Tomcat76

I have purchased most components for my "new" Windows 7 machine. It will serve as video editing workstation and contain backups from other PC's in the network. I already have three 4TB hard drives that contain such backups, but they are "standalone" drives. I now intend to buy two 10TB Western Digital Red drives for the task and I would like both to contain the same data. What I find important: should one drive fail, the data on the good drive should still be accessible (should continue to work as standalone drive); it should also be straight forward to rebuild the previous setup after replacing the bad hard drive. Because the RAID will only be used to store a backup on, speed is a non-issue. Since I have never dealt with RAID before, I have read many things on the subject online in the last couple of days, but I'm still having difficulties deciding which way to go. These seem to be the choices: - hardware RAID (dedicated PCIe RAID controller) - "motherboard" RAID - Windows mirror - clone, followed by periodic incremental backup System specs: Windows 7 Professional 64-bit Asus X99-E (10 Intel SATA ports of which 6 can use RAID) Intel i7-6850K 16GB RAM (4x4) I will not be using RAID on the system drive or on the main data drive in that PC. Only the backup drive should be mirrored. From what I understand, it can prove difficult to rebuild a broken hardware or MB (fake) RAID, while drives once belonging to a Windows mirror can be reused independently. Is this correct? The incremental backup method seems a little over the top as it would be backing up a backup (in my scenario). Any backup should be written to both destination drives simultaneously. Any thoughts?

I wanna thank everyone for their advise, but I eventually settled for an X58 system since I got a good deal for it. I would have preferred an X79-based system, but I wasn't sure Fernando's INF hack would make the AHCI controller work properly without issue. MB: Gigabyte G1.Assassin CPU: Xeon X5650 @ 3.66Ghz RAM: 12GB SSD: Samsung 860 EVO 250GB The Win7 machine will have: MB: Asus X99-E CPU: Core i7-6850K RAM: 16GB (4x4) SSD: Samsung 860 PRO 512GB

Yes. "Other Places" and "Details" should stay.

No, not yet. But I think I won't bother with it anymore. My new computer should be up and running in a couple of weeks. That should hopefully fix all problems. Thanks anyway for the suggestions.

I was wondering if there is a way to disable "Special Tasks" in Windows XP. For folders containing pictures or videos, Windows will add a section in the left side bar named "Picture Tasks" or "Video Tasks", right above the always-present "File and Folder Tasks", "Other Places" and "Details" sections. There are probably more types than just the ones for pictures and videos. For several years now, I have had XP set up to display all folders in Details view (by clicking the "Apply to all folders" button after having configured one to my tastes). This way, I don't get additional columns in the main panel of the folder if Windows decides this to be an image or video folder. However, this doesn't prevent the "Picture Tasks" or "Video Tasks" sections from appearing. I have found many articles on the web describing how to disable "Automatic Folder Type Discovery" on Vista and later, but the procedure doesn't appear to work for Windows XP.

Same symptoms as described in my initial post.

Windows Installer 4.5 is actually part of the problem for me. I'm beginning to suspect it's something specific about my hardware that's causing this. Maybe the Audigy 2 PCI card? I haven't updated Windows between regular XP's EOL date and the time I finally upgraded to POSReady 2009 (more than two years) so it's not like I care too much about having an up-to-date XP; but it would be nice just to figure out what's going wrong.

It's a Core i5-650 with SSE4.2 support. I heard of that limitation. Seems silly to me they restrict CPU support now, less than a year before POSReady 2009's EOL.

As it stands, the last IE8 cumulative that works reliably for me is the one from February 2018. Aside from that, I can't install most other updates either (without rendering my system unusable). Symptoms: - system clock running too slow - loud crackling noises while playing YouTube videos To fix things back, it's usually enough to uninstall the updates I installed last and re-apply the February 2018 IE8 cumulative update (no need to uninstall it first). If that still doesn't work, I need to install Windows Installer 4.5, reboot, uninstall Windows Installer 4.5 and reboot once more. I attempted to compile a list of "bad updates" last week, but I gave up. I would install one or two updates, reboot, and verify if everything was still fine. If so, I'd move on to the next one or two updates. If those failed, it happened that uninstalling those updates, re-applying the IE8 cumulative update and installing/uninstalling Windows Installer 4.5 didn't help, but uninstalling the updates from the previous "known-good" batch would. I already had to unmark several that I thought were good. This makes it really hard to debug. Reading through the forum, though, it seems I'm the only one having this problem. Only the bad oleaut32.dll and its issue with "Find Target" appear to be commonly shared.

I have decided to stick with Windows 7 for that PC and to upgrade to Windows 10 if I really want an up-to-date system after Win7's EOL date. That's an interesting read, but the available motherboards are low-end mATX boards. The PC will be used for video editing and will also serve as a backup computer. They always manage to screw us over... :-)

On a Windows 10 PC that's about a year old, I noticed a freezing issue that occurs/may occur while performing specific tasks. I discovered these at different times since a few days after I took the computer home. The PC was pre-assembled at my regular store with Windows 10 64-bit running on an NVMe system drive. After receiving it, I installed a 3TB mechanical hard drive which is used for data. The problems: * Clicking the Start menu globe, it sometimes takes 30 seconds for the Start Menu to appear. This happens with Classic Shell enabled and disabled. * Opening a program like Notepad or Calculator, I may need to wait 30 seconds for these programs to appear. * When I'm on another computer in the network, right-click a file in a shared folder located on the Win10 PC and click Properties, I sometimes need to wait 30 seconds for the file properties dialog to appear. * When on another computer, right-clicking an image (jpeg, psd, etc.) in a shared folder on the Win10 PC and choosing Open With > Photoshop, Photoshop will open but it will always freeze for 30 seconds before the image is loaded. If I open the remote file from inside Photoshop (File > Open), this delay doesn't seem to be there. I can't help but think these problems are somehow related. Any ideas?

I originally planned to build two new PCs in the near/distant future running an XP32/XP64 dual boot and Windows 7 Pro 64-bit respectively. Since I haven't even started selecting components for the Win7 PC and its EOL date is getting near, it might be better to make use of Windows 8.1 Pro 64-bit instead. While looking for available motherboards yesterday, I found many new ones only come with Windows 10 drivers. One generation down, there are Win 8.1 drivers but the list is often incomplete (missing Intel Optane and Intel ME drivers, etc.). I know I can do some extra digging around for drivers on the websites of the various chip manufacturers, but I was wondering if there exists a "safe limit" as far as mobo/CPU generation goes for Windows 8.1 like the one for Windows 7 (Skylake 100-series/6th gen).

Funny... I uninstalled all hotfixes for the Compatibility Pack, SP3, and the Compatibility Pack itself, then reinstalled the Compatibility Pack and SP3. To my surprise, Microsoft Update is working fine, showing all available updates for the Compatibility Pack. Did one or more of the updates for Windows I installed a week ago fix the MU problem? Weird.

Good to know. On one of the POSReady 2009 machines here, MU wouldn't proceed until I installed the hotfixes for OGL and MSO. This was a couple of days ago. The update for Powerpoint is only on the list because it supersedes an older update that was required on both POSReady machines here; I assumed the new update would consequently be required too (at least, looking from the perspective of a bare Compatibility Pack + SP3 install). I'll do some more extensive testing over the next couple of days. Thanks for the info on KB4011607. I updated the list. I don't have a "standard" XP SP3 machine anymore, so I'm only adding the latest cumulative IE8 update for safety's sake. I don't know if it's really required either.

The purpose of this thread is to compile a list of updates that need to be downloaded and installed manually in order to prevent Microsoft Update from being unable to finish its search for updates. I don't have all features installed, so it's possible this list is still incomplete. (last revised: January 19, 2018) IE8 on POSReady 2009 * KB4052978 Cumulative security update (2017-12) IE8 on XP SP3 * KB4018271 Cumulative security update (2017-06) Office Compatibility Pack SP3 * KB3213641 Security update for OGL (2017-09) * KB3213644 Security update for Powerpoint (2017-09) * KB4011201 Security update for MSO (2018-01) * KB4011605 Security update for Excel (2018-01) * KB4011607 Security update for Word (2018-01) Let me know how it works out and if the list needs to be revised.

The PSU and video card were replaced: no problems thus far. It looks like it was a PSU problem.

The Palit GT 1030 KalmX has been on my radar, but I settled for an Asus GT710-SL-2GD5 instead just last week because of a lack of XP drivers. It's an upgrade from the Zotac GT 610 Zone Edition I had before, but it's not as big as I had hoped for. Hopefully the support range will be increased for the above driver package.

Thanks for the input. I'm going to be placing a new PSU in my own PC and offload my current PSU to the AMD computer. If that doesn't help, I'll try changing the power state to S3. The AMD chipset driver is already installed, though I need to check which version. I thought it was the latest.

Don't know if this will help, but the Soundblaster Audigy FX (not RX) PCIe card uses a Realtek chip.

QFE stands for quick-fix engineering. More info: https://blogs.technet.microsoft.com/instan/2009/03/04/qfe-vs-gdrldr-hotfixes/

It's a quad-channel board, and 32GB is definitely overkill for what I will be using the computer for (not to say expensive).

Looks like availability is a bigger problem than I imagined. I will go with the X79 chipset---more specifically, the Asus Rampage IV Formula coupled with a Core i7-3820 (SB) and a kit of 4x 4GB DDR3-1600 RAM. There are no PCI ports, but at least I won't need to worry about the number of available PCIe lanes. I hope I will still get bass/treble controls with the Audigy RX. The only dilemma for me is whether I should go with 8GB or 16GB of RAM. I find that Firefox is struggling hard with the <4GB available to Windows XP 32-bit; it easily uses up to 100% of one CPU core and more than 1GB of RAM, sometimes reaching 2GB, making it very sluggish after some time. But I intend to switch to XP 64-bit. Will Firefox ever use more than 8GB of RAM? I can't test it myself.

I believe the 7200rpm versions are the newer Red Pro, but maybe there are 7200rpm Reds too that I'm not aware of. Either way, I ordered a 5400rpm. If the drive really needs upto 10 seconds to spin back up from standby (might be adjustable via a tool on WD's site), that's fine with me. So I loose 10 seconds performing a bi-monthly backup... On the noise they make... I currently have: PC1: 1x Western Digital Caviar Black WD6401AALS 640GB 3x Hitachi Deskstar 7K3000 HDS723020BLA642 2TB 1x Hitachi Deskstar 7K2000 HDS722020ALA330 2TB PC2: 1x Western Digital Black WD3003FZEX 3TB (secondary) PC3: 1x Hitachi Deskstar 7K1000.C HDS721010CLA332 1TB 2x HGST Deskstar 7K4000 HDS724040ALE640 4TB PC4: 1x Western Digital Caviar SE16 WD5000AAKS 500GB PC5: 1x Western Digital Caviar SE16 WD2500AAKS 250GB PC6: 1x Western Digital Raptor WD740GD 74GB Something tells me I won't even hear the WD Red...

Yes, someone else pointed this card out to me as well. I'd still want to speak to someone who's actually using this card on Windows XP to verify that the primitive bass/treble controls that Windows XP offers inside its Volume Control panel (sys tray speaker icon > Advanced) are supported by the card's drivers. With most audio cards, those sliders are disabled.

I want to clone because it's faster and keeps the timestamp on files and folders. I'll be holding on to the data on the source drive for a week or two to see how things go with the new drive. I'll be using either Macrium Reflect or MiniTool Partition Wizard for the job, both of which have served me well. I asked about the 512e to 512n conversion because I figured some cloning tools can do a low-level sector-by-sector copy, which (in my thinking) could screw things up.