Messages

1

General Computer Support / Windows 10 privacy issues

« on: June 08, 2020, 08:24:47 am »

Hello everybody,

A while ago I was here asking for advice about Windows 10 privacy settings. In the meantime I have been handed a wonderful little program by Avira.

In case anybody is in need of such a thing, here it is:

https://www.avira.com/en/privacy-pal

Paying it forward.

Take care, everyone, until next time (just started Win10 on my laptop, so that might be soon, lol),

Lady

2

General Computer Support / Re: Windows 10 privacy issues

« on: September 20, 2019, 07:58:43 am »

Of course. That's why I asked for a website. When I google your suggested line I get dozens of sites, not just one article.

3

General Computer Support / Re: Windows 10 privacy issues

« on: September 20, 2019, 06:16:33 am »

Thanks, Tom. I'll look for myself then.

My point was maybe you guys know a trusted site as there is SO much out there.  In other words, why inventing the wheel by myself again.

4

General Computer Support / Windows 10 privacy issues

« on: September 18, 2019, 08:37:29 am »

Hello,

Soon a friend of mine will install Win10 for me. Now I know there has been written a lot about the privacy issues in Win10. Do you know of a website where I can find the latest and correct information about dealing with those? I'd like to keep my computers as private as possible.

Thank you!

Lady

5

General Computer Support / Re: BSOD and maintenance of external HDs

« on: June 10, 2019, 03:28:15 am »

Yes, but I don't know what to tell them when their Diagnostic tool says it's fine. Maybe you can help me with phrasing that.

A driver question (I'm learning  ): with DriverView open I connected WD HD and the driver appeared. Then I connected the other WD HD, the black one, but no second WD driver appeared. Is that okay? Does that mean that the same driver is used for both HDs?

I still have those four WPD file system volume drivers. They're on uninstall mode. Should I install them? They're not in use now, are they? Haven't found any portable device of mine yet which uses one of them. Then they were used to get the WD HD running like satrow said, is that correct?

How is the WD HD driver doing right now? I see in DriverView that it is installed on the WD HD but is it loading correctly now? I finally was able to get the Sysnative App report. See attachment. So maybe you can see what really caused the BSOD and we can rule out the hub? I noticed that the Sysnative App report is the same as the msinfo report. Can you tell me where to look for that driver, so I can learn how to check that. I looked through it but I cannot see it.

The black WD HD is quiet and its led light is on constantly. I think I saw that incorrectly earlier, that I thought it should be out in rest. The white WD HD's led light is also on continuously, sometimes it flickers and the HD inside is running which still says there's something very wrong. I can still access the files on it, so there's no problem.

Can you or satrow please tell me what you think actually caused the BSOD? Was it the hub or the WD HD driver? Or was the hub unstable upon which the WD HD driver crashed and the system shut down? I think it's best that I connect the ext. HDs directly to the USB port next time I make system image backups, right?

I just checked the Windows logs > Applications and those three Prey logs are there again all the time. Should I do something about that? Prey is a program which locates your devices when lost or stolen. But since I have a VPN I don't think they can be found anymore, hahaha. So should I uninstall Prey and see if those logs disappear?

About the C: disk space: how much space do the Windows7 operating system files take up? To check if there's something wrong there.

Tom, could you please answer the questions I asked in my last post? Some are important, like the restore point/shadow copies one.
Excuse my many questions. We're dealing with several issues at the same time and I felt taxed with all this new info and I'm trying hard to get my head around all of it.

6

General Computer Support / Re: BSOD and maintenance of external HDs

« on: June 09, 2019, 04:38:35 pm »

Second post re the available disk space of C:

I raised the amount of free space on C: to 35 Gb or 31% by removing all content of the Library (mostly of Pictures) which I use to store stuff temporarily but which had become totally cluttered because I didn't have time to process things. I moved it to the internal HD partition D:. 31% free space is quite enough, I guess, for C: to function properly, isn't it?

Still these strange two information and warning logs about code 10 have continued up to this point. But I found out something about that. Check the screenshots, 3 in a row. These 3 keep repeating. That must mean something is going wrong with the Prey program. Although it's not a device (code 10 @satrow), to make sure, I logged into the Prey program and logged out again. Or maybe there was something going wrong at their end and they solved it just now. I'll check the logs tomorrow.

Restore points: there are 10 restore points. The last one, which is not in the picture, is of June 7 when I downloaded the SES driver. I found out the different ways to remove them. Shall I remove all restore points but the last one? Look at the list, how strange is that? I make a restore point every month when I make my system image backup. Where are they? There is even still one of 2015, which is crazy. CCleaner only gives the last 3, so that's not helpful. So I have two options: clearing them all, or all but the last one. Clearing them all but the last one also deletes shadow copies I read. That term is new to me. Is that safe? Maybe the shadow copies of so many years are cluttering up the disk space?? I must say, in the past I have tried using restore points in crisis situations but it hardly ever worked and I have my system image backup now. 

Re the WD HD: it passed both tests, quick and extended. See screenshot. Can you see whether the driver is correct now? The WD HD is quiet now, the led light is flickering again. The light should be out when not in use. So it's still not ok.

Hope you're still with me.

7

General Computer Support / Re: BSOD and maintenance of external HDs

« on: June 09, 2019, 08:53:53 am »

@satrow

Especially for you, satrow, Driver View. 

I had a quick glance because I have to run, but here are the screenshots. I think I highlighted the right one. 

Oh, and I finally found the Action Center. But nothing seems to be out of the ordinary, no warnings.

8

General Computer Support / Re: BSOD and maintenance of external HDs

« on: June 09, 2019, 08:40:54 am »

You can free up about 6GB by turning off Hibernate.
Run a cmd prompt as an admin and enter powercfg -h off
I did that.

Can you also check you see how much space is being taken up by the restore points.
I don't know where to find that, I can only see there are 9 restore points.

Go Start - type appwiz.cpl and press enter when it comes up.
This will open Programs and Features and when you scroll to the bottom you will see where it totals the number of programs and how any GBs used.
I don't see it iin Programs and Features on the bottom. I already mentioned it in my last post, I found it in WiseProgramUninstaller. I have 190 programs occupying 7,5 Gb disk space. So that is not much.

Running Disk Cleanup as an admin will also remove obsolete Windows Updates, but you may have to check its box to include those in the clean up.
I wrote that I did disk cleanup, including the Windows Updates.

Re the WD HD: I connected it to my laptop and ran the WD Diagnostic tool, quick scan. It immediately gave an error, saying too many bad sectors. See screenshot. The same with the extended scan. Then I returned to the desktop, connected it there and for the first time there was the popup that the driver had been installed!! I ran the WD Diagnostic tool quick scan and that came out perfect. I don't know how to get the scan report to show you but I made a screenshot so you can see part of it. Now the WD HD doesn't flicker anymore. The led light is constant. BUT I hear and feel the HD inside running, although I closed down Explorer and everything that could make it run. That shouldn't be, right? I will now start an extended scan, but that scan takes many hours. I hope I'll get it finished by tonight. I also changed the cable, same.

Thanks, Tom, for your quick assistance. This was a scary moment. <3

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General Computer Support / Re: BSOD and maintenance of external HDs

« on: June 09, 2019, 05:45:08 am »

I edited my last post several times.

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General Computer Support / Re: BSOD and maintenance of external HDs

« on: June 09, 2019, 05:36:33 am »

Nothing is given with reliability in Start.

I have an urgent matter at hand now. I got a popup saying C: was full. I did disk cleanup to free 412 Mb so I could continue. This is really odd. I know C: is very full, I believe the other day I saw it had 5 Gb left. It's an SSD with only Windows 7 on it. I tried to find out how to decrease that volume but didn't know how. A year ago when I had the last BSOD someone told me that it was a driver issue but we couldn't solve it (probably the same thing as we're dealing here with) and in that process someone said that my system partition on C: was almost twice as large as his Windows 8.1 professional. I went through all the programs installed but couldn't free much space there and I don't believe that the programs total more than 100 Gb. I just checked: I have 190 programs occupying 7,5 Gb disk space.It must be something else that takes up so much space. Tom, you know how I clean up the pc each month for my system image backup. So it cannot be the usual clutter.

I made screenshots of the popup warnings but they failed. I have a screenshot of disk management. I remember that one of the warnings said that it happened while something was being written to C:. What I noticed this morning while checking Windows logs > application for errors of the WD HD was that there was an enormous number of the same information and warning. These two (information and warning) show 3 times a minute since I started up the desktop. So that should tell you something, I hope. See screenshot and details. I disconnected the faulty WD HD but these two things continue to come up in the logs up till this moment. So something weird is going on now. Hope you can help me out. Maybe a reboot could fix it and it's just a glitch but first I'd like to hear your comment.

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General Computer Support / Re: BSOD and maintenance of external HDs

« on: June 08, 2019, 03:44:22 pm »

This is what my reliability monitor looks like. I guess this is what you mean. I don't see anything that looks like a driver.

Please don't forget my system is in Dutch and I've never dealt with any of these things before.

12

General Computer Support / Re: BSOD and maintenance of external HDs

« on: June 08, 2019, 01:47:04 pm »

Certainly looks better, are the new SES drivers installed?

I don't know how to check that.

It might be possible to clear the drive so that it bypasses the WD drivers/SES/Encryption, so it behaves like a standard ext. drive, I'll look into that later, unless Tom finds the time before I get back.

I'm not sure if I understand this correctly, but I definitely don't want to lose the encryption.

13

General Computer Support / Re: BSOD and maintenance of external HDs

« on: June 08, 2019, 11:32:46 am »

I clicked Uninstall in Device Manager and did Action/Scan for hardware changes (on the WD HD).

I downloaded the WD SES Driver.

I downloaded the WD Diagnostics. That looks a LOT better than the WD Drive Utilities that came with the HD. It's now running an extended test. See screenshot. Will report. The SMART status already says Pass, that's a good sign, isn't it?

And a screenshot of the Device Manager's Properties sheet for the WD HD.

A basic question: why can't I remove all firmware from the HD and re-install it? Just like formatting to replace corrupt data.

14

General Computer Support / Re: BSOD and maintenance of external HDs

« on: June 07, 2019, 04:52:22 am »

Where should I be looking in Eventviewer, Tom? Under System or Application?

When I had to buy new external HDDs years ago I changed from Seagate to WD because Shane recommended them over Seagate. I must say up till now I have had no issue whatsoever with either brand. The wonderful feature of the WD My Passport is the hardware encrypted password protection, so I feel very safe using them.

So in my own words: do I understand correctly when I say that the drivers of the WD HD are fine but that they are not being loaded after the crash? And what caused the crash, do you know now?

Something else I noticed. I now have both WD HDs connected, I have a white and a black one. The HD in question - the white one - keeps flickering its led-light in like a second interval whereas the black one shows no led activity. It's obvious but I have to say it: I haven't been reading/writing on either of them since I turned on the desktop. So this shows to me that the WD is in a constant activity. Maybe trying to get the drivers?

15

General Computer Support / Re: BSOD and maintenance of external HDs

« on: June 05, 2019, 10:36:04 am »

Here is the new msinfo file.

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General Computer Support / Re: BSOD and maintenance of external HDs

« on: June 05, 2019, 09:51:26 am »

I performed the Action/Scan already without results. Before we continue with that, Tom, let's try what satrow is saying.

But since you, satrow, now say that it's the malfunctioning driver of the Western Digital HD, if I understand correctly, how do I check that? I connected it this morning and could open it. Doesn't that mean the driver is fine again? I really don't know what I'm talking about, hahaha. Trying to keep up with you guys. 

17

General Computer Support / Re: BSOD and maintenance of external HDs

« on: June 05, 2019, 09:10:19 am »

Tom, I tried to show with the screenshot, but it's in Dutch, that the WPD drivers aren't being signalled anymore but all 4 of them are still uninstalled. The right-click popup says "inschakelen" meaning "install", so right now they're uninstalled. That's why I asked for what devices they are intended.

Satrow: I think you found something significant, lol. I have no idea what that means or what I should do. Is that the culprit?

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General Computer Support / Re: BSOD and maintenance of external HDs

« on: June 05, 2019, 07:07:33 am »

@satrow   I just tried the Sysnative App again but same error.

Here are the two zip files you requested. I must say I'm entering into whole new territory here! Another Expotition! But it's good, I'm learning again.
Before I made the msinfo I connected the hub again which I disconnected last night to try out devices. I thought maybe you can check out its functioning with the msinfo.
Indeed, I now see in the msinfo the 4 WPD drivers under problem devices... The Ralink I think is uninstalled because I have a LAN connection and was advised to disconnect the Wifi to not have both running.
I'm sorry, the msinfo is in Dutch. Cannot help that.

@boggin  Yesterday before shutting down I disconnected the hub and uninstalled all 4 drivers. Now I connected the two WD HDs (My Passport) directly to the USB port and in Device Manager I see that nothing happened to the WPD drivers. See screenshot. So does that mean that the 4 signalled drivers do not refer to the WD HDs? If so, then the HDs are fine? I will add more devices and see when a WPD driver will get installed. It's not my MP3 player, not my phone. Just now I connected the 3.0 hub on which the WD HD was connected when the BSOD happened and this time I got the popup saying the drivers have been installed. The hub has 4 connectors, is this the one I see in Device Manager? The 4 WPD drivers are still uninstalled. So where do they belong to? I think I need some Drivers 101, lol.

Sysnative for BSOD collection:

https://www.sysnative.com/blogs/download/sysnativebsodcollectionapp-exe/

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General Computer Support / Re: BSOD and maintenance of external HDs

« on: June 04, 2019, 03:39:04 pm »

@satrow  I keep getting this error message from Sysnative. See screenshot. It says that the file version is not compatible with my Windows version, 32 or 64 bits. It's really strange, I never had any problem getting the Sysnative report. Just download it, execute it and fine. So I don't know what that is about.

@boggin   Tom, how do I know which devices are meant with these 4 drivers?

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General Computer Support / Re: BSOD and maintenance of external HDs

« on: June 04, 2019, 08:14:10 am »

Thank you, satrow, for your suggestion. I now agree with Boggin that it's not the HD itself.

This is what I'm going to do: when I have some time I'll remove the hub and plug in one of the devices attached to it and check its WPD driver and if it's signalled in Device Manager I'll perform solution 3. How about that, Boggin?

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General Computer Support / Re: BSOD and maintenance of external HDs

« on: June 03, 2019, 05:42:33 am »

The Kingston is the SSD. See screenshot.

Can I remove HD Sentinel again to save the number of days or do you want any more additional information from it?

I just performed a defrag analysis via command prompt and it says that the WD HD has 4% fragmentation and need not be defragmented. So which one do I trust? Defraggler's or Windows's outcome?? That is a huge difference, 38 or 4%.

Just in case, I looked it up and I have a 2 year warranty on the HD. Bought it on Oct. 23, 2017.

I'm getting confused now, Tom. I read through the article. Solution 3 is about reinstalling the WPD Filesystem Volume Driver manually. Now I have 4 of these drivers under Portable Devices (Dutch: Draagbare apparaten) but the WD HD is under Disk Drives (Schijfstations) highlighted. See screenshot. This HD has password protection with hardware encryption.

I opened the Properties of the WD HD there. It says it works correct. I see two drivers under Details. See screenshots.

Another thing I thought about: I used a hub to connect the external HDs to while making the backups. I know a hub has its own driver, right? Could that one be the culprit? I know hubs can be very unstable, although this one, an Anker, is supposedly a good one.

What I don't understand is why the WD HD is under Disk Drives but the Windows error message was about the Volume Driver and they are under Portable Devices. So can you please explain this situation to me in the most basic way? Does the WD HD has its own driver or does Windows install a driver of its own on the HD? I may be saying crazy things but I'm way out of my league here.

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General Computer Support / Re: BSOD and maintenance of external HDs

« on: June 02, 2019, 04:07:04 pm »

I ran the Windows troubleshooter. Among a few other things which weren't applicable it said there was a driver problem with G: which wasn't there. The HD was L:. (I removed all other external devices before doing this.) I did click on apply solution there but nothing happened as far as I could see. It said that it was a Microsoft WPD FileSystem Volume Driver. I'm not sure what all this is about but do I understand correctly that with Windows Portable Device it means the external HD? If so, could this link be helpful?

http://download.cnet.com/Microsoft-WPD-FileSystem-Volume-Driver/3000-2122_4-89013.html

The defrag didn't do much, it went from 39% to 38%. What does that say? Should I do it again or is it better to format the disk and start all fresh?

I started the WD Drive Utilities which I saw I had on board in the WD folder. See screenshot. This is how it looks like. It's in Dutch but I can tell you. The first is check disk status for errors which happened really fast. The second is fast scan disk for serious errors which was completed. The third is an extensive scan on damaged sectors which is still running. I didn't get any reports on the first two scans. Have to find out where they are if there are any.

So I installed HDSentinel which I still have in my Save Downloads folder, like you taught me.  It says the external HD status is perfect. See screenshot of the overview.

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General Computer Support / Re: BSOD and maintenance of external HDs

« on: June 02, 2019, 09:14:59 am »

I'll try that tomorrow, right now the HD is being defragmented.

But what about the BSOD, do you think it has something to do with the HD?

24

General Computer Support / BSOD and maintenance of external HDs

« on: June 02, 2019, 03:53:16 am »

Hello everyone,

On Friday, while doing my monthly system image and data backup I experienced a BSOD. This happened while Macrium was making a system image on one of my external HDs.

The last time I experienced a BSOD was almost a year ago. I asked about it on a Dutch forum but different and unclear answers got me confused and then I received nasty responses, so I left. 

I must tell you that I have been having suspicions about this particular HD, it's a Western Digital My Passport Mobile 2Tb, 20 months old. It's just my intuition that has been telling me for a while now that there's something wrong with it. The only "proof" I have is that on this HD it seems to take much longer to make a system image by Windows. So I already checked it for errors through the Properties > Options in Windows Explorer. That came out okay. Can you tell me of other ways to check and repair the HD? Before I format it, lol. I just checked the two Western Digital HDs with Defraggler and they showed 46 and 39% defragmentation so a defrag is in order. But I don't suppose that would cause a BSOD?

Could it be the software of Macrium? Is it known to crash pcs while making these images?

Could it be the driver on the external HD? The Device Manager shows a yellow exclamation mark on all external devices (USB sticks and HDs.) I'm not familiar (yet) with dealing with drivers, but ready to learn. 

I also looked at the Windows Application Log Files in Disk Management around the time the BSOD happened, but there was only one warning with an Execution Service. Here is a snip of the logs. I saw the BSOD just before 9 p.m.

It's a lot of information, I realize that, but maybe it will help you find out what went on.

Here is the WhoCrashed report. I tried to get the BSOD Collection file from Sysnative but somehow it gave an error message.

As always, very grateful you are there. 

Lady



System Information (local)
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Computer name: USER-PC
Windows version: Windows 7 Service Pack 1 , 6.1, build: 7601
Windows dir: C:\Windows
Hardware: p7-1423w, Hewlett-Packard, Foxconn, 2ADA
CPU: GenuineIntel Intel(R) Core(TM) i5-3330 CPU @ 3.00GHz Intel8664, level: 6
4 logical processors, active mask: 15
RAM: 8466694144 bytes (7,9GB)




--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Crash Dump Analysis
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Crash dumps are enabled on your computer. This system is not configured for complete or automatic crash dumps. For best results, configure your system to write out complete or automatic crash dumps. Select Tools->Crash Dump Configuration from the main menu to configure your system to write out complete memory dumps.

Crash dump directories:
C:\Windows
C:\Windows\Minidump

On Fri 31-5-2019 20:17:22 your computer crashed or a problem was reported
crash dump file: C:\Windows\Minidump\053119-64974-01.dmp
This was probably caused by the following module: volsnap.sys (0xFFFFF88001B70D6E)
Bugcheck code: 0x1000007E (0xFFFFFFFFC0000005, 0xFFFFF88001B70D6E, 0xFFFFF88009A5B7C8, 0xFFFFF88009A5B030)
Error: SYSTEM_THREAD_EXCEPTION_NOT_HANDLED_M
file path: C:\Windows\system32\drivers\volsnap.sys
product: Besturingssysteem Microsoft® Windows®
company: Microsoft Corporation
description: Volume Shadow Copy-stuurprogramma
Bug check description: This indicates that a system thread generated an exception which the error handler did not catch.
This appears to be a typical software driver bug and is not likely to be caused by a hardware problem.
The crash took place in a Microsoft module. Your system configuration may be incorrect. Possibly this problem is caused by another driver on your system that cannot be identified at this time.

25

General Computer Support / Re: Check disk (solved)

« on: April 23, 2019, 05:29:09 am »

I'm late in responding as the notification went to the spam file which I don't see in the Outlook email client.

sfc /scannow is definitely part of my monthly system image backup routine. Learned that from you.