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Is Windows getting worse and worse?

Muse

Muse

Lifer
My Windows 7 machines have been giving me fits and headaches (OK, I don't get headaches, but if I did I'd be popping asprin every 1/2 hour).

Both my Win 7 laptops (Ultimate 64bit and Home Premium 32 bit) are incapable of installing Windows Updates at this point in time. My 32 bit machine today suddenly and without warning (it was idling) stopped producing video and I had to pull the plug on it. It took over an hour of fitful and nonsensical wrangling with Windows to get it to restart. It said it couldn't repair, couldn't find a restore point that worked. Only my stubborn streak kept me trying and Windows finally started when it looked like it couldn't possibly. So much for Windows messages, they were utterly useless and misleading.

My 64 bit machine can't conclude its critical Windows Updates, there are two that fail every time. It always needs to roll back while I cool my heals for at least 1/2 hour. I have stopped trying and I know I'll have to reinstall from scratch unless I can find an image, and I don't think I have one.

My Windows Vista Business laptop doesn't run Microsoft Visual Foxpro 9.0 (the last version) correctly. It has a quirky behavior that is pretty much a show stopper. The experts don't know what to make of it. I suppose the OS has something to do with it, but it's a fresh install, so reinstalling will solve nothing.

Only my Windows XP machines run pretty much trouble free. I've never had those kinds of issues with my XP machines. Now I get messages that it isn't supported, so I've uninstalled MSE and installed AVG Free AV (yesterday). The mobo on this machine can't run even Vista. When I replace the mobo etc. I guess I'll buy Win 7 or something, but I don't expect a trouble free ride. I'll be imaging frequently because my experience with MS OS's after XP have been awful. It reminds me of the Windows 3.1 days which also sucked.

I run a few things that won't run on Linux, so that's out. Is 8.x or 10 better? 😕
 
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System updates are very complex things so having trouble with them is not that special.
Win 7/8 are much more complex than xp so its more likely that you run into trouble.
A lot of times it can also be due to slightly misbehaving(or failing) hardware.
I for one had no more trouble with 7 or 8 then I had with xp.
 
I haven't had an issue that wasn't self inflicted since Windows Me ( which really sucked ). I have ran them all since Windows 3.1. Vista was sluggish. Windows 7 was/is great. 8 & 8.1 is different and has a learning curve. Running Windows 10 Preview and it has an even steeper learning curve, but even in it's preview ( beta ) state is pretty much major problem free.
 
First step in troubleshooting Windows Update is always to stop the service and delete the entire c:\windows\softwaredistribution\ directory. Then restart the service and try again.

If that doesn't fix it, this tool has helped me on several occasions get Windows Update back working again:
http://www.tweaking.com/content/page/windows_repair_all_in_one.html

Beyond that, I've spent so many hours on Windows Update issues and the reality is 99% of the time there is no solution short of reinstalling from scratch. I don't even bother trying to read the logs and search google for answers anymore, it's futile.

Also, fyi, I've been very unhappy with the latest few versions of AVG, both free & paid. Highly suggest Bitdefender, it's free too. AVG puts up too many advertisements (even the paid version spams with upsell ads). And definitely do not have it install it's toolbar into the browser, I've seen the toolbar recently exhibit memory leaks on several XP machines consuming more and more memory until the entire virtual memory system is tapped out.
 
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I've actually had to deal with a borked Win 7-64 Windows Update capability on one machine.

In my case, it was one of a few symptoms indicating hardware failure. First, it was a bad memory stick; later, I determined that the PSU of the desktop in question was dying.

It was actually about six months earlier -- troubleshooting other possible hardware problems of a different machine -- that I undertook a campaign to troubleshoot every system in the house (they all use W7 except for my WHS server). That is, a major initiative focused on cleaning up the errors and warnings in the Windows Event Logs. While there are certain benign red and yellow events, all the systems in the house now have near-totally "blue" profile.

And I don't have any problems with Win Updates. Oh -- there might be a case where some particular update "fails" and the message indicates that it can't install while some particular file is open or in use. These always get installed successfully with cycling the machine through a restart -- which usually completes the update successfully.

Did the OP run SFC /SCANNOW or some other method of assessing system file corruption?
 
I have had some problems with updates that wouldn't install, but I could use a microsoft fix tool, to fix it. Otherwise I don't have any problems. So my answer would be no.

The amount of different hardware and software that windows needs to run on, is so vast that it is impossible not to stumble upon problems some times. Also the problems could lie in hardware faults, BIOS, drivers etc.

Apple has the advantage of only having to support a very narrow field of hardware, of which they have full control as well.
 
My Hp's Dv5,and Dv6 has always installed Win 7 64bit and installed updates with no issues,if you have legal key,i would suggest to make an win 7 iso from here;


http://getintopc.com/softwares/opera...32-bit-64-bit/


when you buy a new PC it comes from the dealer full of advertising software that is installed along side the software needed to run OPS and that makes a big difference from a clean install,with the link i gave for the win7 iso,you only need to get the drivers for the Ethernet card from your PC brand put in a USB stick to install after you install OPS, prior to make clean install,
don't put the key when it asks just tick auto on line activation, it will activate automatically if you have a legal key.

here what i did, i got myself an extra HDD and did not touch the original HDD,i installed from above win 7 64bit ISO link, and made a clean install,and you don't imagine how faster the OPS turned out to be after this clean install compared to the factory OPS.
 
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BonzaiDuck said:
Did the OP run SFC /SCANNOW or some other method of assessing system file corruption?
Click to expand...
I haven't run that on this machine (32 bit) or my 64bit machines running Win7. You do that in a run command window? It's been a while... 😎

I'm thinking it may be too late to save this machine's Windows installation. I got two BSOD's yesterday. They came up, stayed there for ~10 seconds... 😕 ... I scrambled for the photo app on my smartphone but by the time I got it up the BSOD's disappeared. Argh. I have my point and shoot right next to the machine now. Both my everyday browsers are crashing fairly regularly, no known cause (Palemoon and IE).

One of these machines (I can't remember which right now) was yesterday showing ~85% CPU usage in Task Manager/Performance but no app was using over ~3%. What's up with that?
FrankRamiro said:
when you buy a new PC it comes from the dealer full of advertising software that is installed along side the software needed to run OPS and that makes a big difference from a clean install....
Click to expand...

A few details:

Win 7 32bit laptop:
Lenovo Thinkpad T60
COA: XP
I bought Win7 install disk off Amazon a little over a year ago, installed from that.

Win7 Ultimate 64bit laptop:
Lenovo Thinkpad T61
COA: Vista Business
I have an install disk from MS for Win7 64bit, it was provided to an MS sponsored user group I belonged to, won it as a door prize.

So, the COA keys I have are not specific to Win7, but XP and Vista Business. Anyway, those current installations on the machines are not imbedded with crapware and they have their own keys, not from the COA's.
 
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There are several viewers out there that will read the minidump. I will say that 7 is the most stable Micrisoft OS I have used. Actually that comment can probably go back to XP. But I don't remember having near the uptime with xp as I do with 7 (but that could just be me liking to reboot more back then).
 
Muse said:
I haven't run that on this machine (32 bit) or my 64bit machines running Win7. You do that in a run command window? It's been a while... 😎

I'm thinking it may be too late to save this machine's Windows installation. I got two BSOD's yesterday. They came up, stayed there for ~10 seconds... 😕 ... I scrambled for the photo app on my smartphone but by the time I got it up the BSOD's disappeared. Argh. I have my point and shoot right next to the machine now. Both my everyday browsers are crashing fairly regularly, no known cause (Palemoon and IE).

One of these machines (I can't remember which right now) was yesterday showing ~85% CPU usage in Task Manager/Performance but no app was using over ~3%. What's up with that?

A few details:

Win 7 32bit laptop:
Lenovo Thinkpad T60
COA: XP
I bought Win7 install disk off Amazon a little over a year ago, installed from that.

Win7 Ultimate 64bit laptop:
Lenovo Thinkpad T61
COA: Vista Business
I have an install disk from MS for Win7 64bit, it was provided to an MS sponsored user group I belonged to, won it as a door prize.

So, the COA keys I have are not specific to Win7, but XP and Vista Business. Anyway, those current installations on the machines are not imbedded with crapware and they have their own keys, not from the COA's.
Click to expand...


My Hp dv-6 came with Vista installed from the dealer and it was a pain in the butt slow and i installed vista and win 7 and both run fast as so with win 10tp now.

it's very similar in cpu to yours;

http://www.cnet.com/products/hp-pavilion-dv6-1259dx/specs/

http://www.cnet.com/products/lenovo-thinkpad-t60/specs/
 
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Back to basics, run a memory and HDD diagnostic first to see if there is hardware failure, then do a clean reinstall and only install the core apps you need, no junk. Just use MSE. Keep the systems lean and clean. XP died last April.
 
RampantAndroid said:
Run cmd.exe as an admin, then run that command. It verifies the windows binary files.
Click to expand...
I am an administrator, from log-on. When I do that I get:

You must be an administrator running a console session in order to use the sfc utility.

How do I get to a "console session?"
 
Right-click Command Prompt and select "run as administrator." There are two levels of Administrator in Windows 7, the second of which you will hardly ever see.

Whocrashed is probably the best at taking a crash report and making it understandable without doing a lot of extra Googling. Some of the answers are pretty general though, really just depends on what caused it.
 
ketchup79 said:
Right-click Command Prompt and select "run as administrator." There are two levels of Administrator in Windows 7, the second of which you will hardly ever see.

Whocrashed is probably the best at taking a crash report and making it understandable without doing a lot of extra Googling. Some of the answers are pretty general though, really just depends on what caused it.
Click to expand...
This machine is getting very dicey. I had a BSOD a few minutes ago just opening a text file.

My Pale Moon browser's been crashing left and right.

I've scouted around and found an image from April 2014 of the boot partition of the machine. If the image is OK, an OK option, but it was copied to a HD that is now failing and the drive it was copied from was itself about to be RMA'd due to difficulties (too many bad sectors, I suppose). How reliable is it?? :$ Well, maybe OK, who knows? Presumably the area of the HDs hadn't been read or written to so maybe the image is OK. I'm going to take out the SSD in this machine, put it in a 2.5" enclosure, plug that into a different machine and attempt to restore the C partition from the 3TB drive that now holds the image (copied from the failing 2TB drive). Fingers crossed. If this fails, well, I can try an earlier image also gleaned from questionable drives similarly, or just install fresh from the Win7 installation disk.
 
I can't say the last time I've seen Windows eat itself, that wasn't due to flaky / bad hardware.

Edit: Or malware, but that kind of goes without saying.
 
RampantAndroid said:
Just boot into safe mode and run sfc /scannow.
Click to expand...

OK, just saw this, and I think I should have done that, but what I did yesterday was try to restore to my April 12, 2014 image of Windows 7 boot partition from my Acronis WD True Image of it, but it failed. So, I restored to an earlier image from Mar. 31, 2014 and I'm on the machine now. I didn't expect that restore to succeed, but it apparently did. There's a ton to do to get the machine working as I need it.

I didn't back up what I had going into yesterday, so there's no going back. sfc / scannow might have fixed my problems, I'll never know. If the problems were as VirtualLarry suggests hardware related, I'll still have issues, but I suspect they are not.

The image I restored from was on my WD ELEMENTS 2TB USB HD that was failing, I couldn't get it working using my desktop machine. I let Windows try to repair it but that failed. However, after the scanning it was at least seen. Obviously, there's probably corrupt data on the HD. There is a FOUND000 folder off the root on the HD, Windows will not let me access it.

Maybe since this image wasn't read or written to it wasn't corrupted. Here I am using the machine. Fingers crossed, if this fails it's a clean install from my MS install disk. I am about to do my Windows Updates, I'm sure there's a slew of them!!!!!! Yup, wupdate says I have 81 updates, including all 10 of the optional updates, which I decided looked worthwhile (whether they are or not I don't know, but they seemed to all be related to hardware on the computer, so I figured I can hopefully trust them). I changed wupdate settings to notify me when there are updates and let me decide whether to download and install them.

Edit: I just experienced a disconcerting glitch editing this post. The machine just seemed to go catatonic on me for a minute. I think there maybe is a hardware issue. 😕
 
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Oh shit! While Windows was downloading my chosen 81 updates I got a BSOD. In trying to reboot I got another BSOD. Both times I grabbed my point and shoot and tried to get a photo of the screen but it disappeared too soon both times.

Now, rebooted, I got another ~2 minute delay with a spinning cursor, same type of problem I was having with the machine before restoring the image from March 2014. Evidently there is some kind of hardware issue with the machine. I have no idea how to proceed.

Windows is bugging me saying I have an invalid copy of Windows. No idea why. I have my install disk and the serial number but I'm not being asked for the number, WTH is this? Well, that's immaterial at the moment, evidently something's wrong with the laptop hardwarewise.
 
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I started running memtest86+ on the machine and inside of 5 minutes got this, which suggests to me that the problem may be memory that's somehow gone bad: 😕

memtest.jpg


Here's a couple of the BSOD's I got this morning:

BSOD1.jpg


BSOD2.jpg
 
Muse said:
BSOD1.jpg
Click to expand...

Based on what you have posted, this BSOD is a result of a bad stick of RAM. Could be bad hard drive, but let's look at the next one.

BSOD2.jpg


Actually, this one CAN also point to disk corruption. Since we know you have a bad stick of RAM, go ahead and replace that first.

After replacing RAM, run sfc, clean out the minidump folder, and see if anything new pops up.
 
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Thank you! Is there any way to determine which stick of RAM it is without removing one at a time and rerunning Memtest86+?

After running memtest for about an hour, it was showing over 600,000 errors.

I made a mistake and assumed that there was no chance I'd want to return to my recent version of Windows when I restored to my March 31, 2014 version, which was very primitive and only had a few of my apps and utilities installed. I should have made an image of the recent version before doing the restore. However, I have an image from March 5, 2015, but (like a dope) I didn't label which machine it was done of... doh! I'll image what I have and try to restore from this one from ~5 weeks ago. If that works (after replacing the bad RAM), it will save me a lot of work. Anyway, I'm thinking now that I am probably not lost in the woods right now, which was the feeling I had early this morning when everything was going wrong. I was afraid there was something wrong with the laptop, something it would be really hard to figure out. My thought was "what can I do to start the trouble shooting process," and the first thing that came to mind was run memtest. I've done that before but never had a had a bad stick. I guess a stick can just go bad out of the blue.

The machine's been driving me nuts for a couple of months now, but the BSOD's only started a few days ago. For a couple of months at least I've been plagued by nutty 1-2 minute delays that the machine appears to recover from. I thought they were due to squirreliness of my NAS. Maybe it was bad RAM all the time.

I will look to testing the SSD. I think it's probably OK, but AFAIK it could be bad too. It hasn't been hammered, the data is mostly kept on the NAS.

Probably a good idea to run SFC /Scannow anyway (after replacing bad RAM) to ensure that system files haven't been corrupted by the bad RAM. Is this good thinking?
 
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Muse said:
Thank you! Is there any way to determine which stick of RAM it is without removing one at a time and rerunning Memtest86+?
Click to expand...

Not really. If it pops up within 5 minutes, just pull a stick and repeat until you isolate the bad one.

also, be sure to swap dimm slots, could be the motherboard.
 
Re-running memtest with individual sticks is the best way I know, barring just running Windows with a single stick and seeing what crashes. Since you may have corrupt files on your drive, that could be tough. So you may need to have patience on this part.

The nice thing about RAM is that almost all has a lifetime warranty. the bad part being you most likely would want to buy a new stick before a slow RMA process is completed.
 
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