Replies

Satrow: Just FYI, I took a stab at Driver Verifier tonight. Upon rebooting, the machine immediately crashed; I booted off of my Win10 DVD and restored back to the restore point I took just prior to enabling Verifier.

Both WhoCashed and Nirsoft’s BlueScreenView point to mozy.sys so I’ve opened a support ticket with Mozy. I thought perhaps I’d download the latest version of their software and install it but the version on my machine is newer than what you can download.

Rob

@OldMainframeGuy: Have you run Disk cleanup again? If so, did the same “error” appear? In my case, it no-longer appears (and I have “cleaned up” after three Windows Updates since it last appeared).

@Petesmst: Sorry; I missed your post. Letting Scheduled Maintenance run (or running it yourself manually) fixes the problem. Control Panel -> All Control Panel Items -> Security and Maintenance. Click on Maintenance and on the slide-down menu, click on Start Maintenance under Automatic Maintenance. Once it completes, try Cleanmgr again and it won’t try to clean up terabytes of data on your disk.

Rob

I’d much prefer to have more data to work from, the BSOD collection app. here makes a fine job of collecting it, attach the zipped folder here and I’ll take a look at it.

DV can be dangerous – really only if you don’t have a Restore Point or an alt. method of reverting, the instructions here should ensure you’re safe if you use it, the results from a verified crash dump can save a lot of time.

Satrow: Thank you for your kind offer. I’ll download the BSOD collection app and see what needs to be done. For now, I’ve enlarged the size of the page file to match my memory size (32GB which I need like a hole in the head) so the entire dump can be captured and I’m running the kinds of programs that seemed to cause the problem (mostly Virtual Dub). So far, no crashes. I’ll use Driver Verifier as a last resort.

Rob

Sudo: Thanks; I also have the Nirsoft program. It might tell someone who knows how to read Windows dumps what’s wrong but for the BSODs I’ve been having neither it nor WhoCrashed can pinpoint the error; both just tell me it occurred in ntoskrnl.exe or ntkrnlmp.exe. I don’t see a blue screen troubleshooter on my system. Maybe it’s something you get as part of the Insider Program?

Rob

http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,1926596,00.asp

From that article:

“With many third-party free antivirus utilities, you get a ton of bonus tools above and beyond the basic antivirus functions. For example, AVG AntiVirus Free (2016)Free at AVG Technologies includes a file shredder for secure deletion, a component that actively blocks ad networks from tracking your browsing habits, and a rating tool that flags potentially unsafe websites. Defender sticks to the single task of keeping your system safe from malware. Avast Free Antivirus 2016Free at AVAST Software scans your network and router for security problems, optimizes your system, and manages your passwords.”

And that’s the problem. I’m an ex-Avast user (paid for commercial product). To be fair, when you install the product, you can pick and choose what additional chotchkies you want but if you don’t know enough to do that (or you like lots of chotchkies) you end up with an incredibly bloated, somewhat unstable product. Optimizes your system? Sure, if you have enough faith in clicking on a button that says “Click here to let me optimize the 50 problems I found on your computer”. No thanks.

Since PC Magazine probably contains advertisements from the major AV vendors I wouldn’t expect them to give glowing reviews to something built into Windows. While Defender might not score as high as other products in the lab, I think unless you go around looking for trouble and daring your PC not to catch a virus or malware, Defender (and MBAM on the side) is fine. Nothing is going to give you 100% protection and if you have poor online habits you’ll get bitten sooner or later.

I hate picking on Avast; I used it for years but it went from an unobtrusive AV/firewall product to an 800-pound gorilla.

Rob

I abandoned Revo Free when it REALLY fouled up my system on a 64 bit uninstall.

Been using Advanced Uninstaller Pro ever since. Working fine AFAIK.

Any others use this?

Can’t speak for Advanced Uninstaller Pro but up until recently I was running Ashanpoo Uninstaller 6. I used it to uninstall a program and during the uninstall I noticed it starting to uninstall parts of a completely different program. It then proceeded to trash a file used by the HTTP Service which prevented non-browser software from connecting to the Internet. I had to restore back to a previous restore point to fix the problem.

Long story short – I uninstalled Ashamppo Uninstaller and have sworn-off uninstallers forever.

Rob

Atra: OK, so that’s a start. Does your BIOS show the RealTech Ethernet adapter as a device…or at least give you the opportunity to enable/disable it? My very generic Intel system has integrated Ethernet and video which can be enabled/disabled in the BIOS; if disabled, Windows can’t see them as devices. Your issue kind of smells like your integrated WiFi device was disabled in the BIOS. Look for a page in your BIOS settings for “devices” and see if there isn’t a way to enable/disable the built-in stuff.

Rob

Atra: This is probably not much help but if you boot into the BIOS setup, does the wireless device show up there, and if so, is it enabled?

Rob

From googling “WOT” it looks like an add-on. I’ve looked through my browser add-ons and haven’t seen it listed anywhere.

Lumpy: It is a browser add-on; I used it for a few years until this happened. Both Google and Mozilla have removed it as an installable extension from their web sites for their browsers.

Lugh: Bitdefender Traffic Light came up in another online forum concerning WOT:

http://www.bitdefender.com/solutions/trafficlight.html

I uninstalled WOT and installed Traffic Light. So far, so good though I can’t speak to how effective it really is. At least it’s not selling your goodies behind your back.

I’d be running chkdsk to be sure the disk is OK before cleaning up.

cheers, Paul

I found a link (somewhere) to Neowin’s web site which discusses this latest patch and someone else made the same observation about Disk Cleanup showing terabytes of data that can be freed. This person also observed that running the Windows maintenance function fixes the problem. I did, and it did. Apparently it’s just “cosmetic”.

Not having that problem but when I tried to use Disk Cleanup after the upgrade it reported that I had 3 TB it could free (????) of Windows Update files. I rebooted, tried Disk Cleanup again and then got a BSOD (KERNEL_SECURITY_CHECK_FAILURE).

Windows 10 is out of control.

I was going to ask if you had tried an older version of the software. We had a Dymo label printer in my office for a while and had to be very careful that the driver/software didn’t get updated.

Printers are notorious for using installed programs that bypass the normal print process and are very subject to being screwed up by updates. For that reason, I tried to always keep a copy of the original software that came with a printer.

I had an extremely old version (v6) of the program but I hesitated to install it thinking it might cause more issues. The Dymo folks sent me v7 and that worked OK. I actually had two people working on my problem; one sent me the old software (which works) and the other told me not to install it because it wouldn’t work. I had to explain to her that it was in fact working.

Apparently version 8 of their software uses .NET Framework 3.5 and it’s having issues on some machines.

Happy ending (if anyone cares). The nice people at Dymo sent me an older version of the program that doesn’t use Microsoft .NET Framework and it works like a champ. The program has that nostalgic Windows 95 look to it but heck, it works. And to echo Lumpy95’s comment above, the customer support people at Dymo seem very eager to solve your problems.

Gsmith – The only significant changes to my machine was removing an Nvidia graphics card to use built-in video and the last Microsoft update. I reinstalled the Nvidia card to see if it made any difference and it didn’t. I’m not sure when the software last worked; I rarely use the printer. I opened a ticket with Dymo and received suggestions from two different support people. They’re all suggestions I’ve already seen via Google searches and none of them make a difference.

I’ll let Dymo know that their suggestions didn’t fix anything and ask for next steps.

Rob