Robert in CA wrote:
Yes but the 780 isn't an external drive and the health page should be similar
to the 8500. I tried to go back and check the boxes like the 8500 was
checked but it wouldn't let me.

https://postimg.cc/Mvzg0S4Q

https://postimg.cc/z32Phgn9

I'm on the User Account on both computers so if it works on the 8500 it should
also work on the 780.

What do you think of Sea Monkey being the problem? It's the only new program
that I've added recently to both computers. I thought maybe Adobe Flash Player
was doing this but I don't have it on the 780 but I noticed I have Apple programs
on the 780. Why would I have Apple programs?

Thoughts/suggestions?
Robert


Apple programs could have come in at a previous
time, with iTunes for PC, or with Safari Web Browser for PC.
Orphan components from such fun, could be QuickTime (movie player)
or Bonjour (similar to SSDP nameserving or Network Neighborhood).
If you had uninstalled iTunes, uninstalled Safari, and QuickTime
and Bonjour were still there, you could look in Programs and Features
and remove them.

A person could buy a copy of QuickTime Pro and install that,
in which case, you'd probably leave it installed. A lot of video players
have come along since QuickTime came out, so it's hardly necessary
any more. I ditched my QuickTime Pro eons ago.

Seamonkey is similar to Netscape Communicator, a suite
of a few different programs, rolled into one. It does
not have a particular hotkey streak to it. I've used Seamonkey
for a lot of years, and have nothing bad to report about it.
It probably works better than Safari :-)

You have lots of AV programs, and... those make me nervous.
Companies like Avast or AVG, they just can't stop adding
functions that don't belong, which is what makes me
nervous. Some of the AV programs are similar to root kits,
which isn't necessarily bad. Except when the companies
get carried away.

There are also things like Microsoft Intellitype. Which is
a software product specifically for keyboards. Maybe that
would make me nervous.

I have an experiment I want to try, but I can't get it running
on Windows 7, because Microsoft has removed the downloads
for the software for it. If I move my experiment to Windows 10,
then the experiment might work... but it won't be doing you
a damn bit of good. That's an ETW tracer with different events
in it than Process Monitor from Sysinternals uses. That's my only
hope, in terms of automation. I'm not convinced it can do what
I want, which is why I had to try to test it. But it's so annoying
to get running, forget it.

*******

Over the years, I've had various SMART failures (Health tab won't
load), so what has happened to you is not unheard of. It's
not supposed to happen, because SMART over SATA is inband,
and is part of the protocol. Nothing should particularly
be able to stop it. On Windows 10, maybe a year or a year
and a half ago, there was an "outage" on SMART and garbage
leaking through, and that was some nitwit at Microsoft
trying to do something clever with the data (never did find
out what "improvement" caused the breakage). They broke
it somehow, and it took a while for them to put things
back in a working state. That's what I mean by "breakage happens",
even though if nobody screws with it, it would have "just worked".
It's when the people get too big for their britches, that
it breaks.

A person could try "SmartMonTools for Windows", but I don't see
the point of even trying, when it's more likely to be a
filter driver somewhere which has messed it up. It's a lot
like the "turn it OFF and turn it ON" experiments, the
rote solutions that are so popular on the web. I don't like
to waste time banging my head against the wall, unless there
is some indication we could fix it that way. I don't think HDTune
is a bad program, and if there was a working SMART subsystem, it
would have found it.

There's very little you can switch off on hard drives now.
At one time, you could mess with power states, but at least
some of that was removed for "patent reasons". You can certainly
load new firmware into a drive (the protocol allows short term
test until the power goes off, or, burning the firmware into
flash and making it permanent). But unless a drive has a known
issue, there generally aren't any firmware files on offer. For
example, for the drives that used to brick after they ran for
30 days, there was a firmware to fix that. But unless a problem
on a drive is a serious one, they don't always offer a firmware,
not even the original one.

Paul