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Trevor.Dennis
Community Expert
Trevor.DennisCommunity Expert
Community Expert
September 11, 2017
Question

More Computer Trouble

  • September 11, 2017
  • 1 reply
  • 454 views

It must have been a while back that I started a thread saying that my desktop had died.  Since then it has never been 100%, and today it died completely.  A day of struggling with Windows Startup Repair loops, and Command Line tricks all failed to get it to boot, so I have had to reinstall Windows.  I know I decided years ago, that if you get into this sort of hassle, you are nearly always better going for a reinstall, but I was hoping to be able to leave it until getting a new build done.

Even the reinstall fought me.  I was unable to get my box to boot from the USB drive, but it turned out that because I have a lot of drives, it will only show so many in the BIOS, and after disconnecting all but the windows drive, I could see and select the USB drive as boot option 1.  Windows 10 has a really cool install process nowadays, with friendly messages, and sensible decisions based on where you are.  Even after I messed up the keyboard language, it guessed I was clueless and fixed it for me.  Windows did not need the key, and what I thought really clever was that Office knew I hadn't been able to deactivate the last install on this system, because Windows told it so.   I loved that installing and logging in to Chrome restored all the favourites that I thought I'd lost, and MS Word still had all my recent documents listed.

I even have a wee bonus in that my flaky sound drivers are now all OK.

Creative Cloud is not that clever, and it was not particularly intuitive even finding the Application Manager download.  Now I have to put the drives back in so I can find the document I was making for a 'planned' reinstallation, so I know what else I need to set up.  It will be good practice for the new build I guess, but still a PITA.

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    1 reply

    John T Smith
    Community Expert
    John T SmithCommunity Expert
    Community Expert
    September 11, 2017

    I started with Windows 3 and have, not always immediately, eventually moved to the next version... usually when building a new computer

    I use a program to make a complete backup, including the hidden files that Adobe uses for registration, so the one time I had a boot drive fail, I just put in a new drive and did a restore, loosing very little data - TeraByte Unlimited :: TeraByte Drive Image Backup and Restore Suite :: Image for Linux  has a routine to create a bootable CD

    I now use Windows 10, and the only "oddity" I've found is that my wife's computer (also Win10) and my computer sometimes loose our home network connection for awhile when one of us does a restart for some reason... which Win10 has always "fixed" when I restart the other computer so they are back in sync

    Trevor.Dennis
    Community Expert
    Trevor.DennisCommunity ExpertAuthor
    Community Expert
    September 13, 2017

    John I use Shadow Protect, after being put on to it by the lads in the Prem Pro Hardware forum several years ago.  It has saved me twice after drive failures.  It also has a boot drive image option that can be activated via a bootable CD or USB drive, but sad to say I have never made use of that feature.

    As for the crashed system, I am loving that my CC Libraries were all there on reinstalling my CC apps.  I thought I used the Libraries fairly extensively, but we apparently get 20Gb of file asset space, and I'd barely made a dent in it.  I didn't like that I'd lost my custom workspaces though, and Windows was not quite as clever as I'd expected at remembering my mail account settings. Google Chrome was another success with the fresh install looking exactly as it did before my system crash. 

    On the whole, I wish I'd gone for the clean install weeks ago, as everything is so much cleaner, faster, and more reliable, and it was nowhere near the hassle I'd expected.  I'd have obviously still have preferred to have had complete control of the process, and the chance to save my App Data file structure which is where I think the Adobe app workspaces are stored.

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