Repairing Windows 7

[Paul K]

Hello chaps.

Just lately, I've been getting all sorts of little problems during boot up, and it seems to take longer each time. I've routinely run CCleaner to clear out cookies and the registry, and regularly run a defragger, but now I'm getting little messages like ' Your copy of Windows isn't genuine' and yesterday it couldn't find the system disk and was unable to boot up at all. I know thats a BIOS setting rather than a Windows one, and I know how to set it - I just wonder why it suddenly doesn't know where my OS is.

Anyway... I think it might be an idea to run whatever repair utilities there are, and so I am researching the pros and cons. One thing I have read is that before starting, its a good idea to disconnect any peripherals such as printers, external back-up drives ( I have a Seagate Freeagent ) and so on. There are other things, too numerous ( and worrying ) to mention. There are all sorts of sites that deal with these things, but I thought I would first come to that repository of all human knowledge known as CBFS.

So, does anyone have any experience of doing a repair of Windows 7, with hints, tips and recommendations, and even the odd ' for Gawds sake, don't do that' ?

Any advice gratefully received. And if you could come round to my house and do it for me, I'd be even more grateful.

[TSR2]

It's best to disconnect the peripherals, but not essential these days. All I would say is be prepared to reinstall everything incase it goes wrong. Backup, backup, backup.

The windows not being genuine sounds like some hardware has changed (I.e. Failed) and given your problems booting and slowing down, I'd have a guess that your SATA controller driver has changed from the AMD one (which may have been a Via chipset) to the default one. This could be as the result of hardware failure, or CCleaner being a bit over zealous with cleaning out the registry.

It might actually be better to restore the whole pc using the Dell recovery discs, but you'll loose everything not backed up.

[rohan]

Paul
sorry to possibly add to your burdens, but there are a couple of areas of other possible causes for such transitory problems. First, I'd recommend doing a complete scan of your system for viruses and malware - just in case something has crept in unnoticed. Second, I would have to ask when you last opened the case and looked inside, because it could be as simple as a heat build-up. Take a look at the CPU-Z website and download HW-Monitor. It's free and small, and when you run it you'll see the temperatures at various points in your system. While I can't say what would be typical good temperatures within your system, you should see that some rise as you continue to use the system during a session IF a heat build-up is happening. Just keep an eye on the current and maximum values as you work.

I think it would help us to know a few details about your system too - that is, desktop or laptop, CPU, memory and internal disc sizes and, if you can, the PSU wattage,
Ro

[Paul K]

Thanks for the info so far, chaps. It's all adding to my knowledge base, which is no great surprise since I didn't have one in the first place.

Okay, the PC in question is my desktop, which is about 7 years old. Details are as follows:

OS: Win 7 64-bit Professional with SP1
CPU: Intel i7 960 3.2 GHz ( 7 years old ) The CPU cooler is under a year old.
MOBO: Asus P6T Deluxe V2 ( 7 years old )
RAM: 12 GB Corsair Dominator GT TRI-DDR3 2000MHz ( 18 months old with cooling fan fitted )
GPU: Nvidia GTX-650ti ( about 18 months old )
PSU: 1000W ( under a year old )

It also has three HDDs: one 640 Gb with the OS on it, a 300Gb Velociraptor - ( both of these are about 7 years old ) and a 1Tb one which is about 6 months old

To Ben: ref hardware failure...after getting the Windows not genuine message ( it appears in a little rectangle at the lower right corner of the screen ) it cleared after boot-up was completed. After that the PC ran fine, so what hardware component do you think might have caused it? SATA controller driver...I'm going to have to look that one up in detail, by the way. I didn't know I had anything AMD in there.

And CCleaner being a bit too vigorous, you say ? I run the CCleaner registry cleaner before shutting the PC down, almost every time. Any further thoughts on that ?

To Rohan: Inside the computer is pretty clean, though I know what you mean about dust and temp build-ups. However, these faults seem to arise during boot-up, when everything has been turned off overnight and is nice and cool. I'll get that HW-Monitor thing you mention, though.

At the moment, I'm using my laptop and leaving the desktop switched off ( first rule of computer ownership - you need two of them: one to help fix the other ). As I only have today off, I'm not going to attempt remedial action today as I know that I'll get nothing else done. I'm looking at next weekend before I attempt anything. It'll give me time to accumulate hints, tips and Valium.

Thanks for the time and attention so far, much appreciated.

[TSR2]

Hi Paul,

Getting my Pauls mixed up! Other Paul has the Dell with the AMD chipset.
I use Ccleaner if needed, not as an everyday thing personally. Windows not genuine used to pop up when the hardware had changed and the license needed re activated. A full AV scan sounds like a good idea, while disconnected from the network.

[rohan]

Paul,
appreciate your reply. It's probably irrelevant but there were times when I had spurious messages from XP during boot-up. Most were from the o/s complaining that my AV either wasn't installed or wasn't running, yet when the desktop had completed setup there it was in all its glory (bearing in mind this was MSE). My problem seemed to be due to the length of time it takes to finish start-up of the various services compared to the integrity checking bits of the system - MSE being notorious in this respect.

Perhaps in your case it's worth checking what it says about activation etc. on the Control Panel / System page. Also, it may be worth thinking about what changes have happened on the system very recently - even those that may have happened automatically and invisibly (such as drivers or Windoze updates).

I too run CCleaner after every on-line session with pretty much default settings. If it seems that there's a problem in this area, it may be worth renaming the CCleaner.ini file and letting it recreate it - I assume that you have the "save all settings to ini file" option set in "Tools / Advanced".

There's a little utility called HD-Tune which is rather old but still functional (Google is your friend). This gives you info about each of your internal hard drives, including the controller type.

HTH, regs,
Ro


Edit - and yet again I seem to have been replying while Ben was, except he seems to be a lot quicker on the keyboard than I am ...

[Paul K]

Ben, okay, I've got the full paid-for version of Malwarebytes, and though I've already run a scan with it, I wasn't disconnected from my network. Reading around the web, it seems that the best way of running Malwarebytes is in Safe Mode with networking enabled. So, why should I disconnect from the network ? And is it possible to scan my PC from my laptop with Malwarebytes ? I'm sure I read that it is possible.

Rohan, I check through what you say and do the necessary if needed. But not today...next weekend. I can't do with the headache today.

[rohan]

... understood ...

[TSR2]

There are (or where) viruses that would offload the virus bit back to a webserver when you run a scan so that the AV scan didn't pick them up. When the scan finished the virus bit would come back again and reinstall. I didn't think Malware bites was a full AV product? Thought it was only for Trojans etc.

[DaveB]

I don't think MWB is a full AV product mate.. I have it on my WinXP rig (the payware version). However.. it does stop bugs that MSE lets through with gay abandon (if I can use that term). My experience with it on XP is that MWB will find something first and MSE would eventually (though not always) catch up I'm on Avast+MWB on the XP rig now of course.
On my Win7 rig, I've a similar (though not the same) product.. SpyHunter (running with MSE). Although this can fish out unwanted bugs (and it did a darned good job of getting rid of a real nasty sod some weeks ago).. it generally checks for dodgy cookies. Surprising just how many of these you can pick up after a couple of days.. trackers

Not unrelated.. part of the suite is a prog called RegHunter. I guess this is a-n-other version of CCleaner. I ran it once to see what happened and it reported over 10,000 'odd bits' floating around in my registry. Where the hell do you start when that many faults are reported I closed my eyes and shut it down

ATB
DaveB