On 3/13/17 9:24 AM, Paul wrote:
Ken Springer wrote:
On 3/12/17 5:30 PM, Paul in Houston TX wrote:
Ken Springer wrote:
In the System control panel, W8 Pro clearly says Pro.

Is the W8 Home similarly clearly labeled Home?

I ask because we have 3 W8 computers at work that are not labeled at
all, they just say
Windows 8.

Try the Winver command. It's probably the same as through control panel,
but still worth a try.

I'm not working today, so I had a coworker run the winver command, no
identifier at all.

There must be something different behind the scenes. When we got the
machines used and free, they had been reset to "out of the box" state.

In the one I'm working with, doing the W7 Backup and Restore program to
do a system image, crashed every time. It couldn't get a "lock" on the
EFI(?) partition. A very much, much smarter coworker discovered some
service was turned off. (A situation that makes no sense to me for a
computer that's "out of the box".) He turned it on, and then it worked.

That sounds like VSS (Volume Shadow Service), something that a lot
of backup programs need. It allows you to backup C: "hot", without
having to reboot like you used to do with the old Ghost design.

I will try to remember to ask him what he did.

This is why I tell people I've evolved into the quintessential Mac user.
I just want things to work. I've really grown tired of having to deal
with crap like this. :-(

This is the first Mac I've ever owned. Bought it in 2009. And except
for a couple OE errors in the beginning, I've never had to reinstall the
OS because it was screwed up. I haven't spent hours trying to figure
out why the backups aren't working, or why something like Dexpot is
giving me fits. (FWIW, desktops were built into the Mac OS in 2009.)
I've run Time Machine almost from the beginning, and I've retrieved a
couple files from the backup, and that's all.

I guess the optimum word here is "reliability". Or, like the old Timex
watches, "Takes a lickin' and keeps on tickin'." LOL

If a VSS operation fails, you can also check the writers.

https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/...(v=ws.11).aspx

vssadmin list writers

This article has a table, relating certain services to a writer
for VSS. It means the "attack surface" is pretty big. But the
vssadmin command can help.

https://replibit.kayako.com/Knowledg...services---vss

Paul



--
Ken
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