Registry cleaner.

Irish Steve

White Heart Loon wrote: »

Here's a tip, you can install from usb key in much less time than taking from disk (if it supports it)

If you're sitting by it, indeed, and good thought, slightly harder when it's 200 miles away being accessed by Teamviewer.

White Heart Loon

beauf wrote: »

The bottleneck isn't the source disk. Its the destination. The laptop HD.

Try it next time, you'll be surprised.

I do this weekly for a living, I have a selection of keys, the usuals. You can also use nlite and other software to slipstream whatever you want
http://www.nliteos.com/
http://www.rt7lite.com/

No way I'm spending half a day reinstalling a pc, course I want 90 quid for it and the turnover is 2-3days, customer needn't know it takes me 90mins-2hrs.

beauf

Willie is not you, loon. Its going to take him a lot longer and he probably won't be able to do any of that stuff you take for granted. Your estimates seem to have changed dramatically, but at least they are getting more realistic.

White Heart Loon wrote: »

...a reinstall takes a few mins and is free

White Heart Loon wrote: »

.... I want 90 quid for it and the turnover is 2-3days, customer needn't know it takes me 90mins-2hrs....

More realistic for an IT person. A non techie just isn't going to be able do it how you're suggesting, or in the same time.

Irish Steve

White Heart Loon wrote: »

Try it next time, you'll be surprised.

I do this weekly for a living, I have a selection of keys, the usuals. You can also use nlite and other software to slipstream whatever you want
http://www.nliteos.com/
http://www.rt7lite.com/

No way I'm spending half a day reinstalling a pc, course I want 90 quid for it and the turnover is 2-3days, customer needn't know it takes me 90mins-2hrs.

Fair enough........Know where you're coming from, been there, done that, shredded more than a few T shirts in the process!

Vlite http://www.vlite.net/ might be better for Vista though :P
Would be lost without Nlite, the number of XP machines that's rescued, I've lost count. Next few months are going to be "interesting" in that respect, there's a lot of XP out there still.

Cuddlesworth

White Heart Loon wrote: »

No, you take it to a professional who will do it in about 90 mins and charge about 80-100 quid. Laptop will be like new and will last another 1.5~2yrs. Better and cheaper than outlaying for a new one. The OP already said they don't use it much

Hard to justify tbh.

White Heart Loon

Cuddlesworth wrote: »

Hard to justify tbh.

Some find it hard to justify a few hundred on a new one when all they do is browse

Cuddlesworth

White Heart Loon wrote: »

Some find it hard to justify a few hundred on a new one when all they do is browse

Having worked in a support role for a large IT company, I can tell you the obvious lifespan of a laptop is around 3 years. After that the failure rate increases exponentially each year. The OP has a six year old laptop. The risk of immediate and costly failure are quite high, the choice is made tougher if he keeps re-investing back into the machine, the 100 quid to get it back up and working is a bad investment. Coupling that with the constant demands of tech, websites now moving to HTML 5, codecs moving to move intensive algorithms(H265), his laptop will soon be unable to cope with basic browsing.

What you are basically advising is spending 100-150 to get back a 6 year old machine with a 6 year old OS, a dead battery, a slow 80gig drive, 2 gigs of ram and a outdated proc.

Rather then spending 350 for a new lighter laptop with a fast proc, double the ram, 5 times the hard-drive space, a new faster OS and a 12 month warranty. Which he should at least get another 3-5 years out of.

Or to put this in other terms, if your 00 1 litre car is proving to be too slow do you spend 500 quid to rebuild the engine, or do you buy a 05 with a larger engine for a grand.

White Heart Loon

Cuddlesworth wrote: »

Having worked in a support role for a large IT company, I can tell you the obvious lifespan of a laptop is around 3 years. After that the failure rate increases exponentially each year. The OP has a six year old laptop. The risk of immediate and costly failure are quite high, the choice is made tougher if he keeps re-investing back into the machine, the 100 quid to get it back up and working is a bad investment. Coupling that with the constant demands of tech, websites now moving to HTML 5, codecs moving to move intensive algorithms(H265), his laptop will soon be unable to cope with basic browsing.

What you are basically advising is spending 100-150 to get back a 6 year old machine with a 6 year old OS, a dead battery, a slow 80gig drive, 2 gigs of ram and a outdated proc.

Rather then spending 350 for a new lighter laptop with a fast proc, double the ram, 5 times the hard-drive space, a new faster OS and a 12 month warranty. Which he should at least get another 3-5 years out of.

Or to put this in other terms, if your 00 1 litre car is proving to be too slow do you spend 500 quid to rebuild the engine, or do you buy a 05 with a larger engine for a grand.

I agree completely, but people are strapped for cash and usually choose the cheapest option

Irish Steve

I too would love a new high speed all singing and dancing modern laptop with all the bells and whistles, right now, I'm using a second hand Acer aspire 5610 dual core on XP Pro, and it's doing pretty much most of the things I need on a day to day basis, there's not much I can't do

I know I'm going to have to change it in the next few months, and that's a cost that in some respects I resent, because this works, it's pretty stable, and if I upgrade, it won't make that much difference to the day to day operation because what I can do is still very much limited by the capabilities and capacity of the broadband link without which I could not operate much of what I do. Mine's better than some, 10 down, 256 up, with a reasonable cap, but it still is a long way from being able to really work from home in a truly effective manner, so all the bells and whistles of newer operating systems, and faster hardware are in many respects all eye candy that don't have a significant impact on how I work on a day to day basis.

I've done work on Vista, W7 and W8, (and other systems both hardware and software for over 40 years) and while there are some relatively minor improvements, the only real change I've seen is in the bloat of the software, it's bigger, takes more support effort, needs more disc space, but in the crucial analysis, W8.1 is not really doing much more than XP Pro is capable of, and for me, the cost of moving to 8.1 is way beyond what I can justify right now, in that it's not just new hardware, it's then also new software, new "support" software, and all the other peripheral issues that go with it, and in some cases, things like printers may well have legacy support in later versions of the Operating system, but in some cases, that support is reduced when compared to the original drivers that came with the device, I've not bought or supplied ANY low end HP inkjets since Vista came out, and HP "declined" to provide a full featured driver for a printer that was less than 2 years old.

I may be wrong, but I see signs that the end of life of XP is going to lose Microsoft a lot of long term customers, who are going to look very closely at non Microsoft alternatives, simply because the total cost of ownership of Microsoft products is becoming a cost that can't be justified. I also see issues coming down the line with the lemming like rush towards "the cloud", it's nothing new, just bureau processing under a new name, and the true full cost of using "the cloud" if proper back up, escrow and related data and application integrity issues are taken into account make it a far more marginal cost advantage than the proponents would admit to.

The implications for a company of being unable to pay out the payroll because "the broadband is down", or "the cloud supplier's gone bankrupt, and we can't access our data" are things that the advocates of cloud are quietly hoping won't get asked with too much seriousness. Imagine having to drive from Mayo to Dublin and "borrow" time on someone's machine to process a payroll because the weather's gone bad and broadband in the west is down for the next week because of infrastructural damage. It will happen, and when it does, some companies won't recover from not being aware of the risks they are taking.

Anyway, this is all a long way from the original purpose of the thread, which was to try and help a laptop user get their machine working reliably again after a problem with a possible malware issue. hopefully, the OP will come back to us soon with an update on progress

cosmowillie53

Irish Steve wrote: »

OK, I am going to suggest that as a starter, uninstall Chrome, it looks like there is all sorts of bloatware running in that browser at the moment, and I doubt there's anything in there that's critical to the machine.

After uninstalling it, either in control panel, or Ccleaner, do another ccleaner run against free space, and then also do a check on the registry, to make sure that there's no junk there as well.

Let's see how that goes.

I've been away from this old machine for awhile (a break) . Thanks to everyone for the help and advice. I know a new shiny computer would be nice but not nearly as nice as getting this old machine ticking over nicely again.

I have uninstalled chrome..run ccleaner..defrag..mse scan and got to 20gb free space.
The problem is still there.
Thanks.

Irish Steve

cosmowillie53 wrote: »

I've been away from this old machine for awhile (a break) . Thanks to everyone for the help and advice. I know a new shiny computer would be nice but not nearly as nice as getting this old machine ticking over nicely again.

I have uninstalled chrome..run ccleaner..defrag..mse scan and got to 20gb free space.
The problem is still there.
Thanks.

As we've changed a lot at this stage, what's still causing problems now, performance or user switching.

Cheers

cosmowillie53

Irish Steve wrote: »

As we've changed a lot at this stage, what's still causing problems now, performance or user switching.

Cheers

The only problem is with logoff/on.
When I log off and another logs on comp. goes to welcome screen and then a blueish screen and athats it. I must turn off/on and then it will work.
Switch user works sometimes. ctrl/alt/del.
Tks

Irish Steve

OK, that sounds like there's a program running that is either not signing off correctly, or failing to sign on when the user changes, and finding that could get to be messy.

It might be worth trying to change the startup configuration a few bits at a time, but I don't know Vista well enough to guide you through that without seeing the screen to make the changes.

If I remember it correctly, it's a case of running msconfig from the menu, but the exact how escapes me at the moment, and I don't have a vista machine here I can try it on.

Good guidance here

http://netsquirrel.com/msconfig/msconfig_vista.html



Another thought to check, right click on my computer, properties, hardware (I think), device manager, you're aiming for the computer devices page that shows what's connected. When you have that up, there should be an option to show hidden devices, under I think the view menu, enable that, and make sure that there are no devices with an error, usually shown by a ! in a yellow triangle on it, and also check that there are not dozens of devices repeated, especially in the USB section, I've seen issues like this where the USB section gets clogged up with devices that are no longer connected, but it's trying to do things with them.

http://www.vistax64.com/tutorials/80368-device-manager-hidden-devices.html

Same works for both 32 bit and 64 bit.

This may point the way, anything that's got a device icon that's greyed out is not connected, and may be causing issues, one thing that causes it is the same device plugged into different USB ports, it will remember it in each USB port, and can cause problems, so if the same device is in the list and some are active, and the rest inactive, delete the inactive ones.

Epson & HP printers can be a pain in that respect, some of the drivers for them don't work well if the device is not connected, or if it's connected but not powered on.

Worth a try

sawdoubters

cccleaner and hijackthis don't use on widows xp

start with hijack this in admin mode


then ccleaner in admin mode

yoyo

sawdoubters wrote: »

cccleaner and hijackthis don't use on widows xp

start with hijack this in admin mode


then ccleaner in admin mode

CCleaner works fine on XP? Never had an issue myself with it. I also use ATF Cleaner which clears out temp files from all user profiles on a machine (which is very handy )

Nick

cosmowillie53

Irish Steve wrote: »

OK, that sounds like there's a program running that is either not signing off correctly, or failing to sign on when the user changes, and finding that could get to be messy.

It might be worth trying to change the startup configuration a few bits at a time, but I don't know Vista well enough to guide you through that without seeing the screen to make the changes.

If I remember it correctly, it's a case of running msconfig from the menu, but the exact how escapes me at the moment, and I don't have a vista machine here I can try it on.

Good guidance here

http://netsquirrel.com/msconfig/msconfig_vista.html



Another thought to check, right click on my computer, properties, hardware (I think), device manager, you're aiming for the computer devices page that shows what's connected. When you have that up, there should be an option to show hidden devices, under I think the view menu, enable that, and make sure that there are no devices with an error, usually shown by a ! in a yellow triangle on it, and also check that there are not dozens of devices repeated, especially in the USB section, I've seen issues like this where the USB section gets clogged up with devices that are no longer connected, but it's trying to do things with them.

http://www.vistax64.com/tutorials/80368-device-manager-hidden-devices.html

Same works for both 32 bit and 64 bit.

This may point the way, anything that's got a device icon that's greyed out is not connected, and may be causing issues, one thing that causes it is the same device plugged into different USB ports, it will remember it in each USB port, and can cause problems, so if the same device is in the list and some are active, and the rest inactive, delete the inactive ones.

Epson & HP printers can be a pain in that respect, some of the drivers for them don't work well if the device is not connected, or if it's connected but not powered on.

Worth a try

In start up there are 31 items. I have disabled them one by one (except for AV) and it didn't make any difference.

In device mgr. there are two items with an !.
1) under dvd/cdrom drivers. HL-DT-ST-dvdram GSA-T50N
1) Other devices. Unknown device.

Under USB. there are 17 items.
Usb universal host controller (8)
Usb composite device (1)
Usb root hub (8).

Thanks.

Irish Steve

OK,

The devices that are showing !, delete or uninstall both of them.

is there anything connected to USB at the moment, if not, then delete the composite device, if there is, what's the device?

If it's a photo printer, then it should be safe to delete it, anything else, check back before you do.

It will need a full power down and restart after the devices are removed, in order to make sure that the right things are found if needed.

cosmowillie53

Irish Steve wrote: »

OK,

The devices that are showing !, delete or uninstall both of them.

is there anything connected to USB at the moment, if not, then delete the composite device, if there is, what's the device?

If it's a photo printer, then it should be safe to delete it, anything else, check back before you do.

It will need a full power down and restart after the devices are removed, in order to make sure that the right things are found if needed.

The Unknown device uninstalled ok. I also uninstalled the other two but when I turn computer back on there are there again.
(Just a note , computer going slower since uninstal)
.

Irish Steve

Ok, in that case, there are some drivers needed to correct the issues, and that may be a factor in what's happening.

If I remember correctly, there is an option to update driver in the hardware page, right click on the device with the error, and it should allow you to select update driver, and allow it to search the web for an update.

cosmowillie53

Irish Steve wrote: »

Ok, in that case, there are some drivers needed to correct the issues, and that may be a factor in what's happening.

If I remember correctly, there is an option to update driver in the hardware page, right click on the device with the error, and it should allow you to select update driver, and allow it to search the web for an update.

I did as above and message back is that the most up to date drive is installed.
I did a quick log off/on and problem is still there.
(computer seems to be back up to speed)
Tks.

Irish Steve

If the device is showing an error, and the latest driver is installed, there's another issue. What does the error say on the device screen?

cosmowillie53

Irish Steve wrote: »

If the device is showing an error, and the latest driver is installed, there's another issue. What does the error say on the device screen?

It says windows cannot start this hardware device because its configuration information (in the registry ) is incomplete or damaged. Code 19.

Irish Steve

OK, that's one that I can't diagnose from here, as I don't have vista active at the moment.
what device is it, is it part of the "basic machine" or an extra device?

If it's part of the basic machine, then you may need to go on to the manufacturers web site and see if there is a later driver or software update that's not been released through the "windows update" channel.

Sorting a banking issue at the moment, will look back later

cosmowillie53

Irish Steve wrote: »

OK, that's one that I can't diagnose from here, as I don't have vista active at the moment.
what device is it, is it part of the "basic machine" or an extra device?

If it's part of the basic machine, then you may need to go on to the manufacturers web site and see if there is a later driver or software update that's not been released through the "windows update" channel.

Sorting a banking issue at the moment, will look back later

Device type Dvd/cd -rom drives. Seems to be part of the basic machine. Provider Microsoft dated 2006.

Hope all goes/went well with bank.

Thanks.

Irish Steve

Bank have changed the on line system, and in the process, significantly downgraded what it can do, muppets. Who in their right mind writes an application that will only work in Internet Explorer these days, and uses 800 x 600 fixed size window? Bank of Ireland, that's who.

Have a look on the web site for the machine, and see if there's a later driver, or possibly a firmware update for the device, it's possible that the device itself may need a new operating system loaded in to it, the DVD drive has it's own processor, and program that sorts out how it works, and that's independent of Vista, or Windows, or any other operating system,

Irish Steve

We know it's a Toshiba Satellite, can you put up the model number, and the device details for the DVD drive, may make it easier to work out what's needed for it.

cosmowillie53

Irish Steve wrote: »

We know it's a Toshiba Satellite, can you put up the model number, and the device details for the DVD drive, may make it easier to work out what's needed for it.

The model # : PSL B 8 E - 0700 Driver version 6.0.6002.18005.
Hope this helps.

Irish Steve

Drivers for that machine are here

http://www.toshiba.co.uk/innovation/download_drivers_bios.jsp?service=UK&selCategory=2&selFamily=2&selSeries=178&selProduct=784&selShortMod=780&language=13&selOS=26&selType=all&yearupload=&monthupload=&dayupload=&useDate=null&mode=allMachines&search=&action=search&macId=&country=8&page=1

There is a mountain of them, and I have no way to know which if any are applicable to your specific machine, there are BIOS updates, for the main hardware, and firmware updates, some of which could well be applicable to that machine, it's going to be a case of spending some time going through all 3 pages to try and work out if any of them are applicable to your specific configuration, and I can't do that remotely from here, there's just too many variables and unknowns for me to be able to determine.

What's clear is that there have been quite a few updates, it's possible that none of them will make any difference, or that one of more will solve the issues with the machine, but I can't diagnose that from here.

It will be worth going through the list and applying the updates that are relevant to your machine

cosmowillie53

Irish Steve wrote: »

Drivers for that machine are here

http://www.toshiba.co.uk/innovation/download_drivers_bios.jsp?service=UK&selCategory=2&selFamily=2&selSeries=178&selProduct=784&selShortMod=780&language=13&selOS=26&selType=all&yearupload=&monthupload=&dayupload=&useDate=null&mode=allMachines&search=&action=search&macId=&country=8&page=1

There is a mountain of them, and I have no way to know which if any are applicable to your specific machine, there are BIOS updates, for the main hardware, and firmware updates, some of which could well be applicable to that machine, it's going to be a case of spending some time going through all 3 pages to try and work out if any of them are applicable to your specific configuration, and I can't do that remotely from here, there's just too many variables and unknowns for me to be able to determine.

What's clear is that there have been quite a few updates, it's possible that none of them will make any difference, or that one of more will solve the issues with the machine, but I can't diagnose that from here.

It will be worth going through the list and applying the updates that are relevant to your machine

Yes, I can see a bit(lot) of time will have to be spent figuring this out.

Dude111

cosmowillie53 wrote:

Thanks for replies above.
I also used ccleaner and it tells me there are no problems.
Thanks.

You can also try REGSEEKER (This is the one I love)

www.fosshub.com/RegSeeker.html