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OK – my curiosity got the better of me. I just had to run the update to see what would happen.

First of all, I did an image backup of my entire drive. Next I disconnected from my local network and rebooted. After a few minutes, the Click-To-Run update message appeared. I clicked the “Yes” button and waited.

After just a few minutes, the following pop-up message appeared:
37712-image_1

That was reassuring but still not very “official” looking. At any rate, I went back into my supposedly updated version of Word 2010 Starter and looked at the Help page. Below is a comparison of the before and after of the version numbers:
37713-image_2

If the info is correct, there was NO UPDATE to Word 2010. Instead, there is a version change reflected in the “Click To Run” product. This seems to confirm my thought that it was, indeed, an update to the CTR feature and not to the actual Word product.

As a final step, I ran full malware scans to Security Essentials and Malware Bytes. Nothing showed up and the system has run correctly since.

So, I guess it was a valid update, but really poorly handled at the source. And, I still have the system image in case “stuff” shows up later.

Thanks for all the input!!

Ron

Ruirib – I was looking for the same thing, but apparently Office 2010 Starter does NOT have the Update Now option.

And, thanks to BruceR for the links. Looks like others are starting to see the problem and report it also. It will be interesting to see what the “official” Microsoft response to this issue is, if any.

Ron

Is your Office 2010 a click to run version?

Thanks ruirib – Yes, it’s Office 2010 Starter Edition – click to run.

Thanks also for the link! I looked it over and explored the Help area of my Word 2010 program and found the information on updates.

I now tend to agree with your earlier comment that it’s probably a legitimate update. But, I’m not sure why I’m getting the pop-up now and not over the past 3 years. Maybe it’s a really important update.

There apparently was one or more updates to Office on Aug 12-13 and that’s about when I started seeing the pop-up. I’ll dig a bit further and maybe I can apply the update in some manner that does not use the pop-up window. I’m still suspicious.

Thanks again…
Ron

Thanks to everyone for their responses! I did some more research and have the following additional info:

1 – The Click-to-Run window only shows up after a cold boot or restart. It doesn’t pop up immediately; only after starting another app such as browser, game, e-mail, etc.

2 – I close the window with the red X in the upper right corner. It does not show up again until I restart/reboot the system.

3 – The windows shows up the Task Manager with an Applicatin name of “Click to Run”. The process associated with the window is “csrss.exe”. A search for this program shows up two instances, one in WindowsSystem32 and one in a subfolder of WindowsWinsxs. Both instances are the same size and date (07/13/2009).

4 – I have received other updates to Office 2010, but always they showed up in Windows Update. The Click-to-Run window has never shown up prior to a few days ago. There are no updates waiting in Windows Update, either recommended or optional.

5 – Some virus cases have exploited csrss.exe in the past but always shows massive CPU utilization or odd-ball versions of csrss.exe in other directories. Not so in my case (so far).

6 – Zig suggested running the program in a virtual machine. I don’t know how to do this and there doesn’t appear to be a specific program associated with the pop-up window other than the normal Windows process csrss.exe .

One thought I had was that maybe this is some sort of update to the Click-to-Run feature itself and not a regular Office update? That raises the question whether it’s legitimate or not.

If it persists, I’ll probably just uninstall Office 2010 Starter Edition. I’m happy with LibreOffice on my big computer and Wordpad is adequate for quick documents on the laptop.

Any other thoughts/info are welcome. Thanks again for the input so far!

Ron

Thanks, Dan, for that final tip. That was a question in the back of my mind. I did notice the “Fix boot problems” menu item in the Macrium software and though I’d explore that when the time comes.

The outcome of this whole exercise is that I end up running an officially supported version of Windows and that it’s NOT the Win 8.1 version! I’m grateful to your all.

Ron

Success!! I used Dan’s tip and swapped the registry entries for the C and I drives. Rebooted the “new” Win 7 partition and everything is great.

I actually assigned a new login password for the “new” Win 7 setup and changed the wallpaper. With multiple reboots, between all three OS configurations, they all look separate and unique now.

From this point on I’m only using the “new” Win 7 partition and I marked the old one as “Do Not Use”. If all is solid after a month or so, I’ll delete the old one and remove it’s partition. Then I’ll expand the XP partition into the old Win 7 area.

Eventually, the old XP drive will get blown away leaving a “pure” Win 7, single-boot system. I still need the XP setup for awhile until I finish some projects that require it.

Thanks to everyone for the hints, tips and help! I learned a bunch of stuff and have some new links to add to my list of helpful stuff.

Ron

Thanks Lee – I do understand what you are saying about copying the Boot folder. I will do that eventually as my main intent is to “decommission” my WinXP drive and have only a Win 7 system. In my current system, the Boot folder and associated files are on the WinXP partition.

When I used EasyBCD to create the new entry for the new Win 7 partition, I specifically told it to use the partition on Drive 2 (drive letter “I”).

Later today I’ll try copying the Boot goodies to the new Win 7 partition and then booting directly to it by changing the boot drive in the BIOS. I understand I’ll maybe need to use my Win 7 Install Disk to fix boot problems.

Ron

Wow – thanks for all the replies! I tried a few things and have had moderate success. Let me review the situation now.

I rearranged the drives so that Drive 0 and Drive 1 were my original two drives. The added new drive was put on the Drive 2 connector. When I booted XP, it could not see Drive 0. It didn’t show up anywhere, either as a drive with a letter in Explorer, or as a separate unnamed drive in Manage.

I then booted into Win7 (second partition on Drive 0) and it CAN see the new drive without problems. It assigned it as Drive I:

But hold on a minute — I booted back into XP and now it can see the new drive!! Almost like Win7 did something that made the drive visible in XP. Not sure how, but I’m not complaining.

SO, Drive I: was where I had the restored partition from Macrium that was in the “wrong” place, at the upper end of the drive space. Using Disk Management from within Win7, I blew away that partition on the “I” drive and ended up with a full unallocated drive (“I”). I then created a “simple” partition on that drive using the full drive and did a Quick Format.

Then, using Acronis Home 11, I created an image of my Win7 partition (on Drive 0, remember) and wrote it to an external harddrive. I then restored it to the new full-drive partition on Drive 2 (“I”). This worked correctly and it occupied the space at the front of the drive. (Who knows, but Macrium might have done it this way if I had created the partition first before doing the Macrium restore.)

So, we’re making progress!! I now went into EasyBCD and added another entry for Win7. I named it Win 7 New and renamed the original as Win 7 Old. With a little bit of testing, I found I can boot to Win XP (first partition on Drive 0), Win 7 Old (second partition on Drive 0) or Win 7 New (single partition on Drive 2). Everythign seems perfect!

BUT – I couldn’t leave it there. Since the Drive 2 version of Win 7 was a direct copy of the one on Drive 0, how could I tell if this was REALLY booting the new copy? I know, I’ll change the Desktop background image on one of them.

Well, that didn’t work? No matter which Win 7, New or Old, I select from the Boot menu, the desktop background is the same!?!?. EasyBCD has a little utility called System Information. It shows that the “New” version runs from drive “I” and that the “Old” version runs from drive “C”

So, I’m almost where I want to be, but why is the desktop background image the same on both versions? No matter what I do, they both end up the same. What’s the best way to really verify that I have two separate bootable Win 7 partitions?

Thanks again in advance…

Ron Hodges
P.S. Thanks for the comments on Partition Magic. I suspected it was a bit old to know about more modern drive configurations and I didn’t try to use it.

OK folks – sorry for the long delay in continuing this thread. I was out of town and just now getting back to my “Relocate Win7 partition” issues.

I used Macrium to backup my Win7 partition from the original location. It is one a second primary partition on Drive 0. The first partition, primary and active, is the WinXP installation.

I originally had VistaBootPro on the Win7 partition but I have uninstalled it and replaced it with EasyBCD, installing it on both the Win7 and WinXP systems.

So, my original configuration was:
Drive 0, Partition 1 = WinXP (primary and active)
Drive 0, Partition 2 = Win7 (primary)
Drive 1, Partition 1 = Data Drive

Last night I added the new third HDD to my system. I added the third HDD as Drive 1, moving the original Data Drive to Drive 2.

Before restoring the Win7 backup to the new drive, I used EasyBCD to set the WinXP system as default boot.

First issue: Booting Macrium from CD, I was able to restore the Win7 image to the new drive. BUT, it did not go into the starting space on the empty drive. Rather, it installed to the same location as on the original Drive 0 (partition 2) and left a big chunk of unallocated space at the start of the drive. Any way to fix that? I wanted to extend the Win7 partition to use the whole drive.

Second issue: When I rebooted into WinXP, it could not see the Data Drive (now Drive 2). If I boot into Win7, it sees the Data Drive and all is well. When I originally installed WinXP I had to prepare a driver disk for my Mobo (Gigabyte) and load it with F6 as part of the install. Do I need to somehow rebuild that diskette and somehow add it into the WinXP system? All drives are SATA, non-Raid.

Thanks in advance if anyone still wants to comment on this, I’d appreciate it.

Note: I also have the latest/final version of Partition Magic (Ver 7 I think). Is it usable on modern systems? I have it on bootable diskette/CD.

Thanks in advance!

Ron

Dan – thanks for the reply and additional information. Last night late, I did get Macrium Free downloaded, installed and the Rescue Disk built and tested. I was able to make an image of the Win7 partition and store it on my external eSATA drive.

I then booted from the Macrium CD and it did indeed see the eSata drive and I located the Win7 image I had saved.

After this holiday weekend is over, I’ll try restoring the image to the new hard drive and see if I can boot from it. BCD Editor (of some sort) might be necessary, but I should be able to get through it.

Regarding Macrium, I had not heard of it previously. With your instructions, I got it installed and working. This morning I was looking at a recent issue of the British “Windows 7” magazine and there were complete instructions for doing a backup with Macrium!! Coincidence? I think not! Thanks again.

Ron H

Thanks to both of you for your responses. I like the approach suggested by “dg1261” since his explanation used the term “low-risk approach”! And, it sounds logical and simple to me. At age 71, I’ve seen my share of PC disasters and I’m not feeling too experimental at this time.

If I create a partition image with Macrium Free and write it to one of my external eSATA drives, will the Rescue CD be able to see the external drive? I can also plug it in as a USB drive if necessary. I can’t use my existing data drive as it’s short of space.

“leejosepho”, I found your comments about drive letters interesting. I always though that the drive letters are assigned by the OS, and I find no place in my BIOS to set drive letters. I can establish boot order, with or without booting from an optical drive, but no place for drive letter assignments. In fact, both my WinXP and Win7 partitions boot as Drive C:, with the other one assigned as Drive D:. My data drive stays as Drive E: in both cases.

One other question. If I can successfully image the Win7 partition to a new drive and successfully boot from it, could I then have both it and the original WinXP drive installed and boot to whichever one I want? I think the BIOS allows me to select the active boot drive. Does EasyBCD give me any benefit for this scenario?

Thanks in advance for your help and suggestions. I’ll give this a try over the next couple of days and report back.

Ron H

A BIG warning on Steganos Password Manager. I use an older version (7.x) on an old WinXP machine. All available updates for the software were applied. The company has since moved to newer versions with yearly enhancements. I stuck with Ver 7 as I didn’t need the newer features.

BIG mistake!!! A recent series of Windows .NET updates from Microsoft blew out Password Manager. It won’t open and gives a typical debug message. And, it apparently scrambled the actual password file. I tried importing into a later version (12) that I use on my Win7 PC. No luck as it won’t recognize the password for the Ver 7 password file. Even the backup file won’t work. I tried a Restore Point recovery on the XP box but that didn’t help either.

So, just because you keep your legacy software updated don’t assume some other company (Microsoft) can’t break it. I’ve just spent the better part of two days going through the various password reset procedures for the sites I can remember. I’m concerned about the stored passwrods for hardware devices, etc. The Steganos sync feature isn’t helpful here because the passwords from the Win7 and XP boxes need to be separate and distinct.

I know, I know, get off the old systems and software you say. Sounds fine in theory, but the practice sometimes won’t allow it.

Ron

Another option is to use a newtork connected print server. I’ve been using the D-Link DP-300U 3-port server for several years. It has two Centronics parallel ports and one USB port. I’ve used it with WinXP, Vista and Win7. Another person in the house has an iMac G5 connected via WiFi and it works perfectly for Apple stuff too.

This little box is a bit tricky to set up but once it’s working, it just works. If you have problems, search the web for tips. I use it for an old but trusty HP 5MP laser and a Canon S9000 large format inkjet (USB).