Just Need Some Reassurance

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I have a Dell OptiPlex 7090 that for several months has been shutting itself down randomly.  I’ve been working with Dell Support — they’ve been very helpful, by the way! — and after numerous onsite technician visits and shipping the machine back to manufacturer, replacing almost everything that can be replaced, we’ve pretty much narrowed the problem down to a corrupt Windows installation.  Running Windows 10 Pro, v22H2 (as one would hope in this forum!).  Since it’s now Friday afternoon, though, and I won’t be able to get in touch with them again until Monday, I’m posing my question here.

My Dell representative represents a clean installation, with which I reluctantly agree.  This is going to require setting up a Microsoft account (which I’ve avoided like the plague) since the OS was originally installed by Dell when the machine was new.  Right now I log in using my domain ID and I am the administrator.

What I’m looking for reassurance on is that after a reinstallation I’ll be able to continue using my domain login and forgetting all about the Microsoft account (well, I’ll document it, but I have no intention of ever using it for anything).  I’ve been too long out of doing this sort of thing full time and don’t feel comfortable that I know everything I need to know (even with this newsletter)!

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If it’s a pro machine you can set up with a local/non Microsoft.

You sure you don’t want to do a repair install over the top?

Susan Bradley Patch Lady/Prudent patcher

1 user thanked author for this post.

TechTango

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Susan’s post “You sure you don’t want to do a repair install over the top?” is spot on. Choose “keep my files and apps”. I’ve done several and they are great.

Desktop mobo Asus TUF X299 Mark 1, CPU: Intel Core i7-7820X Skylake-X 8-Core 3.6 GHz, RAM: 32GB, GPU: Nvidia GTX 1050 Ti 4GB. Display: Four 27" 1080p screens 2 over 2 quad.

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Not trying to hijack the replies but I had the same problem:

Are you using an Uninterrruptible Power Supply (UPS)? I had the same problem back in the summer and it turned out that the battery on the UPS was bad. Any time the house power blinked or surged and the UPS was supposed to power the computer, the computer would crash for lack of electricity. Lost some data becuase of this. Check your battery to see if it still accepts a charge or replace it with a known good battery. Also my battery was aprox. six years old. Should have replaced it long before getting that old for something that important.

Good luck,
CT47

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Just to keep you all updated:

What I didn’t mention the other day, because it was irrelevant to the immediate question, is that my server was enough out of date that it was generating a few errors of its own (but not enough to shut down my computer, since there was no effect on my partner’s identical machine).  I updated the server Friday afternoon with no apparent ill effects.

After taking care of the usual start-of-the-week “must do” stuff today, I went ahead and did a repair install on the machine.  All went well, aside from 2 hours of my life that I won’t get back, but after the install the computer didn’t even stay up long enough to finish typing this reply.  Rebooted and ran some system tests; all looks good so will see how long it lasts.

(One reason for doing the repair installation is that the OS was installed by Dell when I bought the PC, about 2½ years ago, so I have neither a serial number nor a product code.  I’ll have to talk to them about that.  It does mean I can’t do a full installation right away!)

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dsliesse wrote:

so I have neither a serial number nor a product code

You don’t need either. The Windows license is embedded in the BIOS.

cheers, Paul

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Yep, found that out.  Must say that the written documentation provided by Dell, Microsoft, and Macrium leaves a bit to be desired (too much either inadequate or contradictory)!

Current state of affairs: after making a complete mess of things yesterday and wasting the entire day, I ended up re-reinstalling the OS today (did need a complete installation, not just a repair).  Repartitioned the disk drive so I have my D and P partitions back, then recovered those from the image.  Now just need to figure out how to recover all my profiles (and, ideally, the registry so I don’t have problems with the few programs installed on the hard drive) without repeating yesterday’s disaster of overwriting the new OS with the old one.

Definitely not a project for the faint of heart!

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You should only restore very small sections of the registry. Restoring large sections is likely to break Windows – this is why we like image backups.

You can load an old, offline registry file and then export the sections you want to restore – again, make an image backup first.
Windows Regedit
Nirsoft Utils

cheers, Paul

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It’s going to be a moot point for a few days.  The machine’s problems keep happening even with the fresh OS install, so I’m going to restore the previous image so I can get some work done while it stays running.  It’s going back to the Dell shop for the third time, and I’ll put the new image back on for their benefit before shipping (but it’ll be a day or two before the shipping box gets to me).

This has been a perplexing problem, since my office manager’s identical machine — down to having exactly one different character in the service tag — is having no such issue.

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