Almost disaster. Long story.

I had been doing a lot of work when I noticed the laptop lagging, so I finished up and planned on rebooting after CCleaner. CCleaner needed a update, did that and went to restart. Background programs stalled that, canceled, closed explorer, went to reboot. Another undecribed background program stalled again, forced reboot. As it was rebooting said something about Windows updates, do not shut off. After 10 minutes with no progress I hit the power button, shut down and restarted in safe mode.

Had a Adobe error pop up saying something about epic, open another program such as Photoshop. Tried that said I'd need to reinstall CS3. Yeah right. Tried system restore. Same Window updating, do not shut off. Same no progress whatsoever. Went looking in my spare external drives for my backup. Searched drive in spare laptop, find backup folder empty! No Windows back up (I had all my docs, music, backed up on yet another HDD)


In the meantime I hit the power button again, restarted and went looking for my Windows reinstall CD. "This is going to take me days, should I repartition, OS and programs on one partition, docs in another?" Go get coffee.

Miraculously, windows starts, a little slow, windows checking for problems. I get online, things seem fine, windows still checking for problems. tells me to back up! Yah! Says nothing about system restore.

Here's the message and apparent problem.

(Windows update said I had a critical update on 6/26 and there are no new updates)

I dunno. The Nvidia driver has caused annoyances but nothing like this Any ideas?

Doing a full back up now but if I have problems it may be a waste. I'll probably reinstall Windows when I'm all caught up but I dread reinstalling all my programs windows updates etc. Does Nlite work on Windows7 and would it save serious time?

 

Hi Hiker. I would reinstall windows in your case.

I actually did it just a month ago because it has been 3 years since I have my original windows installed. Now my system works much better than before (I do a lot of testing, installing and uninstalling, development etc... so my old system was full of rubbish).

I usually don't think Windows 7 needs reinstall (like XP nedded for example), but in your case I think you should do it.

Edit: Now one thing many people don't know - you can legally download any Windows 7 iso image that you need and in your case you would need SP1 already cooked in. It is a great idea if you have only bloated windows recovery discs from the manufacturer. And you can install from this clean image and use your serial that you have! You don't have to use your original (old pre SP1) discs or lousy recovery custom configured discs! Just make sure you download the edition you have a serial for. In my case I have Windows 7 Home Premium x64bit. I downloaded the image, installed, activated windows with my serial on the sticker and that was it! All working nice and saved me a lot of time.

Here is a good link: http://techpp.com/2009/11/11/download-windows-7-iso-official-direct-download-links/

It will download from softpedia.

Now for reinstall of programs - go to ninite.com! It saves a lot of time reinstalling programs!

You choose what programs you want and then simple installer installs them without any user intervention. No toolbars, adware or anything else is installed. For example Flash installation from Adobe is a disaster in comparison to ninite.com Flash installation. Adobe installation is so bloated that I expect that some antimalware starts cleaning it afterwards .

Hope this helps. Good luck!

Ivan

 

Yeah, I've been meaning to reinstall but have been pretty busy and don't want to lose the time. I'll line everything up though.

I just used Glary portable one click and cleaned 250 registry errors (mostly adobe) that CCleaner left as well as 168mb of junk files. It seems to be running better, but I am always installing uninstalling programs, so the installation is probably fried.

Potential problem is, knowing the process and not sure how many are allowed, I'm afraid of reinstalling CS3. I use a few of the programs quite a bit (I still suck at them)

Off to check out ninite.

Thanks!

 

I added some info about legal Windows ISO just in case you want SP1 already cooked in....

 

im sure there was a dodgy windows update on or around the 26th as ive had major problems as well.
re installed vista 3 times now and finally running like normal. ive stopped all the latest windows updates just in case.

 

By looking at some of the other recent threads, I'm beginning to think that. {insert tin foil hat smilie}

Thanks. I'm thinking of making my own.

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OK, I uninstalled a couple programs that aren't supposed to be compatible with Win7 (Canon camera software a few years old) using Revo Uninstaller. After one program was removed I had to reboot. Same problem as before.

hard shut off with Windows telling me not to do it. Run a few diagnostic, no problem there. Reboot into safe mode, get Adobe ing again. Run system restore to a few days ago before Win update on 6/26. It reboots looking good, click user name on logon screen, screen goes black, only cursor which moves. Press Ctrl, alt, del, task manager on top of black screen. X out, Ctrl, alt, del, reboot, back to normal. Again no message from system restore.

I forget exactly when but at one point it said something about not being able to configure a Windows update, reverting back.

In another day or two I'll try to reboot. I've made a repair DVD, we'll see if that works if I need it. In the meantime, I'm shutting Win updates off.

Added: Just checked. All updates are still there...

 

Check if CIS disabled Defender when installed. Could it be some kind of clash between CIS and Defender?

Can you check event viewer for errors? Maybe you can find the root of this problem. Try rebooting and then go to Event viewer and see the chronology of the boot.

 

Some of a bunch

Thanks, but I'm not ready to reboot yet. It's been a pain to get the system to come back up. I'm going to get all my install DVD's, drivers, program installers etc and good instructions to reinstall Windows in case I have to.

I get the Defender updates but it's not even running. I'll try to check CIS Defense+ to see if it's blocking anything