Derek891

Walter Sobchak's opinion:

Hello to all - Problem solved. All I had to do was restore Windows 8.1 from a backup image I made about three weeks ago. Ran another scan and everything was clean, so it must have been something I downloaded or installed in the last three weeks. All I can recall doing was downloading several catalogs in .pdf format and installing Firefox (???). I have no clue where it came from, but it's gone now. :)

dvdbane, I think you're onto something. I just got finished running the same scan on my Windows 7 machine, which has the same version of Malwarebytes and the same version of Ccleaner installed. Nothing was detected, period. So it looks like some form of malware has gotten into my Windows 8.1 registry, and it's using the name Ccleaner as a part of it's own name to avoid being detected by a casual inspection of the registry. Maybe the admins or developers can add something to this.

Basic information: Windows 8.1 Core x86_64 v. 6.3.9600 Ccleaner v. 5.04.5151 x64 Malwarebytes v. 2.1.4.1018 Database v. 2015.04.01.09 I just downloaded the latest malware definitions for Malwarebytes and performed a scan. At the end, during the heuristics portion of the scan, Malwarebytes picked up two registry entries from Ccleaner that it claims are PUPS. Here is a screenshot of the results: Please note: This just occurred today and has never occurred previously while using any of the earlier malware definition files. I realize that many times a heuristics scan can result in false positives, and for now I've instructed Malwarebytes to ignore these two issues. I'd just like to know for certain if Malwarebytes has discovered something genuine, or if I should set it to ignore these items permanently.

Hello WarlockLives (formerly known as Warlock and known in France as "Le gros marteau artiste Warlock"). How have you been? Has it taken this long to dig yourself out from under all of the snow that has fallen this past winter? I'm glad to see you back.

Thank goodness you gives figured it out. For a while there I thought it was a series of coded messages from the alien overlord BAMWAR the Malevolent (a.k.a. BAMwar the Malevolent, a.k.a. bamWAR the Malevolent, a.k.a. any possible combination of upper and lower case letters spelling the name "bamwar") demanding the immediate and total surrender of all Earth's citizens. I immediately donned my tinfoil hat and hid in the basement.

Hello @ Coffee4Joe - I've found it slow to start. But once it's running it responds normally and has never caused a system crash. Exactly which Crucial SSD model and which version of Windows are you using it on? Cut and pasted from their website: "The Crucial Storage Executive is compatible with Microsoft® Windows® 7 or newer, and works with the Crucial M500, M550, MX100, MX200, and BX100 SSDs".

Hello Phil - I would like you to be clear on this. There are three different messages generated when " sfc /scannow " completes the operation. Exactly which one did you get? . 1.) "Windows Resource Protection did not find any integrity violations." - No missing/corrupt files were found and no CBS.log was generated. 2.) "Windows Resource Protection found corrupt files and successfully repaired them. Details are included in the CBS.Log %WinDir%\Logs\CBS\CBS.log." - Problems were found and repaired. A CBS.log was generated. 3.) "Windows Resource Protection found corrupt files but was unable to fix some of them. Details are included in the CBS.Log %WinDir%\Logs\CBS\CBS.log." - Problems were found that could not be repaired. A CBS.log file was generated.

Hello Nergal - All right, now I understand. The free upgrade itself will be offered for just one year, with no limit on how long you can use the OS afterward. Thank you.

Recently Crucial came out with a piece of software named the Crucial Storage Executive, which is used to analyze and maintain their various lines of SSD's. I installed it, and just by coincidence, about a week later I noticed that my M500's expected lifetime dropped from 100% to 99%. I dug out my sales receipt and found that I've owned this device for 10 months. If you extrapolate the numbers, namely that 1% = 10 months of use, then the remaining 99% equates to 82.5 years at my current rate of use. I had no idea that I had purchased an heirloom to pass on to my children and grandchildren.

Nergal touched on this point briefly in post #13: You get to install and use Windows 10 for one year. My question is: And then what? I'm guessing it's either pay up to continue using Windows 10, or reinstall whatever version of Windows you had previously. I guess that Microsoft is betting the ranch on Windows 10's acceptance vs. Windows 7/8/8.1 and signing up a large majority of the people who take advantage of the trial offer. Unfortunately, in the past, they also expected that Vista and Windows 8 would be wildly popular. We all know how that turned out.

Hello Phil - That looks better now than the in previous screenshot, but it's still far from ideal. I noticed that the used space on your disk increased from 57% to 80% and you free space dropped from 43% down to just 20%. Did you check off the items I mentioned in my last post before starting your last round of defragmenting? Also, did you try running " sfc /scannow " and then deleting all of your system restore points as I described in my previous post? I have a feeling either or both of that these items might account for the substantial increase in disk usage.

Hello Phil - There is one more thing I completely forgot to mention when I posted yesterday: your system restore points. How much of the Windows C:\ disk partition did you allocate for saving them? And when was the last time you cleaned out the older ones? I've found that they tend to start out fairly small (200-300MB), grow to gigabyte size, and eventually occupying 10's of gigabytes if you let them go unchecked. Windows will only delete the older ones to make way for newer ones when it has reached the upper limit of the space you have allocated. Before you delete any at all, I would suggest that you determine you don't actually need them. Do this by opening an elevated Command Prompt (right click and select "Run as Administrator"), and enter the command " sfc /scannow ". This will scan all of your Windows system files and verify that none are missing and that none are corrupted. This process will take 20-30 minutes, so take a break and let it run to completion. If you see the message "Windows did not find any integrity violations", then you should consider deleting all of your system restore points except the most recent one. If you have Ccleaner installed along with Defraggler, this is easy to do. Open Ccleaner, select "Tools", then select "System Restore". Ccleaner will let you delete all except the most recent one. One more thing: Open Defraggler and go to "Settings", then "Options", then click the "Advanced" tab. Make sure you have the following items checked before using Defraggler: 1.) At the very bottom of the list, make sure "Stop VSS when defragmenting NTFS volume" is checked. 2.) Go up one notch and make sure "Use custom fragmentation settings" is checked, then click the "Define" tab, and make sure "Exclude restore point file" and "Exclude hibernation file" are both checked as well.

That could very well be the case, a lot of netbooks shipped with Win7 Starter and just 1GB of system memory installed. My brother and I both own HP Mini netbooks and can attest to the fact that installing 2GB of memory made quite a difference in the overall performance of Win7 Starter. Hopefully LuLu's friend can do likewise if the manufacturer's specs permit doing so.

Hello Phil - After looking at the screenshot you've provided, all I can say is "OMG!!! ". It looks like the system paging file is occupying 80% to 90% of your Windows C:\ partition and is incredibly fragmented as well. What I would do is this: 1.) Go to the settings for virtual memory and turn system paging off (select "No paging file"), ignore the silly warning messages, and reboot the machine. 2.) Right click and open an elevated Command Prompt (run as Administrator). Then enter " powercfg /hibernate off ". At this point pagefile.sys and hiberfil.sys are both removed from the C:\ partition and this gives you some room to work with. 3.) Open Defraggler and run the Analysis, and confirm that all the beige blocks are gone. Then do a full defragmentation of the drive and get all of your system and data files moved to the beginning of the drive. You might have to do this 2 or 3 times in order to get everything unscrambled and organized properly. 4.) Go back to the virtual memory settings and turn system paging back on (No need to reboot when doing this). 5.) Then open an elevated Command Prompt and enter " powercfg /hibernate on " to restore the hibernation file. Your system will thank you for it.

Hello Siegfried - I had a similar situation when I had Avast antivirus installed on my machine. After I uninstalled Avast, the two entries for it still appeared under the Applications section of Ccleaner. My solution was to uninstall Ccleaner, reboot, then reinstall it. The entries for Avast were gone after doing so. If this doesn't work for you, there are probably registry entries or folders for Firefox that somehow remain on your system and need to be removed.

Hello LuLu - How have you been? It's been a while since I last visited this forum. Having just 1GB of system memory installed is the absolute minimum for Windows 7, and that only applies if the machine is running a 32 bit version of Windows 7, like Windows 7 Starter for instance. (With a 64 bit system, you need 2GB of system memory as a minimum.) The solution is to install more memory, if that's possible. Do you know the brand and model of your friend's machine? A quick Google search of the machines specs should give you an idea of the maximum memory that can be installed. Having 2GB of memory would certainly help out a 32 bit system, and having 4GB would be ideal for either a 32bit or a 64 bit system running Windows 7. Also, you stated that your friend had 10GB free on her hard drive, and that might be a problem as well. The Windows operating system gets cranky when the Windows C:\ system partition gets filled to 90% or more of it's capacity. For example, if the Windows C:\ partition is 100GB in size, and you have 90GB of data on it and have 10GB of free space, you're right at the limit an should think about removing some data files and storing them on some other media, such as a USB flash drive or an external USB hard drive. An even worse example: If she has a 250GB hard drive with just 10GB of free space available, that would be a very serious issue. She would find it impossible to defragment the drive, be unable to store any more files, and would probably experience system crashes (the dreaded BSOD) as well. Now in your friends case, if she is allowing Windows to manage the size of the paging file, and the Windows C:\ partition is at or near full, the Windows operating system might be trying to expand the paging file in low memory situations and finding there's just not enough extra room to do so. This could be the problem behind the error messages she's receiving.

Hello trium - I realize I'm a bit late to the party, and I'm glad to hear that you managed to activate WinXP successfully. In the future, if you ever want to do another clean install of WinXP without going through the hassle of telephone activation, there is a way to backup and restore the two files needed for offline activation. The instructions are in the following link: http://netsecurity.about.com/od/windowsxp/qt/aaqtwinxp0829.htm

Ever since the last great update debacle in August 2014 I make it a point to create a backup image of my Windows 8.1 system on the weekend prior to update Tuesday. I learned that lesson the same way I learned nearly everything else I know about computers - the hard way.

Absolutely incredible. I recently read that Microsoft was on track to make nearly $60 billion dollars in gross income in 2014. Perhaps they should invest just a wee bit more of that money in the Quality Assurance department.

Hello Norrie and hazelnut - This is strange. This morning I tried running the three dism commands on my Win 7 Prox64 machine to verify they all worked, and found only the second one(/ScanHealth) still works. Yet I swear about 2 months ago they worked. @Norrie - Don't do anything with the dism command until I can figure this out. @hazelnut - I just noticed a thread you posted this morning: http://forum.piriform.com/index.php?showtopic=42485 I installed update KB3004394 on 12/9. I read in your post that it may affect Windows update. From what I've read, the dism command uses Windows update to download and replace missing/corrupted system files when it finds them. Do you think this is why the dism command is no longer working on my machine?

Hello Norrie - I think it would be a good idea to fix your corrupt/missing system files first, then figure out what to do about the 23GB or so of files you cannot account for. Right click and open the Command Prompt to run as System Adminstrator, then enter the following three commands one at a time, allowing each one to finish before starting the next: Dism /Online /Cleanup-Image /CheckHealth Dism /Online /Cleanup-Image /ScanHealth Dism /Online /Cleanup-Image /RestoreHealth Here's an explanation of what each one does: /CheckHealth - This switch option only checks to see if a component corruption marker is already present in the registry. It is just a quick way to see if corruption currently exists, and to inform you if there is corruption. It does not fix anything or create a log. This should be finished almost instantaneous. /ScanHealth - This switch option does not fix any corruption. It only checks for component store corruption and records that corruption to the log file. This is useful for only logging what, if any, corruption exists. This should take around 5-10 minutes to finish. /RestoreHealth - (recommended) This switch option checks for component store corruption, records the corruption to the log file, and FIXES the image corruption using Windows Update. This should take around 10-15 minutes up to about an hour to finish depending on the level of corruption

Hello Dillon - Is it D:\ partition you're having the problem with? If so, it's because you're using 97% of the available space. There's just not enough room available to rearrange such large files. I suggest you either transfer some of the files back to C:\ partition, or transfer some of them to an external device, like a USB hard drive or large capacity USB flash drive. Then try defragmenting D:\ again. Be aware that defragmenting such a large amount of data is going to take quite some time. When you're finished, you can transfer the files back to D:\.

Hello Norrie and welcome to the forum. I have a strong suspicion of what the problem is and I would like you to verify it. Go here and download TreeSize Free: http://www.jam-software.com/treesize_free/ This is a software utility that will allow you to analyze your disk usage and see exactly which files are using the most space on your disk. Just be aware that when you run it, you should right click the desktop shortcut and select "Run as Administrator". Once you have the results displayed, take a close look at the section marked System Volume Information. Does the amount displayed there roughly correspond to the 23GB of excess data that you're looking for? If so, then it's your system restore points that are causing the problem. You've probably let them accumulate for far too long, and you've probably allocated a very high percentage of your disk space to be used by System Protection. If this is the case, the solution is this: Go to Control Panel > All > Recovery > Configure System Restore. Click the tab marked System Protection, then click the Configure button. First, delete all of your current restore points. Second, use the slider to select a more reasonable percentage of disk space to be used, and click Apply. Third, create a new system restore point to replace all the previous ones. Just a word of caution before you go ahead and delete all of your existing system restore points: You must first verify that you don't need them. To do this, right click and open the Command Prompt, and select "Run as Administrator". Then use the sfc command to verify that none of your Windows system files are corrupted or missing. The correct syntax is "sfc /scannow". This will take about 15-20 minutes to run, and if no problems are detected, the message "Windows Resource Protection did not find any integrity violations" will appear. If you see a message that indicates anything else, do not delete your existing restore points and post back to this topic for advice on how to proceed.

Good idea Tasgandy. Over 55 years ago, my grandfather made this statement concerning television: "That **** will rot your brain!". How true, especially in recent years. The last TV drama I actually enjoyed and looked forward to watching the next week was the spy drama "Rubicon". I never understood why it was cancelled after a single season. I guess the reason it did not appeal to a broader audience was because it required you pay close attention to details and made you actually use your brain to "think" about what you were watching, instead of vapidly staring at the tube.