operating system and not in browser profiles.

I told you where I read that - http://www.sevenforums.com/ I have made several hundred postings there over several years and do not have the time to locate the relevant topic in which my questions were answered. I just remember the advice that I have followed and also suggest. I KNOW that dual booting SHOULD be safe, but experts who have understanding of how to consistently avoid problems do NOT allow the "alternative" partition to be needlessly accessible to the "running Windows system" via a drive letter. I am absolutely confident that your alternative Windows "system restore points" are needlessly accessed via the letter D:\ If you delete anything within "D:\Windows\SYSTEM32\" (either by accident or just to prove me wrong - and confirm that it is deleted) You will find that either you cannot boot into that alternative Windows system, or if you can then whatever you deleted is likely to remain absent. Having that drive letter allows damage to the contents of that partition as a result of User accidents when doing the wrong things ; Running third party maintenance utilities (possibly including CCleaner and Defraggler, and certainly including alternative tools that do not confine their actions to Microsoft approved API's); Windows natural errors and accidents ; Easy infections of the alternative quiescent system from malware entering the running system. Wrong I predict that when booted into the alternative system it was probably C:\ - and absolutely certainly its properties would have shown A System Volume Name of "Second Disk" and a Capacity of 465 GB and Free Space 423 GB. I suggest you double check. Your screen snapshot tells me that :- You "normally" booted into Windows on a partition shown as "(C:)" and it has a Capacity of 931 GB and Free Space 842 GB and that Windows Explorer CAN ALSO SEE your alternative Windows System as being on a partition shown as "Second Disk (D:)" and it has a Capacity of 465 GB and Free Space 423 GB and Windows Explorer can see :- both operating systems located at C:\Windows\ and D:\Windows\ and if you are an administrator and can view hidden system files,folders and drives then Windows Explorer can also see :- C:\System Volume Information\ and D:\System Volume Information\ and consequently even if you are not an administrator and cannot view hidden system files,folders and drives, because you have run and therefore authorised CCleaner, it WILL access and possibly modify the restore points which are held in C:\System Volume Information\ and D:\System Volume Information\ I could be wrong, but I predict that if you use Windows Disk Management to remove the drive letter D:\, then CCleaner should no longer see the restore points of the other system. Your screen snapshot ALSO tells me that when you boot into the alternative Windows System :- You have "alternatively" booted into Windows on a partition shown as "Second Disk (C:)" - (assuming a typical installation ) and with a Capacity of 465 GB and Free Space 423 GB and that your "normally booted" Windows system would have been found on a partition shown as "(? :)" - probably "(D:)" but could be anything or nothing and a Capacity of 931 GB and Free Space 842 GB Please note that System Volume Names are defined on the physical drives and are the same regardless of the operating system that sees them. Drive Letters are only know by the operating system which is running, and you can use one system to change the drive letters but this has no effect upon the letters assigned by the alternative system. Regards Alan

http://www.sevenforums.com/ Experts on the above forum have in the past warned against :- Allowing the "running" version of system to allocate a drive letter to :- The "alternative" system partition; Any "System Reserved" partition. They have also warned against having more than one Disk with the "Active" flag set. I am not in a position to argue on the above. In the above forum and in other places I have seen reference to loss or Restore Points when XP and Windows 7 partitions can see one another. In post #4 I referred to "Potential Problems" because I recognised that two off Win7 partitions is not the same as one XP + one Win7 but I have no confidence in Microsoft that Win7 + Win7 is all sweetness and light.

It can be FATAL for System Volume Information to be simultaneously visible on both the XP and the Win7 System drives. There are differences between how each version is run. XP was designed/cobbled-together before Windows 7 and knew nothing about it. The things that XP does to S.V.I is not the same as Win7, and as a result XP damages what Win7 uses. I think Win7 knows what not to do to the XP S.V.I. I could be wrongly remembering the details - you need to trust Google more than my old memory. I suggest that you boot into XP if available (or one of the Win7 if not), and launch Windows Disk Management and adjust the Window to show all the available details and take a screenshot and post it. That would give a better idea of your situation than mere words.