repair for windows7 home premium is only on step 18 after 18 hours

[ct]

I am in the process of upgrading from xp to windows 7 home premium. I paid for remote access technical support from Microsoft after I had successfully installed Windows 7, in order to get their help in installing Microsoft Security Essentials as my antivirus program. I had been using Avira antivirus before.

The Microsoft representative first (by controlling my PC remotely) ran several virus and malware scans. I don't know if any infections were found. I only saw a list of 5 "non-malware" items plus a list of approximately 36 tracking cookies.  Then she started the tweaking repair windows program with all of the options checked, except for the two at the bottom for windows 8. It has been running now for 18 hours. It has been on step 18 (repair volume shadow copy service) for more than 4 hours. It took 10 hours to complete step 15 (unhide non system files).

The Microsoft tech said that she would call me back, but she never did, so apparently, I am on my own.

Should I just let the tweaking program run for another 18 hours until it is finished, or does the long amount of time that it is taking mean that it is not working properly? I couldn't find anything on this wbsite regarding how long the repair should take. At the current rate (21 of 41 repair jobs completed in 18 hours), it will take almost 36 hours to run the program. Is that normal?

Thanks for any advice.

[Willy2]

- If you want to go to Win 7 from XP then I would recommend a clean Win 7 install, not an upgrade.
- WR v2.51 takes about 20 minutes to complete all tasks on my Win 7 Ultimate system.
- Step 18 should only take a say 20 seconds max.
- When you're upgrading from XP to Win 7 then I am wondering whether your old system is powerful enough to run Win 7.
- It sounds like you didn't disable your AV.

[ct]

Thanks for your reply. I not only disabled my previous antivirus program, I also uninstalled it. So there is no antivirus program on my PC now.

Windows 7 seemed to run fine in the short time that I had with it before the Microsoft rep took over. I was hoping that since step 15 (unhide system files) took 10 hours, that step 18 (repair volume shadow copy service) would eventually complete. It has now been running step 18 for 5.5 hours.

Carrie

[ct]

Dear Willy2,

Thank you SO MUCH for your reply. Until I read your response to my original post, I didn't even know that I could install a completely clean install of Windows 7 Home Premium with the upgrade DVD that I have. But I did some research after I read your post, and found out that it was really easy - there was an option to reformat the hard drive (and thus wipe out my Windows XP installation) during the Windows 7 installation (booting from the DVD).

I have successfully installed a clean install of Windows 7. I have also installed Microsoft Security Essentials and run a complete system scan. Everything is working perfectly.

After I read your response, I decided not to wait anymore for the tweaking repair to finish. It had already run for 20 hours. So i decided to reformat the hard drive instead. If I ran the tweaking program now, it probably would complete quickly, as you indicated, but I am wondering if it is necessary. Why do you bother using it on completely clean installs?

Thanks again for your help! Carrie

[Willy2]

I still would run WR on your system. After a clean install I noticed that Win 7 didn't allow me to save files to "c:\program files (x86)\" subfolders. After running WR's "Reset File Permissions" I was able to save files in those folders again. Seems MS overlooked this particular issue.

Repairs 1 through 4 & 15 each take a VERY significant amount of time (2 or more minutes). But if the other repairs each take much more than ~ 2 minutes to complete then something is most definitely very wrong. Just abort the program, start WR with the first repair after the "trouble maker".

[Shane]

The WR should never take that long.

It sounds like something in one of the bat files that was running was waiting for something from Windows itself.

To bad I didnt get to this before you reinstalled because I would have loved to have seen a screen shot of the cmd.exe window of the repair so I could see what command it was sitting there waiting on.

All the repairs are things that has Windows do from bat files, the unhide repair is from the program itself, which it just loops through the files looking, I wonder if you had some junction links that where creating infinite loops which would explain why things where taking way, way to long.

On a normal system the repairs normally take 30 min or less if that gives you an idea

Shane