Computer taking too long to connect to the Internet:

I thought I would let you know that the
computer again came up normally and
much faster than before. Same with loading
FF etc.

I don't know whether or not the 13 updates
did anything for sure. All I know is that the
8500 seems back to normal.

In passing, there's no way to permanently remove
the Win 10 nag?

Mark Twain wrote:
I thought I would let you know that the
computer again came up normally and
much faster than before. Same with loading
FF etc.

I don't know whether or not the 13 updates
did anything for sure. All I know is that the
8500 seems back to normal.

In passing, there's no way to permanently remove
the Win 10 nag?

One possibility, is your AV was partially responsible.
But to prove that, you'd need to Google the name
of your AV, the "blue circle" as a keyword, and see
if anyone else experienced the same thing.

*******

The Windows 10 nag, you can right click this
file and "Merge" it, to set some preferences.
Credit for these, goes to the person mentioned on
the second line of text, as a comment.

******* DisableGWX.reg *******
Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00

;Created by Vishal Gupta for AskVG.com

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Policies\Microsoft\Win dows\GWX]
"DisableGWX"=dword:00000001

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Policies\Microsoft\Win dows\WindowsUpdate]
"DisableOSUpgrade"=dword:00000001

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\Curr entVersion\WindowsUpdate\OSUpgrade]
"AllowOSUpgrade"=dword:00000000
"ReservationsAllowed"=dword:00000000
******* end DisableGWX.reg *******

If you don't want to do it that way, the GWX Stopper described
here, hides the notification or something. It's not a hammer as such,
more of a bandaid. The thing is, Microsoft owns the OS, and if they
wanted to do something, the only thing to stop them is a
class action law suit.

http://ultimateoutsider.com/download...trol_panel.exe

On the instruction page, you can see there are four status indicators,
probably based on the above registry settings (whether present, whether
assigned a particular value). And the controls at the bottom allow
you to change the preferences.

(Instructions page)

http://blog.ultimateoutsider.com/201...ly-remove.html

The tool was announced here.

http://www.infoworld.com/article/297...-7-and-81.html

I haven't used or tested either of these. I just keep an eye
out, and prevent '583 update from installing. My Windows Update
has been on Manual for years, and I read the descriptions before
accepting updates.

HTH,
Paul

Mark Twain wrote:
I remember we created a separate
drive/partition just for this
on the external HD but the Dell
came as is.

So how do I rectify the problem?

The only thing I need to save
really are my bookmarks and Dell
image files and Word documents.

Other than that I don't think I
need to save anything else.

Robert


The way I've done this in the past is:

1) Keep the old (damaged) OS partition.
Backing it up with Macrium, then accessing
it later by "mounting" the .mrimg file, is
one way to go get the Bookmarks file later, if
you forgot it. You would select a representative
name for that specific backup such as
bad_win7_C_Oct20_2015.mrimg

You could store that backup on the external drive.

2) Depending on which is more recent, you can
restore a backup you made on the external drive.

Or, using Macrium, you can "clone" the System Reserved
and C: partitions from the backup drive.

As to which of those choices you execute, depends on
which has the partition size, partition alignment,
and file contents you want. If you removed a lot of files to
make the clone partitions smaller, maybe you prefer
not to clone, and use a backup .mrimg to restore.

For step (2) you boot the Macrium rescue CD you made,
so that neither hard drive (internal or external) is
providing the running OS at the time. The purpose of
this step is to overwrite the internal drive, and
overwrite the two OS partitions (C: and System Reserved
if it is present).

In those steps, I didn't have to take the side off the computer.

*******

And in the future, you can delete the oldest .mrimg file on
the external drive, if you wish to make room for a new backup.
Backup files are like sheep, you have to tend to your flock.
Just piling them up until the disk is full, then throwing
your hands in the air, doesn't work all that well. You
have to choose some of the backups to be tossed at some point.
Not all of them, just ones of dubious or temporary value.

I have some Macrium backup files with "delete_me" in the name,
which means later, if I'm running out of space, those are
the first to go

WinXP_C_Oct20_2015__delete_me.mrimg

In my management system, two underscores in a row starts
the "tag section" of the file name. The left hand portion
in this example, is the descriptive file name I chose,
while adding "delete_me" is a tag that tells me the
backup is a temporary one, and can be deleted if I need
space. I don't even need to think twice before deleting
that file - the decision was made in advance. If I still
have space left, the file just sits there. On cleaning day,
into the trash it goes.

Paul

Hi Paul,

I read all the information with the links
you gave and just disabled the Win 10 Nag.
Worked quite well.

Do you recommend that I disable my automatic
updates? Thing is, I don;t know one from the
other so how would I know which to update and
which not to?

Thanks,
Robert

This is what I have on the external HD;

http://i57.tinypic.com/14cs2g6.jpg

http://i62.tinypic.com/x4nlgg.jpg

It appears I have my bookmarks, now I just
need my Dell imagining files which I assume
I can backup to the external HD.

Robert

I just posted the above but now I can't
remove the external HD.

http://i58.tinypic.com/2094io4.jpg

I've closed all the programs and I still get
the same message. SO I guess I'll just leave it
alone and hopefully it will finish whatever its
doing but all I did was to check and see what
it contained.

Robert

This is what the external HD has:

http://i57.tinypic.com/14cs2g6.jpg

http://i62.tinypic.com/x4nlgg.jpg

Now, however I can't disconnect the HD because
I get this pop-up message:

http://i58.tinypic.com/2094io4.jpg

I closed everything but I still get the pop-up
message. So what do I do?

Robert

While waiting for your reply in
how to safely disconnect the
external HD I decided to run
a backup but I can't remember
what to select or which drive?

http://i60.tinypic.com/2hd2xa8.jpg

Image selected disks on this computer

Create an image of the partitions
required to back and restore Windows

Clone this Disk

Image this disk


Thanks,
Robert

Mark Twain wrote:
While waiting for your reply in
how to safely disconnect the
external HD I decided to run
a backup but I can't remember
what to select or which drive?

http://i60.tinypic.com/2hd2xa8.jpg

Image selected disks on this computer

Create an image of the partitions
required to back and restore Windows

Clone this Disk

Image this disk


Thanks,
Robert

You want to backup Disk 1 (top of the list).

You would click "Image" underneath the Disk 1 bar at the top of the list.

The result should be about 127GB (uncompressed)
or smaller if compressed. (But not that much smaller,
as many modern file formats are already compressed.)

You would store the output on I: , which is
a logical partition on the external disk.
The I: partition currently contains only
2.29GB of stuff, so I don't think you have any
..mrimg files in there.

The I: partition is logical. At one time, Windows would
have displayed that as a couple of colored rings around
the last partition. Instead, the explorer display right
now shows a slightly different color for the single logical
on the end. Macrium says both disks are MBR prepared, so
no GPT is involved.

+-----+------------+-------------+-------------+---------------------------------+
| MBR | Primary 1 | Primary 2 | Primary 3 | Extended |
| | | | +-------------+-----+-------------+
| | | | | Logical #1 | ... | Logical #n |
+-----+------------+-------------+-------------+-------------+-----+-------------+
Your big I:
partition

So your backup will be going into I: when
you select a name for the output file.

Paul

Hi Paul,

I'm running the backup now, I hope I did this
right although I forget to name the backup. It
also says it will delete the oldest backup when
it gets to 5GB although I assume you don't want
me to let it get to that point. .

http://i60.tinypic.com/2hd2xa8.jpg

http://i62.tinypic.com/2ijj0pu.jpg

http://i61.tinypic.com/23w8n7t.jpg

http://i58.tinypic.com/sg5ufq.jpg

http://i62.tinypic.com/3323ymq.jpg

http://i57.tinypic.com/m6eyg.jpg

http://i59.tinypic.com/10eikja.jpg

http://i61.tinypic.com/ezifb5.jpg

However I still am getting the same message
that I can't remove the external HD because
a program is using it. As I said, I've closed
everything down and tried it and it still gives
me the same message and I've done this several times.

I thought by running a backup it would release it
but it didn't. The external HD has been connected
for over 7 hours now and I don't want to remove it
or shut the computer down for fear of damaging the
external HD.

So can you tell me of a way to remove it?

Thanks,
Robert

Here's a last screen of Macrium:

http://i62.tinypic.com/2465gl5.jpg

Robert

Mark Twain wrote:
I just posted the above but now I can't
remove the external HD.

http://i58.tinypic.com/2094io4.jpg

I've closed all the programs and I still get
the same message. SO I guess I'll just leave it
alone and hopefully it will finish whatever its
doing but all I did was to check and see what
it contained.

Robert

I'm a little slow answering, because I wanted
to check a couple things first.

One question I had, was whether Macrium Reflect Free
has any special procedure built in when cloning
system drives. I was not able to find an answer to that.

Next thing I wanted to check, was the clone I made
of my own Windows 7 hard drive. I changed hard
drives recently, as the SMART statistics (reallocations)
were getting a bit high, so I decided to change the
drive. I cloned the old drive to the new one, as well
as changing the alignment.

The disk identifiers (everything except the partition
labels) seemed to be different. It did not appear
that anything like this was required.

http://superuser.com/questions/60300...e-prevent?rq=1

My cloned disk had booted (by itself) no problem at all.

*******

Next, I simulated your setup. I connected the new drive
(internal) which was already there. Then, I connected
the second drive using a USB adapter. The internal drive
booted, without making an attempt to do anything nasty
to the partitions on the external drive.

*******

I was thinking perhaps your busy file problem was related
to booting the computer with the second (USB) drive connected.
But I didn't see any signs of trouble here.

*******

For regular "busy" file problems, the Sysinternals program
"Handles.exe" was the first to spot such problem. While
the program Process Explorer includes the code from
Handles, and can list the same information.

So let's use Process Explorer.

https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/...rnals/bb896653

Run the procexp.exe in there.

You can open the ZIP file and extract the EXE.

Now, run the procexp.exe by double-clicking it.

In the middle of the menu bar is "Find". Open the "Find".

In there, type the drive letter that is stuck.

For example, I just opened a text document on my T: partition.
If I enter "T:" in the find box,

NOTEPAD.EXE 1684 File T:\sample.txt

and that tells me that the T: drive is busy because
sample.txt is open. The third column "file", there
aren't very many of those. There are many items
in the list as "Token", but only one listed
as "File" in the third column. And that one "File"
is what is keeping the T: drive busy.

So if I quit Notepad, the one with the PID 1684
listed in Task Manager, then the T: drive
would no longer be busy.

I don't expect this is always going to work, which
is why I was testing my two copies of Windows 7 disks
to see if that was the reason the drive would not
Safely Remove. But I was able to remove my USB
drive. The only thing I didn't like, is the drive
did not spin down as it was supposed to. I stick a find
on the drive and feel for vibration, to tell whether
it is spun down or not. Certainly, if I do Shutdown
from the Win7 menu, that external drive would spin
down and the blue LED would go off, just before the
main system would go off.

Paul

I tried it but I'm sure I did it wrong
because I couldn't find anything and
didn't really know what I was looking
for.

http://i57.tinypic.com/2v2xx6w.jpg

http://i58.tinypic.com/k2bybr.jpg

Robert

Also, I connected the external HD
after the 8500 was up and running.

Robert

Mark Twain wrote:
I tried it but I'm sure I did it wrong
because I couldn't find anything and
didn't really know what I was looking
for.

http://i57.tinypic.com/2v2xx6w.jpg

http://i58.tinypic.com/k2bybr.jpg

Robert



Try typing

J:

as a search term. The colon character will
eliminate many irrelevant entries.

Then, under the "Type" field, look for one
or more "File" entries. It could be a "File"
or a "Directory", but it must have a path
of some sort, like

J:\users\username\

and so on. The "Process" in the left column
is then the guilty party.

Paul