jaclaz

This continues to sound like a cable problem. do try removing the cable from both ends (one at the time) and re-seat the connectors. Of course if the drive activity leds blink and the tray opens/closes at the push of the button it means that the power cable is OK, but it tells us not enough about the data cable, the fact that it doesn't boot from it may well be an issue with it (the data cable), but it can also be that you mis-recorded (or failed to reset properly) the BIOS settings. Now, the Award BIOS should have a choice for "Load failsafe settings". If you choose that one, the CD/DVD drive will work (unless the issue is the drive itself or the data cable). Is the CD/DVD drive IDE/ATAPI or SATA? What motherboard (exact make/model) is that PC? jaclaz

Check cables and connections of the CD/DVD drive. Check Device Manager. What do you see? Check Disk Manager. What do you see? It would be very, very hard normally to "hide" a CD/DVD drive from Windows, confirm that the CD/DVD drive is seen correctly from BIOS, hwever (i.e. try booting from a bootable CD/DVD). jaclaz

Loosely, it may be some (background/automatic) attempt to "update" (the view, the reply, any e-mail account, contacts). What has this particular sender "different" from other ones? Like a particular e-mail address (special characters or similar), a particular way the e-mail is formatted/encoded (plain text, html, etc.)? Do you have the possibility to compare with a mail from another user/sender on the same domain? I presume you already went through ALL the steps listed here : https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/kb/2000071 Can you post the event log entry? Maybe some detail in it will give a hint to the possible cause. jaclaz

Semi-random idea , but maybe in SetupAct.log you can find more details on what actually msoobe does before you kill it. and see if it is possible to go from there pinning down what is actually done... jaclaz

Allow me to doubt that there will be an "official" provision for that, see also: Where did you actually read that? jaclaz

@glnz Off Topic again, please remember that Word is "by design" a container that can have *anything* inside it, if you circulate for revisions a .doc (and I presume also a .docx) there is no limit to the amount of crap that may be inside it, particularly it happens to me very often to find documents with old revisions/comments and/or corrections that reveal much more than they should, for something "serious" (like a contract or a negotiation) this may result in the leak of sensitive informations. (I have found in my experience documents where the - expected - amount was corrected, leaving the old one, and comments like "hey, this is crazy, let's ask for more" or where a "finalized" document was re-used as "base" or "template", leaving some personal data and amounts/dealings of the original viewable in the actual file ). I will also - in passing by - re-tell an anecdote, many years ago we had some commercial correspondence with a firm, and we faced a queer problem, only some of their e-mails arrived, seemingly at random. The fact was that every letter they were sending us was around 5 Mb in size or more, at the time the limit for a single message in the e-mail server we were using was 5 Mb, so only one out of three letters or so "went through". Upon inspection, it came out that (I presume a secretary or a self-proclaimed computer guru) someone was tasked to make the new template for letters and managed to use directly a huge TIFF (or maybe JPG, cannot remember, anyway something in the thousands x thousands pixels size range) of the firm logo embedding it in the word document and shrinking it to something like 7% or so to make it fit in the top left corner of the page. They actually did mention how their network had become very slow when sending e-mails ... jaclaz

More than impressive, it is "terrifying", it plainly means that - even on 7 - the good MS guys have full (or almost full) control of the software on your machine AND that they don' t care to notify you in any way what (the heck) they are doing on your machine , they add (or remove) software at will, without your explicit authorization. Today this resulted in a good thing, removing that senseless crap, tomorrow it may be *whatever*. jaclaz

Well, you can't have Wireshark without a *pcap* underneath it, the latter captures packets, the former analyzes results. Maybe the thingy you linked to is more similar to ntop: http://www.ntop.org/products/traffic-analysis/ntop/ I believe that that netbalancer is more like having the features of different programs grouped together (i.e. doing - probably very well - what separate freely available tools can do) jaclaz

Sure, online Bluetooth skimmers are a real, concrete, danger. jaclaz

Hmmm. https://www.wireshark.org/ https://www.winpcap.org/docs/default.htm http://www.win10pcap.org/ jaclaz

Sure it still exists, but you need (besides an initial longish training lesson) to have a very good microphone or headset, and it is not like it is particularly friendly outside a restricted number of selected apps (and not even on some version of them), particularly Outlook 2013 and - drum roll - Windows 10 (initially): http://nuance.custhelp.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/17805/~/information-on-dragon-naturallyspeaking-13-and-windows-10 http://nuance-community.custhelp.com/posts/905182eaea http://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/insider/forum/insider_wintp-insider_personal/dragon-naturally-speaking-13-on-windows-10/5fc51812-f70d-471c-a2b4-da9e094dac3b If you actually *need* it (imagine a doctor taking notes while visiting a patient or however anyone that cannot use their hands on the keyboard because they are either too clean or too dirty) or if you have some disabilities that prevent you from using more traditional input methods, it is more than OK and a great little thing, but it is not AFAIK[1] to compare with the speed (and reliability) of mouse/keyboard. I believe that current version (revised and seemingly working fine with Windows 10) is the "professional" version that sells for US$ 300, whilst the "home" version which sells for a more reasonable 74.99 US$ is still a hit and miss when it comes to Windows 10 . The "legal" version (which might be particularly useful as a "transcription" software) and has a specialized dictionary is US$ 500, but that's OK, it's for lawyers . jaclaz [1] To be fair, the one I have seen being used was some 5 or 6 years ago and the software (or the power of the hardware on which it is run) may well have reduced the inconveniences.

@Trip Yep : jaclaz

Too many Star Trek New Generation episodes leave a sign, seemingly. Fascinating! jaclaz

A .wim file is nothing but a container, think of it as you would of a .zip, .rar or .cab archive, *anything* different in the contents would make any two of them different, you need to open them (among the GUI tools 7-zip will do) or mount them (via DISM or similar) and compare the contents. jaclaz

Some - as usual in a grumpy tone - general remarks. In the good ol' days (and today as well) a lot of people bought/buy an otherwise perfectly working machine for office use and thought that adding a videocard and/or an enhanced mulltimedia card made that into a gaming machine (or a graphical workstation or a recording studio on a budget). Reality check, if a motherboard has on-board sound and video, leave it alone, hardware engineers, that very likely, at a 99% probability rate, know more than you do on how a PC works took some time to embed some circuits and they are usually the best ones (limited to the intended scope of the machine overall) for the best cost. If you really want a graphical workstation, build one with suitable hardware, same goes for other "dedicated" machines. Back to topic, most probably the Video Controller is an add-on graphical card (the DVI) output you have, and the thing that looks like being a modem card is possibly the PCI Simple Communications Controller and/or the Multimedia Audio Controller , what is strange is that the Ethernet Controller (which is built-in) has not a proper driver installed (that should be in the original DELL OS install CD/DVD). jaclaz

Well, an unfixed 1997 (yes that is last century) re-known bug is still affecting newish Windows (IE, EDGE, a number of MS apps and even Chrome in some instances). The issue - traditionally - was not really-really an issue, but with Live Accounts things change. JFYI: https://medium.com/@ValdikSS/deanonymizing-windows-users-and-capturing-microsoft-and-vpn-accounts-f7e53fe73834 https://www.perfect-privacy.com/blog/2016/08/01/security-issue-in-windows-leaks-login-data/ But - don't worry - the good MS guys are hard at work on those newish t-shirts and on making the life of a driver developer impossible or nearly impossible: https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/windows_hardware_certification/2016/07/26/driver-signing-changes-in-windows-10-version-1607/ jaclaz

Yes, #1 is a RJ45: http://www.differencebetween.net/technology/difference-between-rj45-and-rj11/ #2 is a DVI : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_Visual_Interface which essentially means that you also have an add-on video card or that the one on the motherboard has a dual VGA+DVI output. And yes #3 looks like an old modem (as add on card). About the Blue Screens, do check device manager, I wouldn't be surprised if you had a number of devices with an exclamation mark or a question mark (no driver or not working driver) since it is uniklely that your DELL disc had drivers for those add on cards, and tools like HWINFO are very likely to be interrogating the hardware and crash because they find something that is not properly configured/working (stinger or Ccleaner are less likely, still ...) As well, if - for any reason - one of those add on cards is not working properly (independently from driver) it could cause the issue with HWINFO. jaclaz

Isn't this: what you have? Or this one: There are 10 kinds of people, those that understand binary (and recognize RJ11 and RJ45) and those who don't. Seriously, if you have two "phone jacks", what we highly specialized technicians call "RJ11" sockets, they are likely on an add-on card, you should also have a network socket (a RJ45) near the USB connectors. jaclaz

What you report doesn't sound like "probable". Do check the actual contents of first sector of the card before drawing conclusions, it may be a partitioning/formatting issue. Can you see on the XP the \\.\PhysicalDrive? Open it in a hex/disk editor and post a screenshot, or, better, make a copy of the sector, zip it into an archive and attach the archive. Is the SD card reader an USB attached device? I have seen issues like this connected to problems with the "automatic" mounting of removable media on the USB, the "Safe removal" thingie malfunctioning or with some settings in the Registry that confused it... SDBUS.SYS is only for direct PCI connected devices (rare): https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/hardware/drivers/sd/sd-card-driver-stack jaclaz

Ahhh, the memories.... jaclaz

Well, if you google for "record netflix" you will be offered a number of ways, though Netflix (rather obviously) is not particularly happy about the idea (and actually in theory prohibits it): https://consumerist.com/2015/11/06/you-can-record-movies-off-netflix-or-music-off-spotify-but-youre-not-allowed-to/ but time-shifting is admissible, according to a historical 1984 sentence, something we need to thank Sony and Betamax for, and maybe (or maybe not) what the Netflix guys call "caching" is exactly what you would like to do, but you will need to use a third party program or service, there are tens of such, here is a starting point: http://www.pcworld.com/article/2048278/how-to-download-streaming-media-and-watch-it-anywhere-anytime.html jaclaz

Check if it a 4 Kb sector "native" drive (less probable), or - more likely - an AF one, those are a PITA with pre-windows 7 OS, particularly when a USB bridge is involved. Only seemingly unrelated: http://reboot.pro/topic/21130-sector-size-cluster-muck-accessing-1-of-2-wd10ezex-1tb-af-ntfs-disk-under-two-different-interfaces-incl-a-usb-sata-bridge-in-the-mix/?hl=4096#entry199055 On a Windows 7 try the: fsutil fsinfo ntfsinfo <drive letter> https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windows/desktop/hh848035(v=vs.85).aspx and post results. jaclaz

You mean this one? You might want to appreciate that it won't be "on second page" forever, when referring a post or thread, it is alway a good idea to post a link to it. (the good IPB guys will manage anyway to botch the link at next board update, but usually it can be re-translated back to a functioning one). jaclaz

AND someone forcing him at gunpoint : jaclaz

If I get this right, "normal" people are out of "luck" whilst people with disabilities still have a chance. All this time thinking that those that already upgraded had the one or the other form of (intellectual) disability... https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/accessibility/2016/07/29/windows-10-free-upgrade-page-for-people-who-use-assistive-technologies/ Hey, wait, here it comes the origin of the original "billion installs" target! jaclaz