Post by irvsp on Jan 26, 2018 0:55:17 GMT
First, where is everyone, not much activity lately? Everyone OK?
Well, I'm hearing some stuff from my neighbors, all V1709 related. Mind you I'm quite competent working with Windows. I live in a 55+ community and as such, many of my friends are not computer literate and will ask me for help. 99% of the time I can easily fix anything they run into, either h/w, s/w. or general usage problems.
Recently I hit 3 problems I couldn't handle, all V1709 systems, even my wife's PC.
First one...
A friend calls and says his wife's W10 All-In-One PC wouldn't boot. She went out of town and turned it off. Nothing was supposedly done or installed before turning it off. OK, I'll look at it. Started to boot, then put up it was trying to repair, didn't, and then Diagnosing. Didn't work and off the to screen that allows either to try and boot W10 or Advanced Options. I tried all the 'tricks' I knew, nothing worked. I could boot a USB PE drive and see the disk was fine. I was able to run CHKDSK on the drive, OK? So I figured the MBR was corrupt, and did the fix commands for that, even BCD REBUILD. All commands worked but it still couldn't boot, always declared it couldn't find the boot drive? I came to the conclusion that W10 needed to be re-installed? Friend didn't want to chance that but said he'd take it to the local Computer Repair store he's used before. Called me later and told me they asked what was tried and he explained basically when I did. They said if I did all that, it was the correct thing. They told him probably would require a W10 re-install and it would be $150 USD and they would recover all his data, he's have to reinstall the A/V and Printer Driver though. They'd call him when they were done debugging in a day or two. Calls me 2 days later and yes, they had to re-install Windows. They said they had 2 other PC's come in like that and they suspect a W10 problem. Don't forget, this was around the time of the Meltdown and Spectre MS update that killed AMD CPU systems... I was able to see on his disk that the last usage was 12/26/17... but it died in Jan? Since he had NO backup to restore I gave him the BACKUP lecture and he was going to look at that.
Second one...
A day after he calls my wife's PC hit the SAME problem!!! I tried all the trick commands and on her PC BOOTREC /FIXBOOT give Access Denied... searching the web then didn't have much help (Jan. 11th). Today I happened to look at found this, superuser.com/questions/1285268/cannot-boot-windows-10-bootrec-fixboot-gives-access-denied, so it seems more people are not experiencing this? No, my wife has an Intel i7, and V1709 was on for a few weeks. Now I do have Acronis backups... great, but they did NOT fix the problem? 2 months worth of backups no less (1 per week). I tried the 2 newest and the oldest, same error and repair, diagnose cycle? The then remembered I kept the OLD hard drive W7 partition and I could boot that. Tried it and it booted, GREAT, the basic BIOS and other parts of the PC worked fine. So I used the C: backup only to that drive partition. Booted and said 'wrong version of Windows'... OK, I'll bit the bullet and put back the whole C: drive backup including the MBR... unable to locate the boot drive and the repair diagnose cycle... was the backups corrupted or was Acronis not working with V1709 somehow (used a DVD to do the restore from an external backup drive)? Well, I'll just install W10 to the SSD! Worked... booted fine...? I should mention when I did the Acronis restore when it completed it was able to boot to the SDD but it wouldn't after a shutdown... which pointed to a corrupt MBR or hidden Windows boot file (which seemed to be there and also restored via Acronis). At this point I assumed it had to be the SSD, so I bought a NEW one... and of course, Acronis restore didn't boot, same error and cycle. Next, put W10 on the new SSD. Works like a charm. Decided to rebuild that for my wife since a WINDOWS.OLD was there from the Acronis restore... and I wasn't taking any chances. Restore some stuff, save an image, power down. Wait, power up, and repeat the recovery small amounts at a time, save image, power down, boot... 4 days later, back up mostly.
Third one...
Same friend, HIS computer, also V1709, works fine, but his monitor will not turn on after the PC sleeps. PC does, but not the monitor. If he turns the monitor off and then on, sometimes it would turn on? We talked about what to do, the obvious, don't let it sleep, or I'll loan him a monitor to try.... but he said he was going to call ViewTronics first. His PC is about 10 years old he said (how he has W10 running on it I don't understand) and the monitor was about the same age. Calls me an hour later and said there was a re-boot method, had to do with the Power button and power cord. The agent on the phone walked him through it and it worked... Great, until the next day. Problem was back. He's taking the PC and monitor to the Computer store, they want $40 to fix it. They are MS Partner's and they said MS has a patch for that (Nvidia card). Wow, I've not heard of that and I have an Nvidia card in my PC. He was told it was for very old cards. Well, I searched the web and didn't find a thing about that? Calls me today, the place said the patch didn't work, but they set the PC to never sleep. Paid his $40, and took it home. He said they told him some recent MS Updates has caused problems with a few PC, they have 2 others in the shop now that are experiencing operational problems. Last week they had to put in a newer Video card and that solved the problem. They supposedly tried a video card in his PC and it didn't solve the problem. Not too sure I believe all that though? Searching I can't find any others with V1709 monitor not turning on after sleep either?
So at this point I sort of stumped and worried. Do I really have a reliable Acronis backup? I posted into the Acronis forum as ONE OTHER person had the same problem a year or two ago and one of the forum staff hit basically the same problem I did about the same time.
Is it Windows that is actually causing these problem or some other s/w?
Off my soapbox for now...
Well, I'm hearing some stuff from my neighbors, all V1709 related. Mind you I'm quite competent working with Windows. I live in a 55+ community and as such, many of my friends are not computer literate and will ask me for help. 99% of the time I can easily fix anything they run into, either h/w, s/w. or general usage problems.
Recently I hit 3 problems I couldn't handle, all V1709 systems, even my wife's PC.
First one...
A friend calls and says his wife's W10 All-In-One PC wouldn't boot. She went out of town and turned it off. Nothing was supposedly done or installed before turning it off. OK, I'll look at it. Started to boot, then put up it was trying to repair, didn't, and then Diagnosing. Didn't work and off the to screen that allows either to try and boot W10 or Advanced Options. I tried all the 'tricks' I knew, nothing worked. I could boot a USB PE drive and see the disk was fine. I was able to run CHKDSK on the drive, OK? So I figured the MBR was corrupt, and did the fix commands for that, even BCD REBUILD. All commands worked but it still couldn't boot, always declared it couldn't find the boot drive? I came to the conclusion that W10 needed to be re-installed? Friend didn't want to chance that but said he'd take it to the local Computer Repair store he's used before. Called me later and told me they asked what was tried and he explained basically when I did. They said if I did all that, it was the correct thing. They told him probably would require a W10 re-install and it would be $150 USD and they would recover all his data, he's have to reinstall the A/V and Printer Driver though. They'd call him when they were done debugging in a day or two. Calls me 2 days later and yes, they had to re-install Windows. They said they had 2 other PC's come in like that and they suspect a W10 problem. Don't forget, this was around the time of the Meltdown and Spectre MS update that killed AMD CPU systems... I was able to see on his disk that the last usage was 12/26/17... but it died in Jan? Since he had NO backup to restore I gave him the BACKUP lecture and he was going to look at that.
Second one...
A day after he calls my wife's PC hit the SAME problem!!! I tried all the trick commands and on her PC BOOTREC /FIXBOOT give Access Denied... searching the web then didn't have much help (Jan. 11th). Today I happened to look at found this, superuser.com/questions/1285268/cannot-boot-windows-10-bootrec-fixboot-gives-access-denied, so it seems more people are not experiencing this? No, my wife has an Intel i7, and V1709 was on for a few weeks. Now I do have Acronis backups... great, but they did NOT fix the problem? 2 months worth of backups no less (1 per week). I tried the 2 newest and the oldest, same error and repair, diagnose cycle? The then remembered I kept the OLD hard drive W7 partition and I could boot that. Tried it and it booted, GREAT, the basic BIOS and other parts of the PC worked fine. So I used the C: backup only to that drive partition. Booted and said 'wrong version of Windows'... OK, I'll bit the bullet and put back the whole C: drive backup including the MBR... unable to locate the boot drive and the repair diagnose cycle... was the backups corrupted or was Acronis not working with V1709 somehow (used a DVD to do the restore from an external backup drive)? Well, I'll just install W10 to the SSD! Worked... booted fine...? I should mention when I did the Acronis restore when it completed it was able to boot to the SDD but it wouldn't after a shutdown... which pointed to a corrupt MBR or hidden Windows boot file (which seemed to be there and also restored via Acronis). At this point I assumed it had to be the SSD, so I bought a NEW one... and of course, Acronis restore didn't boot, same error and cycle. Next, put W10 on the new SSD. Works like a charm. Decided to rebuild that for my wife since a WINDOWS.OLD was there from the Acronis restore... and I wasn't taking any chances. Restore some stuff, save an image, power down. Wait, power up, and repeat the recovery small amounts at a time, save image, power down, boot... 4 days later, back up mostly.
Third one...
Same friend, HIS computer, also V1709, works fine, but his monitor will not turn on after the PC sleeps. PC does, but not the monitor. If he turns the monitor off and then on, sometimes it would turn on? We talked about what to do, the obvious, don't let it sleep, or I'll loan him a monitor to try.... but he said he was going to call ViewTronics first. His PC is about 10 years old he said (how he has W10 running on it I don't understand) and the monitor was about the same age. Calls me an hour later and said there was a re-boot method, had to do with the Power button and power cord. The agent on the phone walked him through it and it worked... Great, until the next day. Problem was back. He's taking the PC and monitor to the Computer store, they want $40 to fix it. They are MS Partner's and they said MS has a patch for that (Nvidia card). Wow, I've not heard of that and I have an Nvidia card in my PC. He was told it was for very old cards. Well, I searched the web and didn't find a thing about that? Calls me today, the place said the patch didn't work, but they set the PC to never sleep. Paid his $40, and took it home. He said they told him some recent MS Updates has caused problems with a few PC, they have 2 others in the shop now that are experiencing operational problems. Last week they had to put in a newer Video card and that solved the problem. They supposedly tried a video card in his PC and it didn't solve the problem. Not too sure I believe all that though? Searching I can't find any others with V1709 monitor not turning on after sleep either?
So at this point I sort of stumped and worried. Do I really have a reliable Acronis backup? I posted into the Acronis forum as ONE OTHER person had the same problem a year or two ago and one of the forum staff hit basically the same problem I did about the same time.
Is it Windows that is actually causing these problem or some other s/w?
Off my soapbox for now...