HarryTri

http://nicbedford.co.uk/software/systemrestoreexplorer/

I have a very strange problem with my laptop (Lenovo G500, Windows 8). Some time - about 5 minutes - after booting the sound is disappearing suddenly. This is joined with problems like Windows Media Player reporting inability to play any sound files and Internet Explorer 10 being unable to play YouTube videos (but Mozilla Firefox can - without sound of course). All this are reverted with a reboot and then it happens just the same. A little search in the web revealed that other people also have the same problem even with Windows 7 but I didn't find a solution. The weird thing is that the Windows sound service and the related services are working and all the devices in the Device Manager are reported to be alright and there is no error message in any of the Windows event logs. The lack of sound affects both the speakers and the headphones I used to test. The sound device is Conexant SmartAudio HD and there is also Dolby Advanced Audio. Any thoughts anyone?

Have a look at the BIOS also to see if there is anything "strange". I had my own nightmare with my Lenovo G500 laptop. Four times it failed to configure the Windows Updates after restore from the restore partition, at 98% it displayed the message "Failure configuring Windows updates. Reverting changes." and I was almost driven crazy, I even contacted Lenovo support and arranged to send the laptop to them (the warranty is still void), finally I found the answer in the C:\ProgramData\Microsoft\Windows\WER folder (WER = Windows Error Reporting, you can have a look there for any error information, especially at the CBS.log - the end of it - and the .wer files - open them with notepad). What happened is that I had naively changed - and forgot about it afterwards - the Secure Boot status/mode from Disabled/Setup mode/Custom to Enabled/User mode/Standard (I found it strange that the Secure Boot status was reported as disabled whereas Secure Boot was enabled) and Windows couldn't update the Secure Boot firmware! I reverted the change and the problem was solved...

In order to retrieve individual files from System Restore points you can use System Restore Explorer with which you can mount them as virtual drives.

Thanks for the information about storage spaces, they are available in Windows 8 Home (or just Windows 8 in contrast with Windows 8 Pro) but you need some more drives. I suppose that you can use virtual drives for the job too but I don't have much initiative to experiment on it at the moment.

Maybe it is intended to boot in EFI mode?

"Storage Spaces" are RAID arrays or I am wrong?

I made two very simplistic benchmarks in FreeBASIC (windows console mode) that test the CPU. The one is for single core, not multithreading processors (1 thread) and the other for processors that run up to 4 threads simultaneously. Example results are as follow: 1+ MIPS for an Intel Pentium III 1 GHz processor (the multithreaded one gives a bit higher score than the other), 50+ MIPS (single threaded) and 150+ MIPS (multithreaded - 100% CPU usage) for an Intel Core i5-3230M 2.6 GHz (with TurboBoost up to 3.2 GHz - enabled) processor (2 cores - 4 threads). The single thread one is very simple, as simple as it could be, the other was a bit more difficult to make because of multithreading (no previous experience, the FreeBASIC help file helped a lot). I attach the programs and the source code. Please don't lough at me! Benchmarks.zip

Adobe Flash Player is implemented in Windows 8 (or IE 10/11, I'm not sure). ? http://helpx.adobe.com/flash-player/kb/flash-player-issues-windows-8.html

A bit out of the conversation but I said the bad word, let's say the good too. PCMark 8 is a behemoth (2890 MB download) but it seems good. It is EIST aware and some of its tests stress the CPU quite a bit. You see the results online but a detailed log is saved in your documents folder too. I did two tests initially, one with EIST enabled - score 2151 and one with EIST disabled - score 2149, anyway as I said PCMark is for the first time EIST aware and it doesn't make a difference anyway. It also has OpenCL testing option which hangs on my laptop - who knows why - on the 4th of the 8 subtests but is still an interesting option. If someone has the time to download it and the disc space to install it then it is something that I can recommend.

Adobe Flash Player is implemented in Windows 8 (or IE 10/11, I'm not sure).

This is an example: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\AeLookupSvc - FailureActions: Well, it is impossible to copy the binary data from the registry! You can find a service with failure actions enabled and have a look at its HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\<Service name in registry> - FailureActions value.

On Windows XP the time is in milliseconds, I thought that it would be the same on Windows 8 (now I notice that it isn't).

I upgraded to Windows 8.1 twice and then reverted to Windows 8. Degraded performance, many removed features, lots of bugs (which at least where corrected with the subsequent updates)... In my opinion Windows 8.1 is rather a free downgrade to Windows 8 than an upgrade. My laptop came with Windows 8 and will stay with them as much as possible, no matter how much Microsoft urges for the free "upgrade". Let's hope that Windows 8.2 and Windows 9 will be a different story.

Yes, it always reports the current number of sectors that have been identified as bad (during the latest check or any previous one). By the way use the /r option only if you have a good reason to do it, it can report sectors as bad without them really being so and will destroy the data of any files that are detected as defective by replacing their defective sectors.

Where it can be changed: Computer Management Console> Services> Rightclick in the desired service> Properties in the popup menu> Restore? (I'm not sure how it says it in English) tab. Where it is stored: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\<Service Name> - FailureActions (if they are any, not that it is a binary value not easily interpreted).

I don't think that it is malware, as for the results and the rest stored information: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Winsat

300000 milliseconds can be changed to 3000 milliseconds, which at least will be more convenient.

I don't get it. Can VMware backup all these GBs of files and restore them in seconds?

I tried PC Mark 7 this days (huge but not as much as PC Mark 8). I monitored its benchmark with PC Wizard and the use of the processor was never maximized. I did it two times, one with EIST enabled and the processor running at 1.2 GHz and one with EIST disabled and the processor running at 3.2 GHz. I have done the same in my old laptop with a Pentium M 740 processor. The results: Pentium M 740 - PC Mark 05 EIST enabled EIST disabled 800 MHz 1733 MHz 1844 Marks 2942 Marks Intel Core i5-3230M - PC Mark 7 EIST enabled EIST disabled 1200 MHz 3200MHz (with turbo boost) 1612 Marks 1599 Marks! So the processor is indifferent to this thing! How do they sell it? Passmark Performance Test 8 seems good but it is not free, I am staying with Novabench and Crystalmark (thought a bit outdated - hopefully a new version will be released at some time) for the moment.

Of course you can do this with any disc imaging software (Acronis True Image, Macrium Reflect (free edition available) etc. also.

I know what jaclaz would say it and I say it instead of him: make your image/copies first.

Macrium Reflect Free is very good and you can verify the partition image that you make.

No but why would it create duplicate firmware entries, you just keep the same partitions.

I use CCleaner regularly on Windows 8, no problem at all.