Derek891

Hello Sam and welcome to the forum. I believe that the upgrade to Windows 8.1 is responsible for your restore points disappearing. You would not use the restore points to revert back to Windows 8. From what I have read, Microsoft recommends reinstalling Windows 8 if you want to restore the original OS. You should re-enable system restore, allocate a percentage of disk space, and set a new restore point before moving forward with the installation of new applications.

Hello Brad - I read your post last night, and started searching for the WinXP ISO file, then spent some more time tonight. You may be out of luck with XP. All I could find was the ISO for the Service Pack 3 update, not the complete operating system. I spent some time on several forums and they all have the same information: you need an original installation disk. I did find a couple of sites claiming to have it, but due to the fact they are located in Russia and India, I would be very wary of using them. I'm sorry to hear the installation to the Toshiba didn't work. It must be something Microsoft has designed into the installer, and I can't understand the reason for it. I belong to the Linux Mint forum and people install Mint onto external USB drives and even 32GB USB sticks with no problem. At this point, I'd really like to see if the USB stick works, and the reason is this: Sometime in March, and I'm not sure exactly when, the downloads from Digital River will no longer be available. If the image you have is no good, you will have to try another download. I've tried to find the md5checksum for the ISO you have, so you can verify it's integrity, but so far I haven't had any luck. I'll keep searching for it, maybe you should keep trying to get it to work. Edit: Got it. Windows 7 x64 Home Prem SP1 (Filename: X17-24209.iso - Correct?) MD5SUM: 971843a457b6e0db0af61258cbe7256a SHA1: b4821f46a171708f5f8f8a0ef48fc16529437961 CRC32: d236fd70 http://www.winmd5.com/ Now go here to download the md5checksum utility and verify the image you have.

With MBR partitioning, you are limited to either 4 primary partitions, or 3 primary partitions and 1 extended partition containing additional logical partitions. Not hard to set up and manage if you only have one operating system installed, or two different versions of Windows, but complicated if you are trying to install a multi-boot system, let's say Windows and two different Linux OS's on the same disk. The two big advantages with GPT partitioning are the number of partitions available (up to 128) and the simplicity (all can be primary, no need to create extended or logical partitions). This makes it possible to have 4, 5, or 6 operating systems on a 1TB drive (or more if need be). The only problem early on was that Microsoft had the implementation of UEFI and Secure Boot all figured out, while the Linux camp was slow to adapt. Multibooting on a disk with Windows 8 installed was problematic at best and impossible for some of the Linux distros. In the last six months or so, Fedora, openSUSE, Ubuntu (along with it's derivatives), and others have made great strides forward and are much easier to install on a UEFI system, even getting the signing keys for Secure Boot incorporated into the Grub installer. A good resource for trying to understand GPT partitions and UEFI booting is Roderick W. Smith's website: http://www.rodsbooks.com/

Tas: Glad to here that you and your family, as well as the rest of the town, came through that incident unscathed. We've had some very bad forest fires in the western U.S. recently where people were not so fortunate. My older brother is a volunteer fireman and many of the members of his fire department are also members of the FDNY. Their level of knowledge and experience is a huge asset to the department and it's other members. Whenever our department responds to a fire, a car accident, or a medical emergency people are always impressed by their level of professionalism. Our town owes them a huge debt of gratitude for the time and effort they devote to the training necessary to become volunteers. I came across this video a quite a while ago. The pilot of this Canadair water tanker shows incredible skill while taking on water to fight a fire near Parry Sound in Ontario, Canada. Pay close attention near the one minute mark: the shadow of the aircraft passing over the trees shows just how low the plane is during it's approach to the lake. It demonstrates the guys in the aircraft take just as many risks doing their job as the guys on the ground. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dDIwOggoWqo

It looks like HP is pulling the rug out from underneath Windows 8 and giving consumers what they want by offering a new series of machines with Windows 7 in lieu of Windows 8. http://www.marketspress.com/hp-reverts-windows-7-popular-demand-3715/alanquinton.html The $150.00 discount sweetens the deal for prospective buyers, and displaying the offer on their home page appears to be a poke in the eye for Microsoft's flagship OS. http://www.hp.com/country/us/en/uc/welcome.html

I've only run sfc /scannow once on this machine and it reported no problems. As far as MS Updates are concerned, I'm in the dark on that question.

Fear not Winapp2, I was just being my cynical self. I had Vista Business installed on the Lenovo Thinkpad T400 I recently purchased. It lasted just long enough for me to visit Lenovo's support website, find and download the most current BIOS and firmware I could find, then install it. Two minutes after that, the installation DVD for openSUSE 13.1 was in the drive and spinning up.

Here's a link to the options using the sfc command: http://pcsupport.about.com/od/termss/p/sfc-command-system-file-checker.htm Also: http://pcsupport.about.com/od/toolsofthetrade/ht/sfc-scannow.htm According to what I have read, using sfc /scannow will detect and replace corrupted system files. I would assume Windows may prompt you for the installation disk if it cannot find an item in the system .cab files. Using sfc /verifyonly will report on the affected files without attempting to replace them.

The good news: Anyone thinking of installing Vista can rest assured that it has been thoroughly tested. The bad news: Retail sales of Vista stopped in October, 2010.

Hello jalo39 and welcome. Did you try to delete the cache and cookies using the browser's own settings? Here is a link, see #4 of 14 for Safari under Mac or #5 of 14 for Safari under Windows: http://www.wikihow.com/Clear-Your-Browser%27s-Cache

Hello Jerseylinda and welcome to the forum. First, I think you should review all of your settings for Internet Explorer. The instructions are here: http://www.piriform.com/docs/ccleaner/ccleaner-rules/windows-tab/internet-explorer-files Second, check to see if any files are excluded from cleaning. The instructions are here: http://www.piriform.com/docs/ccleaner/using-ccleaner/excluding-files,-folders,-and-registry-entries Third, check the settings for cleaning or saving cookies. The instructions are here: http://www.piriform.com/docs/ccleaner/ccleaner-settings/choosing-which-cookies-to-keep Fourth, check the settings for cleaning flash cookies. The instructions are here: http://www.piriform.com/docs/ccleaner/ccleaner-settings/cleaning-flash-cookies And last, not to scare you, have you scanned your system for viruses and malware lately? You might be dealing with something that does not want to be deleted so easily. Has Internet Explorer been working without any problems? Do you have any new toolbars you never had before? Again, not to scare you, I just thought of this as a potential problem, something to check into if all else fails.

You give me too much credit Juice. It was more a matter of being observant, not brilliant. What would be brilliant was if Microsoft rewrote the code that handles system paging. The days of Win95 and Win98 running on 16 or 32 megabytes of system memory are long gone, and so is the need for the excessive use of sytem paging. With most modern laptops shipping with 4, 8, or even 16 gigabytes of memory installed, I find it hard to believe that Windows 8 would allow system paging to get so out of control. I know that in past versions of Windows, it was possible to edit a registry value for conservative swapfile usage that would force system memory to more of the work. I haven't gotten around to see if it still exists in the Windows 8 registry. One more thing to add to my "to do" list.

Thanks for the link Winapp2, I'm glad to see that Google has responded quickly and decisively to this problem. I don't mind at all. I think it's more important that people understand the potential vulnerablities in both Chrome and Firefox. I try to never allow any application to automatically update itself without my knowledge or consent. I've been burned in the past and would prefer to have software that's one or two versions out of date and still working rather than something that is problematic, or worse, riddled with malware.

Invisible data: It always adds an air of mystery to a thread.

Yes, as a matter of fact I did. It seems that Windows did not allow the two seperate sections to be rejoined because of other data occupying the disk sectors in between them.

I came across this article yesterday describing yet another internet exploit to be aware of. It seems the people with the black hats have found a way to load adware and malware onto a user's machine by using the automatic updates to Chrome browser extensions: http://arstechnica.com/security/2014/01/malware-vendors-buy-chrome-extensions-to-send-adware-filled-updates/ "A first-hand account of this, which was first spotted by OMGChrome, was given by Amit Agarwal, developer of the "Add to Feedly" extension. One morning, Agarwal got an e-mail offering "4 figures" for the sale of his Chrome extension. The extension was only about an hour's worth of work, so Agarwal agreed to the deal, the money was sent over PayPal, and he transferred ownership of the extension to another Google account. A month later, the new extension owners released their first (and so far only) update, which injected adware on all webpages and started redirecting links. Chrome's extension auto-update mechanism silently pushed out the update to all 30,000 Add to Feedly users, and the ad revenue likely started rolling in. While Agarwal had no idea what the buyer's intention was when the deal was made, he later learned that he ended up selling his users to the wolves. The buyer was not after the Chrome extension, they were just looking for an easy attack vector in the extension's user base."

I'm certainly glad that this kind of technology hasn't trickled down to some of the lesser household appliances. I can only imagine a future where a cleaning service knocks on my door and asks me why I haven't run my vacuum cleaner in the last 30 days.

Hello Juice and welcome to the forum. Just by chance, does your machine have 8GB of memory installed? Mine does, and one time Windows had automatically enlarged the system paging file to it's absolute maximum. In doing this, the paging file was split into two seperate sections on the drive. Defraggler reported this as 8GB of fragmanted files and displayed two seperate paging areas (brown) on the drive map. My solution was to disable system paging, restart, then re-enable system paging. After that, Defraggler displayed one contiguous area for system paging, and no longer reported 8GB of fragmented files. Later on, I made it a point to set system paging at a fixed value, with the min. and max. being equal at 4096MB.

I'm not sure if SMART status and error reporting applies to SSD or hybrid drives, or if Speccy is capable of reporting accurately where hybrid and SSD drives are concerned. That would be something only the Piriform software developers can answer. In your case, I think you should put more faith in what the Seatools application is telling you, since it is provided by Seagate, the drive's manufacturer. I find it strange that Seatools is inconsistent in reporting problems, maybe you should find out if it is meant to work with hybrid drives or if it is only meant to be used with SATA drives.

Also, here is a link to an explanation of the SMART ID numbers, you have to scroll down the page to the table. Note the ID's highlighted in pink are the problem areas. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/S.M.A.R.T. You mentioned 8GB SSD caching. This Toshiba 1TB drive, is it a hybrid drive, or SATA, or SSD? The 8GB SSD caching is a separate device or a part of the drive itself?

All right, I think you should realize that system memory (RAM) works much, much faster than virtual memory (the paging file). I think having it set too high is the reason for the extremely high disk usage you are experiencing. You are better off letting your system memory (RAM) do more of the work. I know you have experimented with different settings, have you tried a fixed value, where the minimum and maximum are the same? On my machine, I have 8GB memory, and have paging set at 4GB for the min. and max. value.

Hello SJC and welcome - Am I reading it correctly that you have system paging (virtual memory) set to 80GB, or did you mean to type 8GB?

Hello again krit86lr - I did a brief investigation, and found a little more info for you. The activation keys are not stored on the installation media, as per these two links - http://www.magicaljellybean.com/keyfinder-faq/ and http://recover-keys.com/en/faq.html - read the FAQ on both. The keys are generated by an algorithm during installation and are then stored in the registry. These two applications are only used to find the keys after Windows is installed on the machine. If you already have the keys and want to see if they are in use, or to validate them, it looks like you will have to call Microsoft. From what I have read, they keep a very tight reign on this information, and it is not available on any website. I also have found that when you give them a key, they can tell you if it is valid for the product in question, how many times it has been used for activation, and if it is currently in use. I know you probably didn't want to hear this, but in this age of digital piracy I think you can understand why this information is not easily available.

Hello krit86lr - What version of Windows is on the installation disks? I remember seeing a software application somewhere for either identifying or verifying the activation keys for Windows 7. I'm not sure if it was used pre-installation to get the key from the disk itself or post-installation to find if the key was a valid one. It was either on Softpedia, MajorGeeks, or the FileHippo websites since they are the only ones I've used recently.

@login123 - I recant what I stated about needing two USB sticks with Macrium; in your case, you can use your external drive to store your images. And a CD or DVD can be used to create the bootable WinPE rescue application. I only used a USB stick because it was all I had available at the time. @Alan_B - I tend to believe the policy of one USB backup per machine isn't altogether HP's doing; it think Microsoft has imposed this on HP as well as other manufacturers in order to prevent bootleg copies of Windows from being created. And with the advent of Secure Boot in BIOS and TPM modules installed on the motherboard, I imagine my USB stick would be useless on any other machine, because of the fact I have never had to provide an activation key during or after installation. One machine, one copy of Windows sold, no more, no less, and absolutely no exceptions.