Win7 support:

On Sunday, August 11, 2019 at 8:23:59 AM UTC-7, Robert in CA wrote:
I haven't been using the Win10 HD I'm on the Win7 HD
I also have one spare Win7 HD that's good.

I tried booting the Mcrium Rescue CD we created on Win 10
but it doesn't engage.

I can't remember how to disconnect the drives (please give
instructions of how to locate it again) but remember that is
what started all this by un-ticking Win7 so I was thinking
what if we un-ticked Win10? Maybe Win7 would function
again?

What do you think?

Robert


Also, in the instructions that came with the 780
it said to press the down arrow key repeatedly then
select system restore. So Why not just try doing a
System Restore?

Robert

Robert in CA wrote:
On Sunday, August 11, 2019 at 8:23:59 AM UTC-7, Robert in CA wrote:
I haven't been using the Win10 HD I'm on the Win7 HD
I also have one spare Win7 HD that's good.

I tried booting the Mcrium Rescue CD we created on Win 10
but it doesn't engage.

I can't remember how to disconnect the drives (please give
instructions of how to locate it again) but remember that is
what started all this by un-ticking Win7 so I was thinking
what if we un-ticked Win10? Maybe Win7 would function
again?

What do you think?

Robert


Also, in the instructions that came with the 780
it said to press the down arrow key repeatedly then
select system restore. So Why not just try doing a
System Restore?

Robert

I recommend that only the Windows 7 drive be
present during the restore. SATA 1 to optical
drive maybe. SATA 2 to Win7 hard drive. Settings
at RAID ON, SATA 1 and SATA 2 enabled.

Maybe when it reboots, it'll actually be genuine ?

Paul

Robert in CA wrote:
I haven't been using the Win10 HD I'm on the Win7 HD
I also have one spare Win7 HD that's good.

I tried booting the Mcrium Rescue CD we created on Win 10
but it doesn't engage.

I can't remember how to disconnect the drives (please give
instructions of how to locate it again) but remember that is
what started all this by un-ticking Win7 so I was thinking
what if we un-ticked Win10? Maybe Win7 would function
again?

What do you think?

Robert

You have two drive bays, with blue plastic trays.

Each drive has a power connection and a data connection.

Disconnecting the power connection and the data connection
(while the PC is shut down preferably), disconnects the
drive and then the OS cannot see it.

If there are problems manipulating the cables, sometimes
it's a good idea to slide the tray out as well, so no
harm will come to the drive. As then
the cables can't touch anything.

*******

A possible reason your Macrium CD did not boot, is
you didn't see the

"Press any key to boot from CD"

prompt. If you press a key within a couple of seconds
of seeing the prompt, it boots from the CD. If you don't
press a key, it finds the next available thing to
boot from (a hard drive).

That prompt appears as a line just below the F12 boot menu.

*******

I think you left the original Win7 drive in the PC at
the same time as you used the Windows 10 DVD to install
Windows 10 on the spare drive.

Since, in that situation, Windows 10 needs to reboot several
times, the boot order would not be correct. Windows 10 is
likely to install the boot menu, on the drive which currently
looks like it will be doing the reboot. This results in
Windows 10 being split between two drives.

win10 boot stuff put here, in the Win7 system reserved.
+--------------\
| v
| Win7 disk System Reserved C: partition
|
+-- Win10 disk ??? C: partition

By using the Macrium "Boot Repair" in the menu, you can
attempt to repair such things. This assumes that the
Windows 10 hard drive, actually has a partition to place
that information in. Where the three ??? are located, might
be where the repair would put the new info.

But we have to work on our Macrium booting, to get to
that step.

When repairing boot on hard drives, it helps if only
the drive needing repair, is cabled up. Then, that
hard drive has to be in the boot order of course.

*******

I still don't understand what caused Windows 7 to go Not Genuine.
When I mentioned these symptoms to someone in a computer
shop, they thought I was nuts :-) Which implies it should
not have happened.

*******

Please confirm your recollection of what
drives were present when Windows 10 installed.

As that knowledge will at least give some idea
when Windows 10 kicks up a fuss, why it is doing it.

Your winload.exe implies something was looking for
a particular thing, and did not find it. It could be
during that boot attempt, that the boot menu
identified a drive by GUID, then tried to access
that partition. So rather than winload.exe being
missing, it was looking for C:\Windows\system32\winload.exe
and since it couldn't even find C:, that is the error
it threw. It's not winload.exe it cannot find, it is
the C: drive it cannot find.

Again, boot repair with Macrium is required, but Macrium
is not a miracle worker. If the necessary partition to
put the materials in is not present, Macrium won't fix
that. Macrium is better at fixing things that are
structurally sound.

Paul

On Sunday, August 11, 2019 at 4:11:09 PM UTC-7, Paul wrote:
Robert in CA wrote:
On Sunday, August 11, 2019 at 8:23:59 AM UTC-7, Robert in CA wrote:
I haven't been using the Win10 HD I'm on the Win7 HD
I also have one spare Win7 HD that's good.

I tried booting the Mcrium Rescue CD we created on Win 10
but it doesn't engage.

I can't remember how to disconnect the drives (please give
instructions of how to locate it again) but remember that is
what started all this by un-ticking Win7 so I was thinking
what if we un-ticked Win10? Maybe Win7 would function
again?

What do you think?

Robert


Also, in the instructions that came with the 780
it said to press the down arrow key repeatedly then
select system restore. So Why not just try doing a
System Restore?

Robert

I recommend that only the Windows 7 drive be
present during the restore. SATA 1 to optical
drive maybe. SATA 2 to Win7 hard drive. Settings
at RAID ON, SATA 1 and SATA 2 enabled.

Maybe when it reboots, it'll actually be genuine ?

Paul

The Win 7 drive is the only drive present in the
780. How do I change SATA 1 to optical or are you
talking of location?

Robert

I never have two HD in the 780 the only exception
being was when we tried to boot with both of them
active so that I could choose either Win7 or Win10.

That's how this started. When I booted it only showed
Win7 but not Win 10 So we un-ticked Win7 to get Win10
to boot by itself because and when we un-ticked Win7
I lost my Genuine Win 7 OS. That's how it happened.

I still have a good Win 7 HD (my backup) and I still
have a good Win10 HD.

and still having the tech come out Wed to look at the
connection issue even though I'm back online.

Robert

This just popped up on the 780 on it's own,
maybe it has something to do with me pressing
the down arrow key?

https://postimg.cc/grDhH0H0

I don't dare close it because this is the first
time I've seen this and don't know how to get
it back.

Please advise what I should do?

Thanks,
Robert

Here's the full page:

https://postimg.cc/grDhH0H0

https://postimg.cc/xk3mpTVg

On Monday, August 12, 2019 at 5:49:10 AM UTC-7, Robert in CA wrote:
Here's the full page:

https://postimg.cc/grDhH0H0

https://postimg.cc/xk3mpTVg



Inadvertently closed the page to where
where I opened it:

https://postimg.cc/67KhHmgV


Should I try a system restore? or
try to reinstall windows?

I'm not turning off the 780 at this point
since this is the first time I have seen
this and may be our chance to fix it.

thoughts/suggestions,
Robert

On Monday, August 12, 2019 at 6:06:07 AM UTC-7, Robert in CA wrote:
On Monday, August 12, 2019 at 5:49:10 AM UTC-7, Robert in CA wrote:
Here's the full page:

https://postimg.cc/grDhH0H0

https://postimg.cc/xk3mpTVg



Inadvertently closed the page to where
where I opened it:

https://postimg.cc/67KhHmgV


Should I try a system restore? or
try to reinstall windows?

I'm not turning off the 780 at this point
since this is the first time I have seen
this and may be our chance to fix it.

thoughts/suggestions,
Robert



p.s. the 780 clock is off by 2hr 45min from the 8500

Robert

Here's the clocks:

8500 7:51am (correct time)

780 5:25am



Robert

Robert in CA wrote:
Here's the clocks:

8500 7:51am (correct time)

780 5:25am



Robert

So maybe the CMOS battery is going flat ?

Do you have a voltmeter ?

The CMOS coin cell, the positive terminal is facing
up, and should measure a bit more than 3.0V .

If all power is removed from the computer, the CMOS cell
provides 10uA of current to run the clock. The watch should
hold its time about as well as a bad wris****ch.

When the OS is running, it keeps time in software using
other means (the machine has several oscillators and counters
for things like this). It may choose to update or correct
the CMOS clock, at infrequent intervals. Like maybe at shutdown
or something. It does that, because it needs a copy of the
time, the next time it boots. (The OS needs to read the
CMOS clock and copy the time to the OS timekeeping mechanism.)

*******

To measure the CMOS battery without disturbing anything.

1) Multimeter, with red and black probe wires in volts/ohms
hole for the red lead, and the black common lead for the other.

2) Multimeter set to 20V fullscale, so you can measure the 3V signal.

3) Touch the black probe to an I/O screw on the back of the
computer. There are some threaded holes used to hold the
I/O plate connectors in place. You can rest the black
probe in one of those threaded holes to pick up a ground
connection.

4) The positive lead of the meter is used to touch the
shiny surface of the CMOS cell.

You can see the steepness of the knee in the Temperature
chart on here. Things seem to go downhill rapidly when
the battery hits 2.5V.

https://cdn-shop.adafruit.com/datash..._datasheet.pdf

And that coincides with the behavior of the chipset. The chipsets
(the CMOS well holding the clock and CMOS 256 byte RAM), they are
rated for function at 2V. There is an ORing diode in series with
the battery, a schottky diode, and the battery must make 2.3V
so that the diode can drop 0.3V and the chipset gets the 2.0V
its needs to maintain the clock and keep CMOS memory valid.

So you don't want the CMOS to go below 2.3V.

And the battery takes a few weeks to "flatten" after it
hits about 2.5V in that graph.

That's to give you some idea where the limit is.

While, if it reads 3.0V, then we can't blame the battery
for this.

*******

Make sure you keep records of any "custom" settings in the
BIOS, that might be important, if the CMOS battery needs to be
changed.

*******

The reason that Help and Support thing popped up, is you're
probably past whatever "grace period" they've assigned for
your "Not Genuine" situation.

Something like this could even happen, if a computer shop
installs a corporate version of software, where the software
activation checks in every three months with some server.
But I know that's not the case. And you probably had some
screen that said the software version was "Refurbisher",
so it's not some other version of software anyway.

*******

There's a couple ways to restore this OS.

1) Restore with Macrium, using your backup image while
the license was still good.

2) Restore from a recovery partition. The refurbisher might
not have a recovery partition.

http://www.goodells.net/dellrestore/

They even have a Windows 7 era reference!
But it still seems to rely on some sort of Microsoft-like
ImageX file to do the restore. And it restores to unpatched
Windows 7 Sp1 or so, so you might need a long session of
Windows Update to bring it back up to date. Plus drivers
maybe. You have a third-party graphics card maybe, so that
would be a driver to reinstall.

http://www.goodells.net/dellrestore/win7/

And the Refurbisher OS doesn't have the sixth line showing in
that screen. So "Repair your computer" is not really set up.
(Not the least of which, is there is no obvious place for
them to store an image for it. Normal Dells would have a
separate partition for this sort of thing.)

*******

If you have a multimeter you can use, check your CMOS
battery when you get a chance.

Paul

no I don't own a voltmeter,.. I have a spare
2025 battery.

I'm not willing to keep knocking myself out on
this when I have a perfectly good HD I can use.

We just made a mistake by un-ticking the Win 7
which is something I will never do again.

PLease tell me how to proceed with this.

Should I just power the 780 off and change the
battery with the 2025 battery I have and see what
happens and try to reinstall windows?

If I still get the same responses as before I'm
thinking of doing a System restore because thats
what the original paperwork pointed to and as you
just pointed out this may not be from Microsoft
but Dell shell.

Honestly though we are going no where on this HD and
I'm getting tired of going in circles when I have a
perfectly good drive I can stick in and end this.

Robert

I replaced the battery,.. and how to restore
defaults on the boot sequence:

https://postimg.cc/B8CjbtmD

Nothing has worked up to now so I tried to do
a system resto

https://postimg.cc/Vd6sBDDJ

That doesn't even function. It doesn't seem were
ever going to get the Win7 OS back. I learned my
lesson the hard way, never un-tick Win 7 again.

Robert

On Monday, August 12, 2019 at 2:30:49 PM UTC-7, Robert in CA wrote:
I replaced the battery,.. and how to restore
defaults on the boot sequence:

https://postimg.cc/B8CjbtmD

Nothing has worked up to now so I tried to do
a system resto

https://postimg.cc/Vd6sBDDJ

That doesn't even function. It doesn't seem were
ever going to get the Win7 OS back. I learned my
lesson the hard way, never un-tick Win 7 again.

Robert

I meant I had to restore the defaults.

Robert in CA wrote:
On Monday, August 12, 2019 at 2:30:49 PM UTC-7, Robert in CA wrote:
I replaced the battery,.. and how to restore
defaults on the boot sequence:

https://postimg.cc/B8CjbtmD

Nothing has worked up to now so I tried to do
a system resto

https://postimg.cc/Vd6sBDDJ

That doesn't even function. It doesn't seem were
ever going to get the Win7 OS back. I learned my
lesson the hard way, never un-tick Win 7 again.

Robert

I meant I had to restore the defaults.

"Restoring defaults" *reduces* the list to the devices
that can be detected on or in the machine. That's what
is supposed to happen.

The machine is supposed to forget the old detections,
and the list returns to having three entries.

If you connect a bootable USB key and re-enter the BIOS,
the list will then have four entries, including an entry
for USB devices (like a flash stick).

I don't understand where all those unticked boxes have
come from. Those *appear* to be dormant entries, the
very thing that "Load Defaults" is supposed to remove.

The Load Defaults button does not appear to affect any other
fields in the BIOS.

The BIOS seems to lack any other ("traditional")
reloading of CMOS RAM. That's the 256 bytes of storage
in the Southbridge, related to legacy BIOS operation.

I expect the BIOS companies are "cheating" on the design,
and are storing settings in BIOS flash, but I haven't seen
any admissions they're doing that. At one time, they had
a hard time finding room in the 256 bytes, and the boot
preferences contained all sorts of "cranky" behavior because
of the limitations for storage. (Even though they were
already storing DMI and ESCD segments in BIOS flash.)

On newer computers using UEFI, the scheme has changed.
The 256 byte CMOS is no longer a limit, because the scheme
allocates up to 4Mbit of storage in the BIOS flash
for "NVRAM variables such as boot paths". Now the BIOS
has plenty of space, and the UEFI BIOS is a "tiny world
of its own", it's a kind of operating system as near as
I can determine.

So what is the 780 ?

It's written by Phoenix. My machine is the same vintage,
and this is legacy BIOS vintage, a generation too old for UEFI.
I don't think any Core2 LGA775 boxes got UEFI.

It has the "standard" appearance of a number of Dell products.
Which means the squirrels could have gotten to it. It doesn't
look like other computers.

And at the moment, yours is not acting like other Optiplex 780
machines. Why ? I don't know. I could concoct crazy theories
that will not get us any closer to a solution.

The Windows 7 which is "Not Genuine", seems to be
missing a few files. That's what the behavior points to
right now. Why ? Why would that happen ? Did the machine
lose its copy of tokens.dat ? Where did it go ? Did your
AV eat it ?

I doubt very much it's something you did.

*******

The battery in the Optiplex 780 is a CR2032. Your
replacement should be a CR2032 too. Battery change should
be done with power off. In a perfect world, you'd have an
antistatic strap, or at least, lay the machine in your
lap to try to bring it to the same potential while working
on it.

*******

Removing the CMOS battery, when the BIOS *has* no proper
"Load Setup Defaults" to clear the entire CMOS RAM, is the
best you can do in such circumstances. You *have* cleared
the CMOS.

There is usually a jumper on the motherboard to clear CMOS,
yet I cannot find a reference to this in the Optiplex 780
Service Manual. I had to resort to a forum post to get the
necessary info (which, since it doesn't cite any references,
leaves a bit to be desired. Because the PSWD1 jumper appears
to alter the BIOS time setting, it's probably pretty close
to being a Clear CMOS jumper.

https://www.dell.com/community/Deskt...0/td-p/3915272

To reset BIOS Administrator Password-

1) Unplug computer [AC power cord]
2) Remove jumper labelled PSWD [PSWD1 on Optiplex 780]
3) Replug power back.
4) with jumper out, boot to BIOS (F2)
5) BIOS is now unlocked [not protected by BIOS Administrator password].
6) Change Administrator Password (under Security)
7) Start operating system.
8) Reinstall jumper.
9) reset time and date--
FAILURE to reset date and time will cause internet connection loss [really???]

There seem to be some holes in that scheme. Why start
the operating system ? Do you leave the door open while
messing around ?

But what that procedure does hint at, is because the date
and time are lost, it roughly has the same "weight" as
removing the CMOS battery.

When you replaced the CMOS battery, it would be in your
best interest to enter the BIOS and correct the clock, before
attempting System Restore on the OS.

*******

Other than that, the help I provide is opinions.

1) To me, reloading the Macrium backup is the
closest thing to a solution.
2) The BIOS settings should "match" whatever the settings
were like, on the first time the drive boots after the
Macrium restoration. It's OK for the BIOS boot order to
be altered in order to get the Macrium CD to boot and
finish the restoration. But before using the 780 Win7
drive, you'd want to return to "RAID ON" SATA 1 and SATA 2
kind of thing.
3) Unlike some other computers (mine here), the BIOS switches
that turn off SATA ports really work. They prevent Linux
from seeing drives for example. If you need, on a given boot
cycle, to work on particular drives, you really need to be
entering the BIOS, over and over again, and altering the
settings. Altering the settings is all part of the stupid,
nonstandard, popup boot menu.

Achieving control over the machine, making the dormant settings
go away, returning the menu to just three items to start,
these are all part of returning sanity to the 780. You have
all sorts of lofty objectives. Objectives are good. But
we have to be realistic here too. Not much of what the
machine is doing right now is logical. Do you agree
with that much ?

We have to regain a kernel of control.

Or, we've lost it.

I know this is annoying. I know you're tired of
working on it. Even if you take it somewhere, unless
the people are "used" to this particular machine, there's
no guarantee they'll be able to fix it.

One advantage would be, if the machine would tolerate
"random BIOS version" re-installation. Now, regular
brands usually enforce increasing BIOS release number.
If you install A15 over A8, you probably can't re-install
A8, because the flasher will usually intervene and
prevent it. Some machines have a serial prom programming
header, to reprogram the chip using external equipment.
That would be an example of a method a shop might use
to put A08 back.

The refurbisher probably disabled the Intel management engine
before shipping the machine. As far as I know, there's
some ceremony to enable it again, so maybe it won't be
an issue in this case. But I don't have any step by
step instructions for dealing with this - there was
an *extremely* long discussion thread on this once,
that took so long to read, I got a headache. I'm not
doing that again! There are umteen versions of ME,
each with instructions.

*******

You *could* do the Macrium restore using the 8500.

1) Remove the 8500 hard drive. Make sure all drives
have been marked with marker pen, so you know which
drive belongs to which machine.

2) Assuming you've had good luck booting the latest
Macrium CD on the 8500, you would put *at least*
the broken 780 original C: into the 8500. Use your
best judgment as to how to physically connect the
780 disk with the backup images on it.

3) Boot the Macrium CD. Restore the image on the backup drive,
to overwrite the original 780 disk.

4) Open the Command Prompt (black icon in task bar).
Execute:

wpeutil shutdown

This will shut down the 8500 immediately, leaving
the Macrium CD locked in the tray.

That command probably isn't available on a Macrium
CD made for WinXP (with WinPE3 or the like), but should
be there on media made on more modern setups.

5) Remove the 780 disk, now freshly restored.
Remove the backup drive.

6) Put the 8500 disk back in. Boot and check that
the 8500 works.

What I hope to achieve with this sequence, is *not*
allowing the restored 780 disk to "see" the 8500 hardware,
and throw it *again* into Not Genuine. That's what
the shutdown command is for - so you can work on the
machine before any reboots happen.

*******

Summary:

We *must* get control of what boots on the 780.

The other procedures are fun and all, but in the
long term, unless you can select the thing that
boots in that pig, you can't properly manage it.

Remember that, the F12 popup boot is only sufficient
to select "device type". If you want to boot a
USB key, there can only be one USB key plugged in.

If you want to run two hard drives internally,
the ports on the motherboard are numbered. If
you have two drives, you connect the drive you
want to boot, to the *lower* numbered port.
This is why SATA0 and SATA1 (which are SATA 1 and
SATA 2 in the BIOS screen) are where the first
Dell peripherals are connected. So if you had
Win7 on SATA0 and Win10 on SATA2, and you wanted
to boot Win10, you'd move Win10 to SATA0 and
Win7 to SATA2. This is necessary, *only* to make
F12 Popup boot work properly. I'm not convinced
(yet), that the BIOS order setting you set up
in F2, really works... I'll have to find proof of
that. That's the stupid thing, now that the BIOS is
filled with "dormant entries" :-/ How could that
possibly work properly the way it is now.

Make sure the clock is correct, before the
780 disk you restore over on the 8500, is
booted for the first time in the 780. We want to take
no more chances on daft behaviors (like, caused
by the clock being wrong). A wrong clock might
prevent System Restores from working, as an example.
A wrong clock can even cause Activation attempts
with a license key, to fail!

Paul