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The modem fussiness could indicate a MTU limitation – and what your connection uses can be influenced by protection software among other things..

Perhaps run through the check just to be sure your packets aren’t fragmenting at your current setting at least..

https://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials/94721-mtu-limit-test-change-your-connections-mtu-limit.html

I have to set mine, and reset it when the router / ISP changed a while back. It can give crazy things like some web pages won’t load in under a week while other are fine, and some programs can’t update.. while the Windows updates always work (when kicked.. like Chrome.)

Most of the planet are yielding to the push for the new thing due to the nearing end of Windows 10 support, which means the high volume players are trying to offload systems they (for whatever reason) consider will be hard or impossible to sell with Windows 11.. but basically if you intend on keeping a Windows 10 box for backup you could maybe use one of those depending on what your plans are longer term.

At present the UK dell factory update will sell you a Windows 10 machine starting just over £200 – the Windows license “purchased” was just over £100 (though I went the other way and bought a trash Windows 7 and configured it for 10 to get digital entitlement back when Windows 10 was the new thing..) so I’m guessing these systems won’t make Windows 11 without some form of intervention..

Perhaps you need to do some careful shopping (plenty of posts around about what will and won’t work with Windows 11 PRO as well .. they’re linking later Windows 11 Pro licensing to processor security features and we don’t know where that road will end.. it might mean an unexpected drop to home version at some point?) and don’t pay too much- perhaps look at and search for similar to the following before buying anything..

https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/forum/all/ability-to-run-windows-11/db73309a-dfa5-4bb4-a284-7e92e5e63cd0

If you actually need a license speak to Microsoft about it (activation line) – they should be willing to sell one (in which case you just use the usual Microsoft download site and media to reinstall) but if you’re polite with them and explain as long as you’re not trying to breach the licensing they’re usually helpful (so basically you have three identifiable hardware items change and activation will be problematic so if you change the motherboard and you never use the LAN port, turn it of as that’s one easily identified..) Xeon chips even need a Windows 10 workstation license. I have no idea how that’ll plan out Windows 11 wise..)

Just need to comment so I can clear the follow up email tick.. you can’t just untick it and submit..

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Travasaurus

I did a bit more delving at the time, mainly looking up the IP the server usually had (173.245.59.155) , noting its run through cloudflare so checked bleepingcomputer as if that had issues they’d have noted it.) In failing to ping everything important that noted one of my ISP’s DNS servers wasn’t replying either so I set up google and tried again (to find 8.8.8.8 was fine but 4.4.4.4 was off.. otherwise no change to the absent DNS entry..).

A date selective search had led to this info (as the US side papers won’t let content out..) – only a couple days old.. the strip which introduced the problem was back in September though.. does it really take “months” for news to travel across the pond?

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-11235995/Dilbert-comic-strip-canned-77-newspapers-artist-Scott-Adams-included-anti-woke-plotlines.html

If you want to read that better be quick..

 

This is probably a bit of a slant, but where did you buy that “to IDE” converter from?

You see, there is another legacy hardware issue its relevant to..

Vestel PVRs of about 2005 .. 2010 vintage had IDE drives. these are well worn now though the procedure to replace them is well documented.. I have a box of drives but they’re getting so old the risk of failure of a head by platter adhesion causation is significant and I never got to spinning them up to running temperature regularly… (basically if left parked for years the slight contact pressure can cause the media to deform such that spin up movement “flicks” the head causing damage as the carrier catches on the media – in the pre voice-coil days it could literally stick and rip the whole head off the armature if moisture / condensation in storage was an issue..)

The problem has been the converters which manifest in Windows as a “SATA to IDE bridge” or similar won’t work on those devices as the “operating system” in them is so basic there is nothing it can do with new hardware. Basically the hardware needs to to the processing to achieve the conversion itself, and I never found anything which actually works.. in fact I only found one type to try..

By the way the SSD aspect is currently useful as the chipset had a strange limit of 160Gb on the size of drive (even with the later model which had a SATA drive and newer chipset) which you can’t realise now – I haven’t seen a drive with size limits for some time.. and not that low on a SATA drive.

might be worth cleaning the mouse sensor (and mechanics if it has them) – it might be the polling speed on the Windows box is higher so it’s reacting to noise the other OS doesn’t see as the driver on the non Windows machine either smooths the value of just happens to miss the spurious signals..

I doubt you’re intentionally overclocking your mouse but maybe you could try underclocking it a bit? That said it seems all the options to tweaking that interface are gone, which perhaps indicates you might have a legacy OEM app for mouse control lurking which is now causing the problem with recent updates (though it’s hard to square that with driver signing changes made some time back, it still might be confusing things by creating legacy registry entries like MouseDataQueueSize.)

assuming the unit is out of warranty (worth checking) if you’re brave you might get some result by simply removing and reinstalling the cable between the display and the base unit, or alternatively you might want to look into getting a replacement in.

I found a manual at https://dl.dell.com/topicspdf/inspiron-15-3583-laptop_service-manual_en-us.pdf – you might want to use your asset tag to get  manual through dell support to be sure, though…

The cable is secured at the screen end by a sticky tab built into the cable form and the connector is sometimes locked into the board receptacle with a “fold over” bar which (if present) should have a layer of yellow Mylar tape to stop unintended shorts. Sometimes the cable just doesn’t land well and as its stuck down, it takes some time for that to show. Peel very gently and use finger nails to extract the plug- do not pull on the wires!

The cable should have a sticker bearing “Dell P/N:” – if not look around the connector at the main board end.. googling that should get a hit but as to who to buy it from, I found a lot of the Dell recommended suppliers to be unavailable or unresponsive some years back.. so if it does need replacing its buyer beware..

I am assuming you have used the recovery options to force the machine into the BIOS setup pages to clear some sort of display driver issue (as UEFI boot can be over before the screen has initialised..). If not maybe try that first.. just on the off chance..

If its an Intel chip you can test the setup:

https://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/download/15951/intel-processor-diagnostic-tool.html

AMD weren’t quite as forthcoming last time I looked. Beyond checking the BIOS is up to date enough to correctly identify the chip installed (so the core voltage is right) if you have installed a NEW cooler on a clean chip, the (slightly domed..) heat spreader on the chip should have optimally spread that paste (which on the OEM ones at least is usually a form of Arctic, but in a waxy base so it doesn’t make such a mess- “it melts” on first use.)

We did have one guy who managed to get it wrong as we used a CPU cooler clip to capture the ATX2 power wire to ensure it stayed out of various coolers on one design, and he managed to trap a wire under the corner of the heatsink against the plastic surround. No damage resulted as the heatsink was in contact, just not fully “down”. The problem was detected in burn in testing so a demo of Passmark Pro, or whatever’s better now, might help you be sure.

apparently cleanmgr has been “depreciated” by Microsoft. Myself I find “storage” (the replacement) to actually be too ready to throw the baby out with the bathwater, whilst leaving the silt in the bottom of the tub.. If you know what you need to do its better to do it yourself.

If you really wanted to thin the rubbish it would be nice to have a way of safely clearing the source files for the built in apps after you tear them out of the active install (and thus WinSXS) with DISM, but there isn’t a way I have been able to find- probably as there is significant component reuse between them (which is why removing Edge doesn’t go well, I suspect.)

For example I still have a cached installer for VC_redist.x86.exe in a folder under C:\ProgramData\Package Cache\ from 2019 (first install, think it came with an old office product..) – long since removed and superseded. It’s that sort of junk which is hard to get rid of as you can never be sure why its not been removed.. which is why I follow Sues advice re media as it It’s not a 5 minute fix might for a problem I might as will spend the next 10 minutes backing up (not much at all local) and flatten it and let Windows setup do its thing.. I have a backup of drivers (pnputil) and as my machine is old and thus completely whql..

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geekdom

I “pruned” (dism /online /cleanup-image /resetbase) and something by way of an error message popped up at the subsequent shutdown but whatever it was seems to have left no event log or lasting effect.. it seems fine, but then I don’t do anything complicated like printing..

I guess what you mean was does it clean up the component store? That should happen on its own (part of scheduled maintenance) in its own time.

With 21H1 I used /StartComponentCleanup in place of /resetbase to start it as the machine was noticeably clunky and /AnalyzeComponentStore indicated there was some rubbish, but either way a subsequent (command prompt) defragment was required to get the SSD running right which indicates with a really only, clunky BIOS based RAID the positioning of file data on the drive left after an update could be improved on.. even though technically the effect there should be negligible.. so if you really need to you can make it sort its mess out to whatever level you need..

As to the end result, mine didn’t go through the “out of box experience” which thus means the various privacy settings and the like that process configures remained unchanged, whereas if you ran an in place repair, I would expect that process to end with that to ensure the settings were good as Windows setup has little information as to why you might choose to install the update that way.. perhaps someone else who’s done that can confirm?

I didn’t see the effect, though I have in the past. It’s worth localising a source wallpaper and browsing for it – when it went awry for me (way back, 2019) the wallpaper set was with an image where I had used the “right click and set as wallpaper” option from an “Internet” location – so it could have been to do with the recent fiddling with the “mark of the web” around zip files with recent builds.. which would mean you use opatch?

https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/microsoft/windows-mark-of-the-web-bypass-zero-day-gets-unofficial-patch/

Just a thought..

Seems poor configuration was part of the problem.. (or is this another “incident”? This is October 4th..)

https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/security/microsoft-data-breach-exposes-customers-contact-info-emails/

https://twitter.com/KiPos_info/status/1577745070941503488

Should anyone be able to make use of this..

 

 

I was probably typing at the same time as you and I ramble on a bit.

It’s just the other way to do it in case something breaks, and for a end user purchased key it makes no difference how you do it.

Well, actually it can if you have a Xeon machine with it’s eclectic Windows 10 workstation as that includes a CPU license and the GUI wont apply both licenses to the system as it sees the “wrong Windows edition”. (last minute sales “the customer needs a larger OS drive on this machine due out tomorrow and their old data drives added..” situation.) but that’s not an issue here..

Still – all’s good, Beth40 now has all the info in one place.

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Coldheart9020, b

At a glance that’s the folder I have. I fact its quite  amess as the processes aren’t deleting them – so I have a bunch of them with the same content. Mine aren’t being cleared out or deleted but it might not have to around to it yet.

It could be my install as one thing I have done is used DISM to massacre a lot of the cr@p which comes in the box to aid in getting a large product onto a small SSD. I also occasionally use the /resetbase switch (as well as the usual measures with DISM to generally remove the update trash which storage seems to love to cling to) to ditch all the old versions of everything to help maintain the space I have..

I don’t have a problem and I’m making the case that the effect described in this post doesn’t represent a problem beyond that MS can’t be bothered to tidy up the mess as they so along, preferring to get the cleaning lady in once a month to clear it out.. (unless like me you’ve turned off storage because you actually store things in your download folder for a reason.. have you?)

I guess the way to tell would be to disable the what was the content delivery service – that’s been gone a while, by description it might be delivery optimisation now? That was harder than it should have been (when I went there back at 1809). If the effect disappears it’d prove the point but I wouldn’t try to hard to prove it, or leave that service off long term (as you might want edge  to update).

As I have to manually kick Chrome to get it to update, I just did that and it did. No extra folders appeared so I still doubt that’s a cause of the issue (now got 105.0.5195.127 should anyone want to know!). I also have the empty folders with an En-US within. I’m quite happy to completely ignore the extra folders, and I’ll clean them out myself when Windows starts to complain about space (as I followed SB’s post so already have the recovery media downloaded..) and I think others here have completely vindicated the reasoning as well..

As to the “I haven’t got a temp folder” post – what happens shortly after you type

cmd /c start %temp%

in your run box and click the Ok button there?? I guess you could delete the system variable but I’d also guess that might cause some strange behaviour..

 

 

 

uninstall old program, reboot, run its removal tool, reboot probably a good things for any AV program (so you need to get the removal tool before hand).

Defender definitions (https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/wdsi/defenderupdates) depend on having the ability to cope with updates with a 64 bit update so you may need to install some KBs first so you can use update the product to attend to the licensing.. https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/topic/2019-sha-2-code-signing-support-requirement-for-windows-and-wsus-64d1c82d-31ee-c273-3930-69a4cde8e64f

If you just purchase a key (legitimately from Microsoft of course) it should be a case of adding it to your install with slmgr /ipk:{your product key}, activating it with slmgr /ato, and letting it fetch a few files from Windows update (so small you might not even see it happen) and it should reboot and spend a couple minutes applying the changes (mainly getting the “pro only” updates sorted and in place from the component store, but with a recent build again that could even be past by now (I last used that process about three years ago.. also should mention there are some special “oem” and “educational” keys where the process won’t work but you wouldn’t normally be buying that sort of key anyway..)

That does seem like a lot to expend to stop updates – perhaps attend to Bitdefender at the end of its run and get Windows defender up and running and then see what other forum posts can offer by way of help and work arounds rather than diving in right now when half the globe seems to be descending into chaos.

Also consider your new pro license will still have the same “end of support” date (https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/lifecycle/products/windows-10-home-and-pro) and that isn’t really that far away so its’ really down to your take on the likelihood of your system hardware reaching that date before something in the hardware fails (possibly irretrievably)- might be time to see who’s fixing what faults with your model. I used to maintain Mini ITX machines and we had to price in a new PSU into the maintenance fee over every three years (as many failed short of as beyond that age, and the first year covered by manufacturer warranty so wasn’t our problem..). Even the cheaper brand full ATX units generally ran to five which was about the age you start figuring in hard disk and optical drive failures. Other faults tended to be more random.. which is why we used to keep history on the machines until they expired as otherwise customers skipped maintenance until the machines were worn out.. though it was a good seller for extending the newer three year warranty pattern..

And please read the forums about backup solutions.

If you have anything you really must keep on the machine, you need to be thinking about that before you undertake anything else – specifically you need to get it backed up before you do anything, let alone before something unexpected happens and you’re left having to deal with it.

A lot of computing engineer time is spent extracting the data from failed software installs and rebuilding a new one as sometimes the update state can get so confused the tools can’t resolve a solution for themselves (given your success with those tools, I’d wonder if your software is uncomfortably close to the edge of that cliff..) so a backup now could be more worthwhile than any software package you could and should be able to reinstall from its media, ready to take control of its build from the outset… so really back up your files and your software installation separately and get your recovery media organised before starting, so you have two routes back if it all goes horribly wrong. Getting data out of a failed installation is never as easy as backing it up while the software is at least operating.

 

 

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Beth40