Replies

The file you need is “spoolsv.exe” and it must be in the WindowsSystem32 folder.

If you can’t find it there, do a search to see if it’s anywhere else on the PC.
If you find it elsewhere, copy it to the above mentioned folder.

If NOT, copy it from another PC running XP and put it in that folder.
Reboot and see if the service is back, in “Services.msc”.

Well, at least, that’s where I’d start.

Good Luck,
The Doctor

I thought that looked vaguely familiar………..

It’s a file related to an Epson CX6000 Printer.
If you don’t have that printer, then get rid of that entry.
If you DO have the printer, leave the entry where it is.

I DO have that printer and I have two entries in my MSCONFIG / Startup folder starting with E_SC.

The Doctor

Java is an outside program. The new ones replace the old ones, so you can safely delete the older versions.

Dot Net however is “Windows”. Leave all the versions alone, and keep it up to date. You should now be at level
3.5 with updates.

Look elsewhere to save disk space. Running DiskCleanup and Defrag, all part of windows, will go a long ways
toward keeping your system running well and should be run on a Weekly Maintenance routine.

Using this shortcut to run Disk Cleanup, will give you a much improved cleanup.

%SystemRoot%System32Cmd.exe /c Cleanmgr /sageset:35 & Cleanmgr /sagerun:35

Just copy and paste the above line into a New Desktop shortcut.
On the first run, Select everything but, “Office Setup files”, “Setup Logs” and “Compress old files”.

It’s actually pretty simple to keep your computer clean, just using what’s already built into Windows.

Good Luck and Happy Computing!
The Doctor

There are a great number of programs that can and will remove partitions, even going all the way back to MS-DOS and FDISK.
“Delete Non-DOS Partition” is the option to select when running FDISK.

Then of course, there is the Old Reliable “Partition Magic 8” and even Easus Partition Manager, etc.
The list just goes on and on. Actually, there is NO partition that cannot be removed.

Every time I get a new or used HD, I partition it with FDISK and then do a DOS format of it. That checks every sector on
the drive for reliability and blocks out any bad sectors. Then I can install any OS I want with total assurance that the
drive will perform correctly. It takes a little while, but checking out drives that way has never failed me…..in 30 years.

Good Luck!

The Doctor

I’ve played this game longer than I’d ever want to admit to.
And I’ve spent enough money on gadgets that claim to keep a HD cool to buy me another new PC.

I applied expertise I gained while working in an Air Flow lab, to come up with my own solution to HOT HD’s.
Here’s the result of years of testing and experimenting.

This is a Two-Fan “VIO” cooler, affixed to the HD with 1/4″ standoffs, to greatly increase air flow.
I’ve applied this technique to all my hard drives for the past ten years and all my HD’s remain at room
temperature even during degrag’s or Ghost Backups.

I buy those little two-fan coolers for at little at $3 each.

Just a word to the wise.

The Doctor

I’ve been using XCOPY almost as long as it has existed in MS-DOS.

It helps if you just go to a command prompt and type:

XCOPY /? (press Enter)

That will give you a complete list of all the switches that can be used with XCOPY.

The switch you needed in the above problem was the /s switch, to copy sub-directories.

I have used xcopy to back up whole drives before.

One typical line I use to backup the entire “My Documents” folder to my storage drive is:

Rem Backup My Documents and all sub-folders/files.
xcopy “C:Documents and SettingsAlexMy Documents*.*” “D:My Documents” /s /y /H /R /D

Xcopy works great when properly applied.
I like using what MS gave me instead of downloading more programs to add to the HD bloat.
I’ve been doing it for thirty years, so I probably won’t change now.
My first HD was only 20 megs in capacity, so I learned real quick to save HD space wherever possible.

Cheers mates!
the Doctor

As a professional Computer Tech (retired, but still working) I have to share other peoples problems and their pain.
The most traumatic circumstance I have to deal with is the retired gentleman who is writing his memoirs and saving
them to his hard drive, with NO backup. (Like, what’s he thinking?) and then the HD crashes or his .doc file becomes
corrupted.

Since home computers have not come with floppy drives for many years now, it’s not surprising that people are not
using floppy disks for backups. But for people with old pic’s or data on floppy disks that they can’t access on their
new PC, a USB External Floppy drive is a solution to that problem.
I just don’t find RW CD’s to be reliable enough for secure data backup.

I recently had an old gentleman call me who was writing a novel and only saving his work to his hard drive. One day this
.doc file got corrupted, deleted or some such. He was on the verge of a coronary when he called me for help.
Knowing the seriousness of this situation, I took a friend with me on the service call. My friend is a data recovery specialist.
It took almost an hour to finally recover the old man’s novel.

Now the old man saves his work in chapters, not just one big file and every days work is backed up to multiple flash drives.
Word, for instance, will let you save a file and re-save a file as many times and to as many places (drives) as you wish.

Any disk, hard drive or even flash drive will crash eventually. So don’t keep all your data in one place.

Now would be a very good time to sit down with a Data Management Specialist and set up a foolproof backup scheme,
that will serve your needs. Let me give you a good example *.

* I have customer records and important documents, going back 15 years. Over that time I’ve experienced
many hard drive failures, but I have yet to loose the first bit of data. Since about 1980 I’ve built my own PC’s and I always
use a case large enough to accommodate multiple hard drives. So, one option I have for a fairly quick backup of C: is my
second hard drive.

Since its release in the mid 90’s, “Ghost” has been my backup program of choice. I backup C: every week, using Ghost,
to either the second partition on my main HD, or to my ‘Storage’ hard drive. I can also burn the Ghost image to a DVD,
which I do every month. That DVD goes into a fireproof vault, about twenty miles away at a friend’s office.

A simple batch file is the quickest way to just backup data files.
A click of a desktop icon runs a batch file which uses XCOPY to copy all of “My Documents” to a like directory on my backup HD.
That also works equally well to backup files to a flash drive. Using XCOPY and the proper switches, I can back up only the files
that have been changed or added to the ‘My Documents’ folder. Using this technique, my daily data backup only takes a few seconds.
That backup batch file can also be coupled to my Quick Shutdown routine for an automatic daily backup.

A typical XCOPY backup batch file can be a simple one-liner, like this:

XCOPY “C:My Documents*.*” M: /s /M /V /F /H /R /Y

This copies the contents of “My Documents” to my flash drive ( M: )
and saves time by only copying data that is new or changed.

A good rule of doing backups is to Keep It Simple, so you’ll do it more often.

Good Luck,
The Doctor

The drive manufacturers have free cloning software on their web sites.

cheers, Paul

If your drive is either a Seagate or Maxtor, the software they provide is actually Acronis True Image, FREE and no expiration.

I’ve been using Ghost, since 1997 and continue to use it today. Version 11.5 will back up or CLONE any hard drive, any make or model, whether NTFS or FAT-32.

I use that from a boot CD or Flash Drive to back up or clone any hard drive, or to do my own weekly all C: drive backup.

I always find whatever I need by remembering an old Bible Quote, “ask and thou shalt receive”.

Have a great day,
The Doctor 🙂

MS Windows (all versions) was designed to run ONE WAY. Once you start trying to redesign windows you can create a quagmire of disconnections. Sort of like a swamp, filled with snakes and alligators.

Occasionally, as a service tech, I have to work on such a PC and it’s a real nightmare, when things are NOT where they are supposed to be. I like the old saying “KISS”. That means “Keep It Simple Stupid!”

Office is not the only program that writes things to the “My Documents” folder. Having it where Windows put it, is very helpful.

However that’s not saying that having a backup copy elsewhere is not also helpful. I wrote a batch file, using XCOPY that backs up all new or changed files in my own “My Documents” folder to a like folder on my internal storage HD. I’ve added a few extra lines to that Backup Batch File, to back up my email files, address book and Firefox Identities file, to name just a few.

Every valuable file you own, should be in at least TWO places, preferably not on the same drive. Flash drives are quick and easy to use, but NOT the most reliable. DVD’s are far more reliable and today they are fairly cheap.

Cheers Mates!
The Doctor

JFYI

One of the most valuable programs I own is the “Norton Removal Tool”.

A few years ago, it consisted of three files. One was a batch file to de-activate the Norton .dll files. A second one actually removed the program, and a third was a registry script that removed 1891 registry entries. WOW! Does any program really need that many entries in the registry?

The new and improved version of the “Norton Removal Tool” is just one file. I just don’t trust it, to remove all the unwanted registry entries, so I still use the old registry script.

Some time back, I tried a trial version of MS Office 2007. I didn’t like it and uninstalled it. Then I cleaned my registry with “Easy Cleaner 2” and it removed almost 30 megs of registry entries, left behind by Office 2007. Again…… WOW! That reduced the overall size of my registry by 1/3. Since the registry is one of the OS files that must load into RAM on boot, that gives me back 30 megs of ram to use elsewhere. It also speeds up the boot process.

All registry cleaners are NOT created equal, however. I’ve heard so many users raving about CCleaner, but on the two occasions that I’ve tried it, it’s screwed up my PC so bad that I had to use a Ghost Image restore to put things right again. Thank God, I make at least one Ghost backup every week.

I continue to use “Easy Cleaner 2” on all my 32 bit OS’s with never a problem.

Cheers Mates! The Doctor

Most zip files represent a very large amount of data. That’s why they were zipped in the first place.
I don’t delete my zip files, but I keep them in a ZIP files directory on a second HD or partition.
That takes a big load off of my OS drive.

Keeping all the files that you never, ever, use, off of your C: drive can only serve to improve
overall drive performance. Zip files, ISO’s and movies all fall into that category.

Good Luck!

The Doctor

Just being nosey…………

In the original batch file, why send the result to NUL. Doesn’t that defeat the very purpose of the batch file, or did I miss something?

I removed the >NUL from the batch file text and ran it. Sure nuff, it told me what version of XP I’m running. Opening the System folder in the Control Panel told me the same thing and I didn’t have to write any batch files to get the information. Windows, all versions, is quite happy to display that information. Windows 7, System Folder will likewise tell you what the version number is, of your OS you’re running.

Just a thought.
The Doctor

I don’t run Windows 7 as my main OS. I probably never will. I have it on a spare HD, just to play around with. To really run great, it does require some tweaking and tuning, just like Vista and XP before that.

Every release of OS since the beginning has had built in SAFE Defaults that seriously limit the speed at which the OS can run. They seem to assume that you’re running it on the worse possible hardware, with the least amount of ram. Yes, Win-7 will install and run on just 1 gig of ram, but not real well.

In 1980 I found the same kind of SAFE Defaults built into the OS for the little Commodore 64. So I re-wrote the C-64 Kernel ROM, to remove its redundancy and had a much FASTER little computer. I sold copies of that revised Kernel ROM, all over the country. Well, anyway, most of the tweaks that work for Vista, also work for Win-7. I use a batch file to shut down or Manual’ize services that don’t need to be running 24×7. That batch file for Win-7 is considerably larger than the one for Vista, which is larger than the one for XP. The redundancy just gets worse for each new OS.

Has anyone compared the size of XP to the size of win-7, as it sits on the HD, after installation? Win-7 is HUGE !!! It reminds me of the Senate healthcare bill.

One little registry tweak to copy the windows Kernel to ram on boot, GREATLY increases system efficiency and performance. People talk a lot about speed and efficiency, but hardly anyone ever uses this simple tweak. It’s been around in one form or another, since Windows 98. Go figure!

If, by my post, you’ve gotten the impression that I’m not a real fan of Windows 7…………… You got it right !!!

It reminds me of the little old lady that owned a 37 passenger bus, just to go to church on Sunday. Gross overkill, to say the least.

Y’all have a great 2010 now, Y’hear?

Happy New Year!

The Doctor

If it’s truly an integrated part of your motherboard, then you’ll probably ONLY find driver support at the web site of the motherboard manufacturer.

You should download the entire (latest) driver pack for that motherboard. It may be 50 – 60 megs, but that’s not unusual, so don’t balk at it.

I do this stuff all the time so don’t let it baffle you. Just grin and bear it!

I’m having a similar problem now, after installing Windows 7 Ultimate on my three year old PC.
Some USB things work OK and some don’t. I need updated USB support drivers, but as yet
I don’t have them. That’s a job for a rainy day.

Good Luck and Happy New Year!

The Doctor

Not in argument, but just to continue the conversation.

You said, “all that they would want to do”, or some such.

How about if they want to read some Office file like a Word 2007 document that someone has sent them? Or if they want to use a Spreadsheet, written in Excel 2007?

Get the picture?

By installing a totally ‘Out of Date’ suite like Office 97, a persons option are seriously limited. I just don’t recommend it. Even Office 2000 or Office 2003, would be a better choice, than Office 97. Or, try the latest version of Open Office. I understand it’s FREE.

Happy New Year!

The Doctor