Alan_B

I know what happened - you prayed and that makes all the difference. :)

Apparently Kcash received his first answer within 12 hours of his posting, and you gave up waiting for further answers and installed an alternative product during the next 7 hours If your problems are so urgent then you can pay for direct support by the developers.

Happy to help Regards Alan

If you cleaned the registry the try restoring the registry backup that would have been suggested.

Please note that I was NOT suggesting that you use WinApp2.ini to fix your problem. The purpose of WinApp2.ini is to increase free space by removing files which us forum amateurs think you do not need, and there is a slight danger it will cause a problem, but I have never heard of it fixing a problem.

CCleaner can do no harm if you the Analyze button. CCleaner is normally harmless if you click "Run Cleaner". Under the Registry page is "Scan for Issues" which is also harmless. BUT the "Fix Selected Issues" can give beginners a bad experience, which you may be able to repair by restoring the registry backups that would have been suggested when you chose to Fix. I never "Fix Selected Issues" unless I have identified those issues and their consequences and am satisfied that the advantages outweigh the dangers, and when those dangers actually strike I have a Perfect backup of my system ready to to repair everything in 5 minutes. Sorry, I only know English and do not know the names of the buttons in your language.

Free downloads for either Boot CD or Boot Flash http://www.partition...ootable-cd.html http://www.partition...lash-drive.html With those you can plug your SATA HDD into the PC and boot into a partition manager without Windows being aware of the "foreign" HDD. Hot plugging drives onto an active Data + Address + Power Bus would be way outside of my comfort level. For me the only possible (and potentially valuable) use of this software is that it promises to safely remove eSATA external drives as easily as Windows Drive Manager can deal with USB. I am using Zentimo xStorage Manager and that is an easier way to remove USB2 drives, but it cannot remove eSATA - If I use eSATA for an external backup I can disable it but cannot remove it until I have shut down.

Do you use WinApp2.ini ?

What is "4:37pm Pacific Time to G.M.T." http://www.worldtime...o-gmt-converter That shows PDT or PST, but no PT - Pacific Time "is neither Fish nor Fowl" My best guess is 23:37 GMT, About 22:00 GMT my Browser was running with Gmail on one of its Tabs, but it was in the background whilst I tested some software when my computer crashed and shut down. I restarted and launched my browser and restored the previous session which brought back all the TABs that had been open - apart from Gmail. I clicked my bookmark shortcut to launch Gmail and enter my account, and each time Gmail refused to even recognise that I had an account - but It recognised my wife's account. This would have been around 22:37 GMT ( give or take half an hour) I feared that either my Windows installation or my browser profile was corrupted, and called it a night. This morning I powered up and as I hoped but really doubted, after an overnight shut down and start up all was well again, and Gmail was working again. Conclusion :- Either Google went dark at 22:37 GMT, or about 1 hour before Google went dark there were problems with Gmail, and either there was a cascade of servers falling over and taking down their neighbours, or Google phoned Technical Support and they asked "Have you tried switching off and switching on again"

Is it possible that the version of Windows, and maybe the make and models of SSD's, might be relevant for reproduction ?

The loss of original pathnames suggests that something has written to drive F:\. This could be due to :- A mistake when you quickly clicked that set the destinations as F:\; A mistake in the external connections / hardware such that the data intended for your destination drive ?:\ happened to also hit F:\; Automatic operation of backup / archiving software that was independent of your actions and happened to use F:\ as its destination; What version of Recuva ? (specific number please - "latest" is a variable I do not trust) How were your external drives connected ? (eSATA, USB2, USB3, etc.) What was the drive letter that you intended as the destination ? What was the format of both the source and destination drives ? ( Using Windows Explorer select a drive and right click and choose properties and it will show you )

When Give Away Of The Day were offering Glary and I had the time to spare, I would visit the site at the end of the day to see how many "gluttons for punishment" had taken the bait and now needed help in repairing their systems.

What drive letters were you trying to Recuva from and where were you saving what was recovered ? What was the total size you wished to recover? What was the total size of the partition that lost the data? How did the data get lost in the first place ?

Actually I looked up your machine and saw it came with a large HDD, and thought that either you had a supplementary small SSD for your operating system, or that you had only a small Windows partition and a much larger data/Documents partition, or possibly you were like myself and afflicted with O.C.D. I am like you and hate the way Free Space is used up, and when I used Win XP I would often mount last month's backup image of C:\ and compare with the current state of C:\ and obsess over every new file in-case it was malware that had invaded, or even worse - a Windows Update that had forced itself through. Windows 7 is so much worse that I have given up worrying. So far as Pagefile.sys is concerned, I have it set to a fixed size on my 64 bit Windows 7 and this is good for me. I do not know what is suitable for Windows 8. N.B. Last night I happened to stumble across a Win 8 bug in this article https://windowssecre...-for-windows-8/ Search for the phrase This could also cause you grief, either now or in the future

Welcome to the forum. Try this freeware version of Treesize https://www.jam-soft....80&language=EN That gives you options of a 3.2 MB installer or 2.5 MB Portable (which is my preference.) That will allow you to see where the space hogs are, and by either taking screen shots or using Treesize "Print" you can capture each day and then compare and see what is growing. For me the worst space hogs are Browser profiles and caches and C:\Windows\Winsxs\. C:\System Volume Information\ is also a space hog for people who have not disabled "System Restore" (or whatever Win 8 may call it..) Alternatively Desist from defragging for a week - nothing will die. I have not defragged for a year and my computer still runs. If your used space continues to grow when you are not defragging then you have some other issue, and my best bet would be software updates, either Microsoft Updating (sometimes without warning) or applications (especially from HP) automatically updating. How large is the partition you are defragging, and is it system partition C:\ ?

Thanks for the link, now downloaded and ready to use. I have quite a few 8 GB Flash Drives with significantly different speeds. The most recent is USB3 because I wanted to achieve speeds limited by the USB2 host and NOT be inferior Flash technology that could not achieve USB2 LIMITS. so I considered it worth paying an extra 10% for whatever boost that could give at the time, and also for use in the future (which is now scheduled for next week). I was disappointed to find that the fastest of the USB2 flash drives was a few percent faster than this USB3 I am using a PCIE graphics card. I will look into the availability of a non-express PCI USB3 interfact card. Regards Alan

I accept that it should still work after setting back to factory defaults, but my son now manages the I.T. department of a college after working up through the ranks when he configured / set up all the computers for the technology classes, and if I undo his enhancements and cannot restore back to his settings then my system will be degraded until :- He next makes a 600 mile round trip to visit ; or TeamViewer gives him remote control of my BIOS settings ; or I risk my sanity trying to understand the unpredictable world of Windows Computers.

I inherited this P.C. from my Son who custom built it and set it up. I do not know what "factory defaults" were wrong and needed fixing before I received it. Default Factory Settings could cause grief. I will document on paper as a manual fall-back when I try a single tweak and then file/profile restoration.

Thanks, I will investigate. Chances are that it will let me save to a file on the HDD, and then allow my to make a mistake in the BIOS so that the BIOS can no longer access the file Us longtime time users of Windows never expect an easy life.

That is a good idea which I was not aware of. How many snapshots can it keep ? and how can I select which to restore ? Regards Alan

Thanks Do you happen to know :- What settings are applied to your ports ? and / or The difference between "Autonomous Switch" and "Auto" ? This morning I found that by default all my ports were set as Auto, and had the alternatives "Disabled", "Software Switch", and "Autonomous Switch". n.b. Either Asus.com FAQ has a spelling mistake or Windows could not do a proper copy and paste when I posted "Automonous Switch". The thing that really ticks me off about the BIOS is that I cannot click the link to the asus.com web-site and read the magic incantations to the BIOS god, but first I have to sacrifice some wealth to renew the ink in my printer so that I can diligently follow the instructions One further aggravation is that when I exit from the BIOS then Windows punishes me by enumerating my drives wrongly, and Windows Disk Management and Minitool Partition manager are all told the first Disk is my WDC HDD (spin up delay of 5.1 seconds), followed by my OCZ SSD (??? delay ???), followed by my Samsung HDD (spin up delay of 8.1 seconds) and this has in the past caused glitches in the real-time drive performance records kept by my Disk monitor. N.B. I know that in theory I can get back to the BIOS and change it again, but whether I can repair my mistakes depends on finding the piece of paper on which I may have noted down what the pre-mistake settings were Regards Alan

@ Hazel Thanks - the last item shows me 5 Gbps which I compute as 625 MBytes per Second, but perhaps they really mean 5 Gtps (including "transaction" overhead bits for each byte) I do not know for sure, but I assume this is per "bank". I have a little more research to do - I will check out their forum. @ eL_PuSHeR Thanks That tells me It leaves me with a little doubt about whether this capability existed at the time when my motherboard was built. Alarmingly, when I look at the FAQs I read http://www.asus.com/...61-B0E802C46D52 I do so hope I can avoid changing the BIOS - "Dragons Be Here" I will look and think a bit more before making my purchase. I am happy to consider any other options Regards Alan

Recuva version 1.48 was released yesterday. Oh dear - moderators sleeping at their posts perhaps ? @ Apshu It probably works in situations where 1.47 failed. It may be worth trying for yourself - otherwise I think my alternative recommendation may be as easy for you to use as Recuva. Alan out.

I do not believe it is possible for fragmentation to make a HDD run slower than a USB2 Flash drive. Is it possible your computer hardware is defective ? Do you need to restore DMA mode ? Perhaps this will point you how to fix it. http://forum.pirifor...showtopic=38431

I wish to use a USB3 External HDD and believe my only way is to add a PCI Express Card in my long x16 socket. Tech. Support of the original seller of the motherboard will sell me a "long" card that uses the entire length of the x16 socket, and assured me that it would give me the full benefit of the 5 Gbps capability of USB3, and warned me that any smaller card that can fit into an x1 socket would give me only 2 Gbps, and he quoted the small table on the right near the top of http://en.wikipedia....iki/PCI_Express I have now read all the above and have read In 2003, PCI-SIG introduced PCIe 1.0a, with a per-lane data rate of 250 MB/s PCI-SIG announced the availability of the PCI Express Base 2.0 specification on 15 January 2007. The PCIe 2.0 standard doubles the transfer rate compared with PCIe 1.0 to 5 GT/s and the per-lane throughput rises from 250 MB/s to 500 MB/s. followed by PCI Express 3.0 Base specification revision 3.0 was made available in November 2010, after multiple delays. The motherboard was supplied around May 2011 so I HOPE the supplier achieved 2.0 standard in those 40+ months. Is there any freeware that can positively identify the PCIe version of my motherboard, or do I have to pay the extra for a large card or attempt a "sale or return" on a cheaper small card. According to Speccy :- Motherboard Manufacturer ASUSTeK Computer INC. Model M3A32-MVP DELUXE (CPU 1) Chipset Vendor AMD Chipset Model 790FX Chipset Revision 00 Southbridge Vendor ATI Southbridge Model SB600 Southbridge Revision 00 PCI Data Slot PCI-E Slot Type PCI-E Slot Usage In Use Bus Width Unknown Slot Designation PCIEX16-1 Slot Number 0 Slot PCI-E Slot PCI-E Slot PCI-E Slot PCI Slot PCI Slot Type PCI Slot Usage Available Bus Width 32 bit Slot Designation PCI-2 Slot Number 5 Regards Alan