Pink’s PC Problems: 2010-03-10
Right before I went to see [Emmy], I received a Gateway PC to repair from a good friend of Mom’s She explained that she’d taken it to a computer repair shop and that they told her that it’s infected with some sort of virus. They advised that the machine is too old to bother disinfecting. Finally, they suggested that she purchase a new computer (from them). Of course.
When she related what happened at trivia night three weeks ago, I told her that I’d take a peak at it for her. So, here it sits, here I am back home from vacation, and now I’m about to begin the job of evaluating and repairing it. I’ll post my progress in the comments below.
March 10th, 2010 at 12:33 pm
02:30 PM: I’ve connected this computer to my test jig and it booted to the Windows Vista Home Premium logon screen. However, I do not have the password. Calling Pink now to get it. Stand by.
02:40 PM: Left her a message, and will pick this up again when she calls back.
03:45 PM: I’ve got the password, and discovered that several important updates have failed. So I’ll first debug these failures since it’s possible that the software on this computer may be in an inconsistent state with these failures present.
Also, Pink says that this system is very slow. So far, I’ve not been able to reproduce this. Everything seems as fast if not faster than my computers here. But I’ll keep looking.
04:00 PM: The .NET 3.5 Framework SP1 update is one of those that is failing. I’ve used a database cleanup utility to get rid of all remnants of the .NET framework.
04:15 PM: Next, I installed .NET 1.1 and the SP1 update to that. It turns out that version 2.0 and 3.0 of the framework come bundled with Vista.
04:45 PM: Attempted to install the .NET Framework 3.5 package, twice. Got errors both times.
05:35 PM: I located a “full package” version of the framework, version 3.5. It’s over 200 MB in size and for some reason, I’m only getting around 50 KB / sec. So this will take over an hour to download. Downloading it now…
07:45 PM: The .NET 3.5 full package also failed to install. I noticed however, that this computer does not have the Vista service pack one installed yet. Doing that now. Hopefully, this will enable the error-free installation of the remaining updates.
08:45 PM: The Vista SP1 update failed with error code 800F081F. Nothing definitive on the Internet for how to solve this. I have an SP1 disc here but it won’t install over the copy on that computer unless I format over the current OS. So I’ll back everything up and try tomorrow.
March 11th, 2010 at 10:19 am
12:15 PM: Backing up Pink’s PC. The following directories I’m copying to an external hard drive:
* c:\Documents
* c:\found.000
* c:\intel
* c:\quickenw
* c:\users
01:00 PM: I’m holding off on erasing the hard drive until I verify that Pink has the discs for all the software currently installed; those must be reinstalled after reformatting. I’ve left her a message and am awaiting her reply.
07:30 PM: Talked with Pink. She has all the software disks that she’ll need to reinstall after the restoration of this PC, and she says to go ahead with the restore.
07:35 PM: Her computer has a recovery partition, which contains a clean installable version of Vista. To access it, you reboot the machine while repeatedly pressing the F8 key. This takes you to a menu where you can choose the recovery manager. From there, you can pick what sort of recovery you wish to do. I chose PC restoration with data backup. That’s in progress now, and it’s displaying the Factory image recovery screen.
08:00 PM: The restoration operation is finished, and it took between ten and fifteen minutes to complete. Now, the PC is in the process of starting Windows Vista for the first time.
08:20 PM: Now, it’s installing applications that came with the PC originally.
09:20 AM: All 44 bundled applications on the system image partition have installed. Now downloading and installing 92 important Vista updates.
10:55 PM: 26 of the 92 updates have been installed so far. This will probably take a while.
11:30 PM: 50 of the 92 updates applied so far.
March 12th, 2010 at 10:22 am
07:30 AM: All 92 updates installed successfully. Then, around 8 more updates appeared. Installing those now.
01:00 PM: Still experiencing approximately four failed updates. So I’ve hidden these and am applying the Vista Service Pack 1 update. Perhaps after that upgrade, those failed updates will work. Stand by.
03:10 PM: The Service Pack 1 update has been successfully installed. Now applyijng the updates that failed before this upgrade…
03:30 PM: All remaining updates successfully installed. Now, back to investigating the original problem with this computer; slow performance…
March 13th, 2010 at 9:05 am
10:45 AM: Pink left a message about picking up her computer today. I missed her call however. But I left her a return message, saying that she can come today or tomorrow. I asked her to call me to set a definite time.
11:00 AM: Verified that audio works and that the recovery process made backups of the important files from the previous installation.
March 14th, 2010 at 10:36 am
01:20 PM: Applying the Windows Vista Service Pack 2 update to Pink’s computer.
02:30 PM: The new service pack 2 installed without troubles and several other updates that appeared subsequently, also installed correctly.
03:25 PM: Pink just left with her computer. She seemed pleased with my work. We reinstalled her QuickBooks and restored her company files for that without too much problem. She had the backups stored on a PassPort drive that was locked. I’d never played with one of these before, but was amazed to find that this little box, slightly bigger than a pack of cigarettes, could hold nearly 300 GB. Wow!
Anyway, once we installed the drivers for this device, we had to run an EXE program on the visible partition of this drive, in order to access the locked portion of that drive. We did this, and entered the password at the prompt, and then we were able to view and then restore her backup QuickBooks files. She says that everything works as she expected.
Thus, this job is now finished.