Saturday, August 18, 2012

Windows 7 Weirdness

That was scary! Last night I attempted to download photos from my granddaughter's camera's SD card onto my desktop Windows 7 computer so I could burn them onto a DVD for her. She had her 4GB card so loaded that it could no longer store new photos and she is afraid to move them to her computer as she was told this would slow her computer down. Anyway... I slipped her SD card into my reader and the screen froze. I tried everything but could not free it up. The only thing I could do was to hold down the power button to turn the computer off.

When I tried to restart the computer it would not get past the Acer splash screen. It just sat there. I tried DEL and F12 but that did nothing. After a couple more attempts of powering down and restarting, I powered down again and unplugged the computer overnight. This morning I plugged it back in and powered up while tapping F8 to get into Safe Mode. It suggested going into the startup repair mode. I watched the repair mode box for a while until it suggested using System Restore. I said OK and it went back to the Startup Repair box. I went for breakfast and a half hour later nothing had changed. The repair box was still open and scrolling endlessly. I powered down again and restarted in Safe Mode. This time I chose "Start Windows Normally" and it worked. I did three restart cycles and it worked every time.

Now the computer would not recognise my USB flash drive. I tried to do a System Restore and chose a date two days ago. It sat on the "Preparing System Restore" box for a good hour, doing nothing. I did a restart and Windows opened again. I Googled and someone suggested creating a new restore point and restoring to that point. I did and it worked. However, my older restore points do not seem to work My USB flash drive was still not being recognised but I fixed that by unplugging the computer again for a few seconds. That fixed the USB problem.

I used my laptop to transfer my granddaughters photos onto a DVD and everything worked. Her camera now works much faster with a formatted SD card. The fact the photos transferred fine on the laptop eliminates any chance of a virus on her SD card. I will do a full scan with MSE anyway.

My old System Restore points still do not work and the Internet is full of complaints about Windows 7 System Restore. I guess I will just have to live with it and make sure my backups are always up to date. It is working but I do not trust it. The computer is less than four months old. I hate it when things go wrong!

8 comments:

  1. I hate it too when things go wrong with a computer. Our desktop just chose to quit working! Aaargh! One more thing to fix and/or look into changing.

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  2. Yet another indictment of the crappy Windows system! The extra $'s for a Mac is well worth it. I will never go back!!

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  3. I agree with anonymous... you just don't run into strange stuff like that on the Mac side of things... much less painful. Glad it finally came around for you!

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  4. I'm doing the every-few-months round of backups on my crew of computers as I type. I'm getting ready to go back to the States, and I leave a copy of the backups up there. Jury is out on Windows 7 for me, we still don't use it at work. Seems ok here at home, 2 have W7, and 2 have XP. I'll bring back my older Dell laptop this time and start trying Ubuntu on it.

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  5. It sound like a driver problem with the card reader on your computer.

    Either that or your granddaughter's SD card is formatted in such a way that your computer couldn't recognize it. Hard to say without knowing all the details.

    As for the System Restore, you could test it by Creating a New System Restore Point. Then do a Windows Update followed by a System Restore to the Restore Point you just created. That, at least, would prove System Restore is working for future restores.

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  6. Thanks Rick! I did that and it worked. It restored to the most recent point and then did the latest update again. All is well. I hope.

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  7. I figured that Rick would come to the rescue:)

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  8. Its nice to have Rick as a follower, with expert knowledge right there for you, good luck.

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