exxos blog - random goings on

[stephen_usher]

Often the local council will have a MOT testing centre that you can use. No repairs there but that also means no bias.

[exxos]

PC drama continues

while I increased the level of protection in the antivirus software, at the same time I also finished installing the Microsoft office updates. I think one of those has potentially broken something windows because I'm having trouble getting to the desktop now it seems to get stuck on the welcome screen, or it gets past that point and the screen fades to ordinarily where the desktop would come up, only remains totally black. The only thing on the screen is the mouse cursor. I cannot get into task manager all the start menu or anything so it is like nothing is running at all. after several resets it does eventually come up. So I am struggling to find the cause of this problem at the moment some people online claim it is graphics related, but I don't believe so because surely the system should be having some kind of response.

Linux Drama continues

oddly it also seems to have a graphics related problem. the issues of it flashing the desktop intermittently return. but it is strange because when I load steam, and load the game, more often than not the game is acting like there is no graphics driver installed. The graphics are there but running at like 5FPS. I normally reboot the computer and then it works fine afterwards.


I think it's rather strange that both operating systems have seemingly graphics related issues. I have taken the graphics card out of the PC and clean the contacts and put it back in but to no avail. If the problems persist then I have another graphics card I can try. the with the problems been intermittent it is difficult to diagnose in both operating systems

[alexh]

I'm having trouble getting to the desktop now it seems to get stuck on the welcome screen, or it gets past that point and the screen fades to ordinarily where the desktop would come up, only remains totally black. The only thing on the screen is the mouse cursor.

I had a similar thing with Windows 10 Pro update from 21H1 to 22H2. I just had to leave it on totally black screen for a long time HDD activity was minimal but there and it eventually fixed itself and from then on didn't do it again.

You think it's a hardware fault?

[PhilC]

What @alexh said, seen it in a few versions of windows. In Win7 I had to leave it over night and then it was fine after.

[exxos]

I had a similar thing with Windows 10 Pro update from 21H1 to 22H2. I just had to leave it on totally black screen for a long time HDD activity was minimal but there and it eventually fixed itself and from then on didn't do it again.

You think it's a hardware fault?

I don't think its hardware. I think it's either the ESET security killing stuff (i've disabled a lot of stuff again now but still the same) Or what I think it might be is that I finally updated Microsoft office stuff. There was like 20 updates so I think something has gone wrong

There was very minimal hard drive activity, problem is you don't know if the CPU is maxed out doing anything or not

I only got it to boot up because I selected " last known good configuration" or whatever it's called from the boot menu.

What @alexh said, seen it in a few versions of windows. In Win7 I had to leave it over night and then it was fine after.

ah ok. Relating to above it could possibly be updates which are causing the problems. at one point it did say something about " updating security" on boot up what it appeared to completely lock up.

But I did realise earlier is that previously I ran out of drive space years back, so I zipped up all the old KB windows updates, and deleted them, looks like I also removed the zip file in the end. if that's the case then it could be a bit of a problem because those files are "gone" now.

So I guess later tonight I will keep rebooting the machine and see if it gets stuck and just leave it on all night. is not exactly a slow computer it is a Ryzen 5 5500 with nvme drive. So you would think all this "waiting around for hours" would be a thing of the past by now

[exxos]

It's even more odd as I can't backup the drive. Paragon keeps saying vss technology failed to start. Never seen that error before.

I restarted PC and it showed the welcome text then faded back to black with only mouse arrow on screen. But I've gotta take van for MOT shortly so will just leave it like that and see what's what when I get back afterwards.

If it was the office updates then I wish I hadn't have bothered now.

[exxos]

So pc been stuck on blacks reen for about 2 hours so far.

Van failed MOT. They showed me steering jamming on full !ock. They said they never seen that problem before. Anyway, booked in Friday to have the steering rack and assembly replaced and have done with it.

So PC buggered, van buggered, now the toilet roll holder fell off wall in bathroom. Guess that's me dose of 3 troubles for today.

[exxos]

PC sage continues with some light at the end of the tunnel.

I reset the PC and got back into windows and just started working through all the errors in the logs. I think some of them have been there for a long time but they are from programs which I no longer use. They turn into a nightmare removing them. I don't even know why they are running services in the first place.

Anyway, Paragon hard disk backup 14 was basically "crashing".

error.PNG (18.47 KiB) Viewed 708 times

VSS technology has failed with error 0x11112.

I did the usual many hours looking through forums on the Internet. Most of them seem to imply the VSS service was not starting, but it actually was. I went down the rabbit hole basically. It did not really help because everybody has made a typo of "1112" not "11112" for the error code

Then I found it in the Windows error logs..

vss2.PNG (203.92 KiB) Viewed 708 times

The key part here was "Get Disk components".

It sparked something in my mind because I was trying to think what had changed recently on my PC. The only thing which had really changed was I installed the remaining Windows updates for Microsoft Office. So they should not of affected anything.

So because of that error, I then thought I wonder if it is the Linux drive causing this problem. so I unplugged it rebooted and thankfully the backup program is now working properly!!

I knew there was issues within Paragon because I downloaded that Linux drive Explorer program so I can actually access the drive within windows with the intention of backing it up. but Paragon still will not access the drive. swap partition was recognised but the main drive was just listed as "un-formatted". As to why this even cause the problem in the first place is beyond me as I was not even accessing the drive

So now I am wondering if the Linux drive is why Windows was having problems starting up I rebooted about 50 times today with the drive plugged in. I'm not really sure what "triggers" it into not working.

So it is a bit of a conundrum because I obviously want to use limits but I cannot have the drive plugged in

I think the later versions of Paragon hard disk manager would probably work properly. But I am somewhat against updating because they went hellbent along with everyone else, on Windows 10 themes So basically they had a nice efficient GUI then screwed it all up while updating the theme. But as it stands, it looks like I'm just going to be forced to update to the later version

I'm also somewhat reluctant to update because I really question how much testing they have done with Windows 7. I know I can depend on paragon 14 to work properly. But will more recent versions of it also work properly..

I have also realised a slight "flaw" in my backup methods now. because I use a script to delete backups which are older than five days to make room for new daily backups. The problem is as the backup program has not been working for the past several days, I actually have no backups now so I am rebuilding those while I am typing this waffle out.

[exxos]

Backups done. Now purchased paragon 17. Next problem is I don't seem to have the setup program anymore to uninstall the current version. The new one won't install until the old one is removed. BUT there was a hacky guide to having both versions, which didn't work. So I've forcefully removed all the files and deleted stuff out of the registry , then forced removal of drivers was windows system as it wouldn't let me delete stuff

Finally got it installed. And indeed they have totally reworked the GUI. Which means menus in menus in menus again I wouldn't say it's bad but it's gone windows 10 theme. Plus make everything way bigger than it needs to be which just clutters the screen up and causes more scrolling....

Now maybe people are starting to get the idea why I don't want to change anything or update anything as every single change causes multiple problems

[Rustynutt]

To unstall testy old exe's, use (what I think is a UK product) Revo Uninstaller.
It's a nice tool for pretty much all Window cleaning functions.

I too have occasional screen issues flashing off and on at times, then it stops.
Win 7 ASUS 2.8GH Quadcore something or another with an MSI graphics card.
What's most prevalent now are green asterisk looking symbols popping up all over the "home" screen (don't want to say desktop ). But they don't appear in application windows
Some forums read where the graphics card memory is going bad.