The Windows Maintenance Challenge: Part 1

The Windows Maintenance Challenge: Part 1

Can commercial software maintain your PC better than Windows’ built-in and free tools?

This article is the first in a series that will help you determine which tools — free or paid — yield the best results on your specific PC.

Personal-computer salvation? Or snake oil?

You’ve undoubtedly seen the ads; they state something similar to: “This software is guaranteed to make your PC run like new! Download it for free!”

The ads often promise a fix for every PC affliction: “It’s the only software that instantly speeds up your PC, prevents crashes, fixes system errors, boots Windows faster, deletes malware and junk files …” and so on, and so on.

For many PC users, that sounds great. Simply click a button and everything gets magically fixed. That’s certainly easier than trying to use all those tools already built into Windows — or the myriad of specialized, third-party maintenance tools.

But in truth, there never has been one application that fixes all Windows problems — and it’s doubtful there ever will be. Windows is simply too complex, and the range of PC configurations is virtually infinite. A suite of tools might do the trick, but then there’s the question of free versus paid.

Windows has built-in tools for nearly any problem — and they, along with many third-party tools, are completely free. Most of the do-it-all maintenance applications are paid. (These commercial products often offer a free scan; but to fix any system errors they might find, you have to accept a paid subscription.)

Naturally, you’d assume that commercial maintenance tools offer significantly better and easier troubleshooting than do Windows’ free tools. But do they? Clearly, this question calls for a test.

Using a relatively simple before/after comparison

In outline form, the test plan for this series of articles is simple:

• Take a mainstream, real-life PC and get it running as well as possible, using only Windows’ built-in maintenance tools and conventional maintenance techniques.
• Once the test PC is thoroughly cleaned, measure maintenance-related variables such as startup/shutdown speed, free disk space, number of reported Windows errors, and so forth.
• Make a system image of the now clean, baseline setup.
• One by one, run several full-blown, commercial maintenance tools on a freshly restored system image of the baseline PC. That’ll give each commercial tool exactly the same starting conditions.
• Note what each commercial tool finds, and see whether it improved the system’s overall performance. Also note any nonquantifiable, subjective elements of each tool’s operation.

The results will then show whether the commercial maintenance tools can improve the test PC beyond what Windows’ built-in and free tools can do.

A comparison of techniques, not products

At this point, you might think this article is a standard software review. But it’s emphatically not!

There are numerous reviews of commercial PC-maintenance products on the Web. But the results of those reviews all have an important shortcoming: they apply only to the machine used to test the software. No matter which PC configuration I chose for maintenance tests, it wouldn’t be exactly like yours. In fact, it might not even be close.

Ultimately, the purpose of this Maintenance Challenge is not to find the best maintenance tool for the test PC. The goal is to help you find the tool or tools that work best with your specific combination of hardware, software, skills, and personal preferences.

To that end, these articles have an optional hands-on component that lets you work along with me. It’ll let you safely produce your own custom test results.

For example, in this article I’ll discuss how I used Windows’ built-in maintenance tools to create a clean test system that’s lean, secure, and stable. (Links to previous Windows Secrets articles will tell you how to properly use the tools.)

If you wish, you can go hands-on, giving your PC the same thorough tune-up I gave the test PC. (You can do it even as you read this article.) Or you can simply read the articles, using my results as a general guide to free and commercial maintenance tools and techniques.

That said, if you do choose the hands-on option for this article — and I hope you will — your PC will almost surely end up leaner, cleaner, more secure, and closer to error-free than it is now. That’s a worthy goal in itself!

Follow the Maintenance Challenge through to its conclusion, and you should have a set of custom test results that apply to your PC. You’ll definitively know whether free or commercial maintenance tools are the right fit for your unique mix of hardware, software, skill level, and personal preferences.

Let’s get started!

Building the base system with a thorough tune-up

To clean the test PC, I used — and I suggest you use — the maintenance tools and techniques discussed in two Windows Secrets articles: the Jan. 10, 2013, Top Story, “Let your PC start the new year right!,” and the Jan. 16 Top Story “Keep a healthy PC: A routine-maintenance guide.”

A complete PC-maintenance process is laid out in those articles, along with numerous links you can follow for additional how-to information. The tools and techniques discussed work on all current Windows versions. Most even work on XP!

Allow some time for the tune-up. Depending on when and how much maintenance you’ve previously done on your system, the complete process can take anywhere from a few minutes to several hours. (Some tasks, such as defragging and malware-scanning, will take some time to complete, but you don’t have to stay at your PC.)

Once all the maintenance tasks are completed, we’re ready to establish some baseline measurements.

Quantifying the maintenance results

When comparing most things, it’s almost always useful to have some measurements that are objective and repeatable. Numbers might not tell the whole story, but they can tell a very important part of it.

For example, the main reason to remove junk files is to increase disk space — and the best measurement for junk-file removal is whether you have more space and how much. Likewise, the only way to know whether a maintenance tool has improved startup and shutdown times is to time them.

For this series, I took my initial, baseline measurements immediately after completing the test-system’s tune-up. Most of the recommended measurements are a cinch to do and take only a few minutes.

Here’s what I measured, and how you can perform the same measurements:

Disk usage: To determine exactly how much disk space your setup is using, in Windows/File Explorer, right-click the drive of interest (typically, C:) and select Properties. In the Properties dialog box, record the numbers following Used space and Free space. You can copy them to a Notepad file, but it’ll be safer (and give slightly more accurate test results) to put them on paper.

You also can get a count of the number of files and folders on your drive. Click the C:\ folder and group-select (select all; CTRL + A) its contents. Right-click on the selected items and select Properties. Properties will list the total number of files and folders in the selection. (You’ll notice that the total size of the files in this files-and-folders Properties box is different from that given by the overall disk size Properties mentioned above. That’s because the files-and-folder size count skips some hidden files and folders plus files the user doesn’t have permission to access. In contrast, the overall disk-space count includes everything. I prefer to use the overall disk-space count, but you are free to use either. Just stick with one or the other.)

Registry size: Some commercial tools claim to not just correct Registry errors but also shrink (compress) the Registry for greater speed. You can quantify the size of your Registry by locating all Registry-related files (NTUSER.dat and so forth) and adding up their sizes. You also can open regedit.exe and export (File/Export) the full, expanded contents of the Registry. Use the .reg file as another basis for comparison.

Operating system file integrity: To make sure all operating system files are valid and uncorrupted, run Windows’ built-in System File Checker (sfc.exe; more info). Let the tool, shown in Figure 1, try to correct any problems it uncovers.

Rerun sfc.exe (ideally, several times if it doesn’t give a clean bill of health) and then record the final number of OS integrity violations that remain uncorrected. There should be none, but record whatever final number you’re given.

System stability and other errors: Windows’ built-in Reliability Monitor (Figure 2) tracks and displays information on every crash, hang, and hiccup generated by Windows and installed applications.

Many reported “errors” are actually minor, transient events that require no remediation. But if you find serious trouble — it’s a judgment call — Reliability Monitor’s Action column and Check for solution option might provide solutions.

When you’re done, make note of how many significant, unremediated errors remain — ideally, there should be none.

To access Reliability Monitor:

• Win7/8: Open Control Panel in Category view. Under System and Security, click Review your computer’s status and then click Maintenance. Next, under Check for solutions to problem reports, click View reliability history.
• Vista: Click Start, type “perfmon” into the search box, and then press Enter. In the Reliability and Performance Monitor window’s left-hand navigation pane, click down through Reliability and Performance/Monitoring Tools/Reliability Monitor.

For more information on using Reliability Monitor:

• “How to use Reliability Monitor” – Microsoft Windows article
• “Using Reliability Monitor” – TechNet article
• “Use Reliability Monitor to troubleshoot” – TechNet article

Startup/shutdown speed: It takes a few steps to quantify startup/shutdown performance, but it isn’t hard. In fact, all you need is anything that measures seconds.

For startup, carefully time how long your system takes to go from power-on to a stable desktop. Don’t run any applications; immediately measure shutdown time by starting the clock when you click Shut down and stopping the clock at lights-out.

That method works, but I prefer to remove the effects of human reflexes from the results. Instead, I used two very simple batch files to automatically record precise start and stop times.

If you’d like to try automatic start/stop timing, here’s how to create the batch files:

• Open Notepad and enter (or copy/paste) the following two lines:

  echo Restart began at %time% >> “C:\Users\{username}\Desktop\timelog.txt”

  shutdown -f -r -t 00

• Replace {username} with your Windows sign-in. For example, my path would be: C:UsersFredDesktoptimelog.txt. Save the file to the desktop and name it timedrestart.bat.
• Now create the second batch file. Open Notepad again and enter (copy/paste) the following two lines:

  echo Restart ended at %time% >> “C:\Users\{username}\Desktop\timelog.txt”

  exit

• Again, replace {username} with your own Windows user name.
• Name this second file bootdone.bat and save it to your PC’s Startup folder, typically located in the following path. (Again, do not put the first batch file — timedrestart.bat — in the start folder.)

  C:\Users\{username}\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Windows\Start Menu\Programs\Startup

  For the final time, replace {username} with your own. (You might have to unhide Windows’ hidden files to see AppData.)

In practice, here’s how you’d use the files. Note: This assumes you’re not using a Windows sign-in password (more on that below).

With your system freshly maintained, fully booted, operating normally, and with no other software running, click timedrestart.bat in Windows/File Explorer. That file will write the current time to a timelog.txt file on your desktop and then trigger an immediate forced warm restart.

When the reboot completes, bootdone.bat (in the Startup folder) will automatically record the finish time in the same timelog.txt file.

Your resulting timelog.txt file will contain pairs of lines, like these:

Restart began at 18:39:48.70

Restart ended at 18:41:17.67

Doing a little math (or using a tool such as the free online Time Calculator) will quickly reveal the exact amount of time this full shutdown/restart cycle took. For example, in the above example, the time is 1 minute and 29 seconds (rounded to the nearest second).

Whether you’re using the manual or automatic timing methods, you should perform several full restart cycles, back to back. Average and save the results with the other metrics you’re gathering.

Note: For maximum accuracy, ensure that no unnecessary external factors interfere with the boot process. For example, I temporarily configured my test PC (a Win7 box) to automatically sign in to Windows, avoiding the usual sign-in pause during the reboot process (more info). I also made sure there was nothing in the optical drive and that no USB drives were plugged in.

Other items: If there are other maintenance tasks or optimizations that you wish to perform, now’s the time. Likewise, make note of any additional maintenance metrics that are important to you.

A clean, secure, error-free base system

To review: Based on all the major maintenance tasks referenced above, here’s what’s been done so far:

• Pre-maintenance system image/backup made
• Junk/temp files cleaned
• Registry cleaned
• System scanned and verified as malware-free
• Firewall operation verified
• Drives checked for logical errors and any errors corrected
• Drives defragged
• Operating system and browser(s) fully updated
• Other software fully updated with all relevant security patches
• BIOS and drivers updated, if necessary
• Operating System files’ integrity verified
• System errors checked; significant errors remediated
• Post-maintenance system image/backup made
• Baseline maintenance metrics recorded and saved, off-system

It’s an impressive list, and you might be perfectly happy with the way your system is right now. If so, great!

But maybe you’d get even better results from a different tool. Next week, I’ll show you what happens when I ran several different commercial maintenance tools on the same PC setup; you’ll see which tools — commercial or free — did a better job.

And again: If you choose the hands-on option, you’ll produce customized test results that are specific to your own unique mix of hardware, software, skill level, and preference.

You’ll know, definitively, whether free or commercial maintenance tools are the best fit for you!

Stay tuned!

IE version change wrecks Google Maps?

When a feature suddenly changes for the worse — or disappears from your machine entirely — it’s natural to wonder what you might have done to cause the unwelcome event.

Lounge member BillWilson believed a recent upgrade to Internet Explorer 11 might have been responsible for ugly rendering of Google Maps. So he posted his problem in the Internet Explorer forum. But as it turns out, Google has been making changes, too.

The following links are this week’s most interesting Lounge threads, including several new questions for which you might have answers:

Office Applications
General Productivity	Win7 doesn’t burn CDs/DVDs any more
Word Processing	Urgent help needed; corrupt Word 2010 file
Spreadsheets	Wandering cell comments in Excel 2007
Databases	Access 2007 switchboard issue
Visual Basic for Apps	Adding lines to worksheet via VBA
Microsoft Outlook	Outlook 365 rules have quit working
Non-Outlook E-mail	Screen shots and photos sent via Gmail received as gibberish
Other MS Apps	OneDrive not working on Vista machine
Windows
General Windows	Change flash drive from CDFS to NTFS?
Windows 8	USB devices not recognized
Windows 7	Win7 sign-in password fails
Windows Vista	Installing Vista on external drive
Windows XP	Issues installing Java 7.67 update
Windows Servers	Server 2008 R2: Hiding desktop icons and pushing printers
Internet/Connectivity
Internet Explorer	IE 11 wrecks Google Maps
Third-Party Browsers	Firefox crashes
Networking	Can’t stream music via Internet anymore
Social Media	Skype kills third-party IM-client support
Other Technologies
Security & Scams	Shadow Defender problem
Maintenance	Image backups: Move to new hardware with SYSPREP?
Hardware	Dual- and triple-channel RAM
Graphics/Multimedia	PaintShop Pro X and PaintShop Pro X5 freezing
Other Applications	Guitar Rig 3

starred posts: particularly useful

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If you’re already registered, you can jump right into today’s discussions in the Lounge

'Situation threatens to become catastrophic'

We seldom get an opportunity to bring you comedy about the publishing industry — some people would say that’s only right because the publishing industry is seldom funny. Still, recognizing that humor can come from astonishing places, we’re pleased to bring you a video from HBO comic John Oliver, who explains the increasingly difficult relationship of advertising and the news. By the end of the video, you, too, will cringe whenever you hear the term “native advertising.” (No, it’s not ads produced by locals!) Click below or go to the original YouTube video.

Turn vacation photo albums into a group project

Your summer vacation would be a fading memory if not for the dozens or hundreds of digital photos you and your fellow travelers snapped.

Posting a few images online for all to see is easy; with the right tools, organizing dozens of photos into cloud-based digital photo albums isn’t that much harder.

When posting a photo or two won’t do

Few of us take solitary vacations and keep our travel photos to ourselves. For most of us, vacation means traveling with spouses, significant others, kids, friends, relatives, and even pets. And most of your fellow travelers (okay, maybe not the pets) have a camera or a smartphone that qualifies as one. Today, one vacation can easily produce a hundred or more digital images — most of which we feel compelled to share with others, regardless of the quality of the photos. And, of course, we want to see what our traveling companions recorded.

Obviously, the Internet makes simple photo sharing easy. At this point, who hasn’t posted a few images on Facebook or some other social site? But quickly posting and sharing a vacation’s worth of photos? That’s not so easy — especially if you want to create an online photo album in collaboration with fellow travelers. Most cloud-based photo services, social-media sites, and online-storage services let you collaborate on creating digital-photo albums, but they don’t all make it easy.

Some services require jumping through virtual hoops, such as setting up special “groups” that make the task needlessly difficult. And those services that do make it easy still put up an often unavoidable hurdle: every collaborator must be a member of the same service (though typically the membership is free). In the worst cases, photo-album collaborators must also download and install software.

There are too many online photo services to cover here — Flickr, Picasa, Photobucket, Snapfish, and many others. For this article, I’m sticking to three of the most popular services: Facebook, Dropbox, and Google Drive. All three are reasonably easy to use and extremely popular — there’s a good chance that your photo-album collaborators use at least one of them.

Photo albums as a collaborative art form

Assuming you’d like to set up a digital photo album and invite others to add to it, you should be aware of a few rules and courtesies that will make the process go more smoothly.

First, if you couldn’t find a service that all collaborators already use, help those who need to sign up. Send them the correct URL. If they’re truly cyberphobic, walk them through the process.

When you set up the album, make it initially available only to your collaborators. When everyone involved is satisfied with the group’s work, you can then share it — in a view-only form — with friends and relatives who weren’t fortunate enough to travel with you.

Don’t upload all your vacation photos. Be discriminating. That might sound obvious, but some people feel compelled to throw in every overexposed, poorly framed, or out-of-focus snapshot. Don’t include 10 virtually identical images just because you had multi-shot mode switched on. And ask your collaborators to do the same. (Keep in mind that limiting your submissions to just the best images will also reduce your upload time.)

Also, resize your photos to fit a standard computer screen. Digital cameras typically take images of 10 megapixels or more. Shrinking those images will greatly reduce upload times.

Collaboration means give and take. Delete any photos that your fellow collaborators object to. You might think their portrait in front of that towering waterfall looks great, but they might think it makes them look old or fat. There’s no reason to get into family feuds over one or two photos.

With that out of the way, let’s look at the services.

Facebook: The ubiquitous and obvious choice

For most people on the Internet, Facebook is the go-to place for sharing personal photos — plus recipes, recent events, current life philosophy, favorite movies, political rant, and other mind droppings. There’s a good chance that all of your photo-album collaborators are also on Facebook.

But putting your life on Facebook can be a bit scary. The company makes a good profit from mining the information you share with friends and selling the nuggets to advertisers. You can protect yourself fairly well — if you know how. Unfortunately, Facebook changes the rules every so often. To see what I mean, check out Patrick Marshall’s Jan. 17, 2013, article, “A refresher course on Facebook privacy controls.”

Assuming you — and your collaborators — are smart enough to not put anything really private on Facebook, creating a new Facebook photo album is easy. On your homepage, click Photos and then Create Album (see Figure 1). In the Create Album dialog box, give the album a name and then click Custom (Figure 2). Click Custom again and, in the next dialog box, click Only Me.

Once you’ve created an album, you can upload photos. Facebook makes it easy to add a picture or two to the timeline status — you just drag and drop. But uploading a large batch of images is more difficult. Click the Add More Photos button; if you have Flash Player installed, you’ll get a Windows Explorer–like dialog box that lets you select a group of images. (To make life easier, gather all the images you want to upload into one easily accessed folder.)

If you don’t have Flash or it isn’t working properly, an online dialog box will let you upload up to five images at a time (see Figure 3) — after selecting each one individually.

After your own photos are uploaded, it’s time to get collaborative. Click the Change to Shared Album button in the upper-left corner of the album window. You’ll be asked to identify your collaborators from your Facebook friends list, as shown in Figure 4. (Note the prechecked box, Contributors can add their friends as contributors; you might want to uncheck it.) They’ll be notified that they can now upload their own photos to the album.

After everyone has agreed that the album is ready for full sharing, click the Edit button in the upper-right corner and make a choice in the Privacy pull-down menu. I recommend limiting the album to Friends of Contributors (Figure 5).

Dropbox: Share the photos on your drive

Dropbox comes at photo albums from an entirely different direction. It’s primarily about making your files conveniently available to you and selected others — not sharing your life with friends and advertisers.

If you’re not familiar with Dropbox (site), here are the basics. The Dropbox program, running in the background, uploads to a cloud-based server everything stored in your local Dropbox folder. It also downloads files in the other direction. Thus, the contents of that folder (and its subfolders) stay synched between cloud storage and all devices that have Dropbox installed and are signed in to the same account.

Dropbox offers two ways to share the contents of a folder with others. Here’s the method that allows collaboration.

Start by moving your best vacation photos to a new folder within the Dropbox folder. The name of this folder will become the name of the album, so make it friendly and descriptive.

Don’t worry about uploading the photos. The very act of putting them into the folder will start the upload.

Right-click the folder and select Share this folder (see Figure 6) in the Dropbox section of the context menu. This opens a browser window to Dropbox.com, where a Share dialog box will appear. Enter your collaborators’ email addresses. You can add a message (see Figure 7). I suggest you uncheck Allow members to invite others before you click Share folder.

Dropbox will send invitations to your collaborators. But these could be caught by spam filters, so you should send a private message to each as well. Each collaborator will need to click a link in the email and then press the resulting Accept button. Most important, they must already have a Dropbox account set up and running.

Once they click Accept, Dropbox will download your album folder into their Dropbox folder. Any photos dragged into the folder will be synched and soon appear in the album folders of every other collaborator. They can also delete any photos they don’t like.

This process is very easy, but there’s a catch. A free Dropbox account starts with only 2GB available. A large collection of high-resolution photos coming from collaborators’ Dropbox accounts can soak up much or all of that limited space, resulting in an error message and a failed upload. That’s all the more reason to shrink your images and select only your best efforts.

After everyone agrees that the album is ready to share with others, right-click the folder and select Share Dropbox link. This puts a URL onto your clipboard. You can then paste the URL into an email that you send to friends and family. The collaborators can also send the URL to their friends and family.

The good news is that anyone receiving the URL doesn’t need to join Dropbox or download anything to view the pictures. All they’ll need is the URL, a browser, and an Internet connection. The Dropbox website provides a workable photo browser, where you can see thumbnails, enlarge a photo to fill the browser window, and download the full picture.

Google Drive: A bigger version of Dropbox

Google’s Dropbox clone has one big advantage over the original: generosity. A free account gives you 15GB of storage right off the bat. If your album takes up a significant amount of that space, you’ve got way too many photos!

For creating and sharing photo albums, Google Drive (site) behaves almost exactly like Dropbox. But the menus and dialog boxes are significantly different. So I’ll just cover them. Also, by default, files stored in Google Drive are only in the cloud. To have a local Google Drive folder, you must click the option Install Drive for your computer.

To do any kind of sharing, right-click the photo album folder, which — of course — must be in your Google Drive folder. Select Share; then, in the resulting Share Settings dialog box, click the Change link.

This opens a link sharing box that lets you select who can access the folder: anyone, anyone with the link, or specific people.

Select the Specific people option (Figure 9), click Save, and you’ll then be returned to the Share settings box. You can now add your collaborators by entering their email addresses (Figure 10). Make sure that each of them has the option Can edit next to his or her name.

When you click Send, the Share settings dialog box will refresh itself and display a list of invitees. At that point, you can separately change each individual’s ability to edit or view the folder.

Once the album is complete and you’re ready to share it with more than your collaborators, right-click the folder and select Google Drive/Share/Change. This time, however, select Anyone with the link. A new Access option will appear; make sure it’s set to Can view. The URL will appear at the top of this dialog box, so you can copy, paste, and email it.

Whether you use Facebook, Dropbox, or Google Drive, you shouldn’t have any trouble creating a collaborative photo album — unless, of course, you and your collaborators find yourselves fighting over which photos stay in and which are best left unshared. In that case, consider looking for new traveling companions.

How to prevent repair/recovery disc failures

Simple, proactive steps and tests can help ensure that repair/recovery disks work as they should — when you really need them.

Plus: Using hard-drive “short-stroking,” File History’s excessive use of disk space, and a virus-scan crashing problem.

Drive-letter change causes repair-disc failure

After reading the April 24 LangaList Plus column, “Obscure error halts rescue disk-creation process,” reader David Malherbe sent in a note sharing his own experiences:

• “I’ve had a similar problem on a few Win7 machines over the years. The CD/DVD drive worked perfectly for everything, except with repair discs. It would then fail.

  “The problem started after I created a second partition to store photos, music, and so forth. I named the ‘new’ drive D:, which changed the assigned letter for the CD/DVD drive. When I reformatted the machine and reinstalled Win7 with no second partition, I had no problem creating a rescue CD.”

Yes, changing drive-letter assignments can royally mess up operations with bootable rescue/repair media.

Unfortunately, PCs still use drive-lettering conventions carried over, virtually unchanged, from their earliest days — over 30 years ago.

On those first personal computers (including both CPM and DOS systems), we booted the OS, ran applications, and stored our data on the only media devices available — cassette and floppy drives. Those drives were permanently assigned A: and B:.

Soon, hard drives found their way into PCs, and those devices received the letter C:. (It was probably assumed at the time that no PC would need two hard drives.) Optical drives came next; they were almost always assigned D:.

That drive-labeling convention has persisted, even as personal-computer technology changed radically over the years. For example, A: and B: are still reserved for floppy drives we no longer use. (How many of us still even possess a floppy drive?)

Three things upended that predictability.

First, the size of hard drives grew to the point where splitting (partitioning) a physical drive into two or more logical drives became both practical and useful. And each new partition received its own drive letter.

Unfortunately, the established drive-lettering conventions did not fully anticipate the consequences of partitioning or having multiple drives. To this day, inserting a new partition/drive low in the device chain — say, D: — can cause ripple effects that reassign drive letters to all other devices above C:.

Second, Windows made it easy to reassign and shuffle drive letters — more or less as you wish. (See the Microsoft support article, “Change, add, or remove a drive letter.”) If you want your secondary partition or hard drive to be M: or W: or Z:, or your optical drive to be L:, O:, X:, or whatever, Windows lets you do so.

Finally, today’s ubiquitous USB drives and other devices such as media players, phones, and cameras obtain and release drive letters on the fly, in an ever-changing mix that depends on what’s plugged in and when.

The upshot: Aside from the primary C: drive, virtually any drive can end up with almost any drive-letter assignment. (In a multi-boot setup, even the primary drive/partition might end up with an assigned letter other than C:.)

Windows normally handles this kind of drive-letter juggling easily. But some things are out of Windows’ control. When a PC first wakes up (especially if the PC is using an old-school BIOS), Windows isn’t yet awake or running the show. Until Windows takes over, the BIOS in most PCs simply uses the primitive, straight-up-the-alphabet drive-lettering conventions.

And that’s where trouble can start. If you create a Windows repair/recovery disc while Windows is using nondefault or variable drive-letter assignments, or if you alter drive-letter assignments after the disc was created, there can be a mismatch when you later use that disc to boot your PC.

Effectively, the disc is booting outside the Windows environment that created it. Any Windows-based drive-letter assignments will not yet be in effect, and your drives and files will not be where the repair/recovery disc expects to find them. The repair/recovery operation might stop dead in the water.

For that reason, I recommend (whenever possible) sticking with Windows’ default drive and folder locations and settings for repair, recovery, and backup activities. Repair/recovery disks and backup tools have the greatest possible chance of success when there’s no mismatch between the PC’s default-drive letter assignments and those used internally by Windows.

I also recommend testing emergency boot/repair disks (both optical- and hard drive–based) and backup tools before you actually need them. Always ensure you can boot from your emergency disc and restore files to their proper locations.

By testing, you’ll uncover problems such as mismatched drive-letter assignments. If you find a problem, you can take the necessary steps — such as reassigning drive letters back to their defaults — to ensure successful system restores. You’ll have no unhappy surprises down the road.

Short-stroking mechanical hard drives for speed

Frequent correspondent Herman Berliss asked about a highly specialized hard-drive partitioning technique.

• “Fred, have you seen the Lifehacker article, “How to short-stroke your hard drive for optimal speed?” Have you ever done it? Is it worth doing?

Short-stroking is a rather extreme concept for improving the performance of a mechanical hard drive. It does not apply to solid-state drives.

The technique restricts the size of your main partition to only the outermost portions of a drive’s platters. Thus configured, the drive’s mechanical arms don’t have to move much — any motion is short and localized. The read/write heads more or less hover over the fastest-moving parts of the drive’s surface.

Ideally, the rest of the drive (the slower, inner portion) is left totally empty and unused, or is used to store only rarely accessed files.

Even before the dawn of solid-state drives, it seems to have been a relatively obscure tweak for improving drive input/output performance. Today, it might be useful in a heavily used RAID system, such as an enterprise-level file server, where drive performance is the most critical factor — i.e., in applications where milliseconds really matter.

But I can’t see any real-world advantage to using short-stroking in standard-duty, personal-use PCs — especially one with a large drive. You’d have to waste major portions of the drive in order to shave a handful of milliseconds off drive response time. You might not notice the change in disk performance, but you’ll definitely notice the lost disk space.

In my opinion, personal-use systems will benefit more from regular defragging. Good defragging tools can group most frequently accessed files towards the fast, outer portions of your hard drive’s platters. This has the same effect as short-stroking without requiring artificial restrictions on partition size. You get good speed plus full use of your drive, in whatever partition sizes you want.

Try short-stroking your drives if you wish; but personally, I don’t think it’s worth the effort.

Win8 File History consumes too much disk space

Robert Dessert’s Win8 File History is growing at an alarming rate.

• “Could you discuss why Win8’s backup system backs up many files multiple times, when there’s been no change to the files or their path? This causes the file history to grow far larger than it should be, often overflowing multi-terabyte drives. There are many references to this problem online, but I’ve not found a solution.

  “Please help!”

Wow! I talked about this problem a year ago. Apparently, you’re among the minority of Win8 users whose systems trigger a conflict between File History and its content-indexing subsystem. As a result, nearly every file on a system gets flagged for backup — even if there’s been no change since the last backup.

Two previous Windows Secrets articles should help you gain control over File History operations:

• Start by reading the Aug. 15, 2013, LangaList Plus column, “Solving File History’s ‘excessive saves’ bug.” That article details three known workarounds for the content indexing bug that plagues some Win8 systems — possibly including yours, Robert.
• Next, check out the March 13 LangaList Plus, “Controlling what Win8’s File History saves.” That article applies to all Win8 systems; it tells how to define exactly what File History includes in its backups — and what it should not include.

Once you’ve worked around the indexing bug and then established what files and folders Win8 should include in backups, File History’s excessive appetite for disk space should be tamed for good!

A virus scan causes repeatable crashes

Pierre Desjardins’s anti-malware tool continually crashes on the same files.

• “I have Iolo System Shield installed on my Vista Laptop. Each time I run a virus/spyware scan on the PC, it crashes when the scan is about 96 percent complete. And in each case it’s when the application is scanning C:\Windows\inf\.

  “What can I do to get this application to stop crashing during scans?”

Permanently solving this problem is a process of elimination. You’ll need to find out whether the crashes are caused by something in the C:\Windows\inf\ folder — e.g., malware or disk error — or by a flaw in your anti-malware tool itself.

Start by checking for disk errors. Windows’ Disk check works the same in all versions: in File Explorer, right-click the disk you want to check (in this case, C:) and select Properties. Click the Tools tab and then, under Error-checking, click Check now. Under Check disk options, select Automatically fix file system errors. (For more help, see the MS Support article, “Check your hard disk for errors.”)

If Windows finds disk errors and fixes them, try your anti-malware tool again. If it now runs to completion, you’re done!

If there were no disk errors or they were fixed, and your anti-malware tool still fails, you have a bit more detective work to do.

Use one or more anti-malware tools from other vendors to thoroughly scan your system. There are many such tools available; see, for example, the April 11, 2013, Top Story “A dozen tools for removing almost any malware.”

If those tools find malware, then Iolo System Shield clearly wasn’t doing its job. I suggest you uninstall it and try a different tool for your regular scans.

If those non-Iolo tools don’t find malware but do successfully complete their scans, assume that the problem is with System Shield itself — some bug or incompatibility with your setup is causing it to fail. Again, the solution is to use a different anti-malware tool.

But with luck, your problem will turn out to be something simple, such as a superficial disk error that Disk Check easily and automatically corrected.

In any case, when you’re done, your system should have a healthy disk and a working anti-malware tool!

Win8.1 Update: Much ado about (almost) nothing

August’s Patch Tuesday is notable more for the updates we didn’t get than for those we did.

It was rumored that this Patch Tuesday would see the release of another big update for Windows 8.1 — the so-called Update 2. It never happened.

The Windows 8.1 update that never was

In late July, there were numerous reports that Microsoft would release an update on the level of Windows 8.1 Update, which added some much-needed UI fixes. As with every rumor of Windows 8 enhancements, the inclusion of a Win7-like desktop Start menu was mentioned. But the anticipated Windows 8.1 Update 2 never materialized. August’s Patch Tuesday brought only the usual round of security and nonsecurity fixes for Windows. So, as usual, I start with the security updates and follow those with the various nonsecurity patches.

MS14-051 (2976627)

Delay in giving browsers some added protection

This month’s Internet Explorer patch, KB 2976627, includes a framework for blocking obsolete ActiveX controls that could be used in cyber attacks. As noted on an Aug. 6 IEBlog post, Microsoft was planning to start blocking out-of-date ActiveX controls on Aug. 13 but delayed flipping the switch for a month, to give corporate customers additional time to prepare for the change.

The new system will alert IE users when it blocks webpages or parts of webpages because they contain dated ActiveX controls. Java apps often use ActiveX controls; if you have removed Java from your machine or are running the latest version of Java, you probably won’t see many (if any) of the blocking alerts.

Keep in mind that ActiveX blocking is limited to websites that run within IE’s Internet zone security settings. Local intranet and trusted sites are exempt. If you frequently visit a site you trust, and you keep getting ActiveX-blocking warnings, add the site to IE’s list of trusted locations. To do so, click Tools/Internet Options and then select the Security tab. Select Trusted sites and then click the Site button. Add the site’s URL.

This IE patch also includes fixes to IE for crashes and general performance issues.

In an Aug. 7 IEBlog post, Microsoft announced a change in its browser-support policy. Starting Jan. 12, 2016, only the latest browser on each platform will be supported. So, for example, Windows 7 users running IE 10 will have to upgrade to IE 11 to receive browser updates from Microsoft. According to the blog post, as of Jan. 12, 2016, the officially supported browsers will be:

• Vista SP2 — IE 9
• Windows Server 2008 SP2 — IE 9
• Win7 SP1 — IE 11
• Windows Server 2008 R2 SP1 — IE 11
• Win8.1 — IE 11
• Windows Server 2012 — IE 10
• Windows Server 2012 R2 — IE 11

Also remember to check that you have the latest version of Adobe Flash Player, Adobe Reader, and Acrobat. (Adobe typically releases updates for those products on Patch Tuesday, to keep them aligned with Microsoft’s updates.) Review Adobe Security Bulletins APSB14-18 and APSB14-19 for more information. Windows 8 users will see KB 2982794, which updates IE 11’s built-in Flash Player.

What to do: Install KB 2976627 (MS14-051) immediately.

MS14-043 (2978742)

Windows Media Center used in Office attacks

Taking advantage of a newly reported vulnerability in Windows, hackers could use a malicious Office file to exploit a flaw in Windows Media Center and take over PCs. The remedy, KB 2978742, is rated critical and applies to all Win7 systems except Starter and Home Basic plus Win8.x Pro machines. Attacks can occur if you browse to a malicious webpage that invokes a Media Center ActiveX control.

What to do: It’s likely that this exploit will be used in the near future. Install KB 2978742 (MS14-043) as soon as offered.

MS14-048 (2977201)

OneNote for one attack

OneNote is Microsoft’s excellent cross-platform, note-taking app. But this month’s security update for OneNote 2007 reminds us that opening unknown files could lead to an infection. KB 2977201 fixes a flaw in OneNote 2007 that could give an attacker the same rights as the current user. For the exploit to work, a user must click a link and then open a malicious file. An attacker could then create a file in the victim’s Startup folder and execute code on the next sign-in. Given that you can’t be infected simply by visiting a site or opening an email, KB 2977201 is rated merely important.

What to do: Install KB 2977201 (MS14-048) if it shows up in Windows Update.

MS14-045 (2976897, 2982791)

Two kernel-driver patches for multiple flaws

We’re now patching Windows kernel-mode drivers nearly as regularly as IE. Almost every month sees a new kernel fix. August’s KB 2976897 and KB 2982791 patch three kernel vulnerabilities and are rated important. Most Vista, Win7, and Win8.x systems will see both patches. (Windows Server 2003 will receive only KB 2982791.) Kernel updates are generally required for a secure Windows; keep in mind that this is another update XP won’t get.

That said, there are already reports of problems with KB 2982791. According to an MS Community post, some Windows 7 users are getting BSoDs after installing the update.

What to do: I recommend the usual process with kernel updates: put KBs 2976897 and 2982791 (MS14-045) on hold for a couple of weeks.

MS14-049 (2918614)

Windows installer service used in attacks

Recently revealed vulnerabilities suggest that hackers are trying to wiggle into our systems silently through Windows’ core services. For example, KB 2918614 patches a flaw in Windows’ installer system. According to the update’s description, an attacker could run “a specially crafted application that attempts to repair a previously installed application.” However, for the exploit to work, the attacker must be able to sign in to Windows locally. A successful exploit would give the attacker full admin rights to the system.

KB 2918614, rated important, applies to all current versions of Windows, including Server 2003.

What to do: Install KB 2918614 (MS14-049) when offered.

MS14-046 (2984625)

No reason to delay the latest .NET updates

Now that XP is behind us — at least from the perspective of MS support — the fear of .NET patching problems has nearly vanished. .NET updates are much better behaved on current platforms, so the need to uninstall and reinstall a troublesome patch is now rare.

August’s .NET updates include:

• Windows Vista SP2 — KBs 2937608 and 2943344
• Windows Server 2008 SP2 — KBs 2937608 and 2943344
• Windows 7 SP1 — KBs 2937610 and 2943357
• Windows Server 2008 R2 SP1 — KBs 2937610 and 2943357
• Windows 8 — KBs 2966825 and 2966827
• Windows 8.1 — KBs 2966826 and 2966828
• Windows Server 2012 — KBs 2966825 and 2966827
• Windows Server 2012 R2 — KBs 2966826 and 2966828

What to do: Install the .NET updates in MS14-046 as soon as possible.

MS14-047 (2978668)

Preventing ASLR security-system bypasses

Implemented in Vista, address space layout randomization (ASLR; more info) is a security technique that helps prevent buffer-overflow attacks. It works by placing code in random memory locations. An attacker can’t address a particular memory address and assume that some potentially exploitable code will be there.

But a privately reported Windows vulnerability could let an attacker bypass ASLR by using two or more vulnerabilities together. KB 2978668 is an important fix that applies to all current versions of Windows except Vista and versions of Windows Server 2003 and 2008.

What to do: Install KB 2978668 (MS14-047) as soon as it’s offered.

MS14-044 (2977315, 2977320, 2977321, 2977326)

Knocking off two vulnerabilities in SQL Server

You might have Microsoft SQL Server on your system and not know it. Typically, it’s installed by an application that needs it. The patches in MS14-044 fix flaws in SQL Server’s Master Data Services and the relational database-management system. An exploit of either flaw could result in a denial-of-service attack.

As with many other updates rated important, the related vulnerabilities fixed by these SQL Server patches can be exploited only if the user clicks a malicious link or attachment.

What to do: Install KBs 2977315, 2977320, 2977321, and/or 2977326 (MS14-044) if offered.

MS14-036 (2881071 )

A June MS Office 2010 patch déjà vu

Microsoft has a do-over for KB 2881071. The original update would fail or only partially install on specific editions of Office 2010.

What to do: This is a critical security update. Install KB 2881071 (MS14-036) if it shows up in Windows Update.

MS14-050 (2880994)

For admins: fix for SharePoint Server

KB 2880994 is rated important and fixes a potential exploit using malicious JavaScript apps. The affected platforms include versions of SharePoint Server 2013.

What to do: Install KB 2880994 (MS14-050) after testing.

2975719

Nonsecurity fixes for Windows 8.1 and Office

As noted at the top, the much-hyped Windows 8.1 Update 2 never came to pass. If Microsoft did have plans for another major update to Win8.1, they fizzled into the optional KB 2975719 — or, as Microsoft reportedly calls it, the “August Update.” Technology pundits now believe that significant updates to Win8 will come in Version 9.

The description for KB 2975719 calls this update a rollup that “resolves issues and includes performance and reliability improvements.” However, according to a Neowin post, the update is causing a problem with the Desktop taskbar — it will no longer automatically disappear. The post states that only some Win8.1 users are affected and the problem is not consistent.

Given my usual policy of holding off on nonsecurity updates, there’s all the more reason to leave KB 2975719 uninstalled for a couple of weeks. On my system, the patch was in the Optional section of Windows Update and unchecked.

The now usual deluge of Office updates. Once again, Redmond appears to be rebuilding Office 2013. Leave the following until the next Patch Watch, when I will give a thumbs-up or thumbs-down. (All the updates are for “stability and performance” fixes, unless otherwise noted.) For more information on the most recent nonsecurity Office updates, see Microsoft’s Office Sustained Engineering Team post.

Office 2007

• 2883097 – Outlook; junk filters

Office 2010

• 982726 – Outlook; junk filters
• 2687502 – Office; lexical improvements

Office 2013

• 2760249 – Office; blank list result in connection wizard
• 2760587 – Outlook; junk filters
• 2881009 – Office; file save issues
• 2881011 – Outlook; file save issues
• 2881070 – Lync
• 2883036 – Office; online activation issue
• 2883049 – Office; improve visuals
• 2883051 – PowerPoint; file save issues
• 2883052 – Office; file save issues
• 2883057 – Web Apps Server; pivot and data-source issue
• 2883058 – Word; table indent issue
• 2883060 – Office; lexical improvements
• 2883061 – Excel
• 2883062 – Office; file save issues
• 2883066 – OneDrive for Business; file save issues

Other nonsecurity updates

• 2760319 – SharePoint Server 2013; language translation errors
• 2880518 – SharePoint Server; lexical improvements
• 2880542 – MS Web Applications; lexical improvements
• 2880998 – SharePoint Server; language translation errors
• 2881034 – SharePoint Server; lexical improvements
• 2881079 – Visio; language translation errors
• 2881083 – Lync; lexical improvements

Windows 7 updates

• 2980245 – IE crashes
• 2981580 – Time zones
• 2970228 – Russian ruble symbol

Other Windows 8 updates:

• 2970228 – Russian ruble symbol
• 2971239 – Mobile device manager
• 2979500 – Digital camera file formats
• 2981580 – Time zones
• 2981655 – Sites using HTTPS won’t open in Firefox after family-safety update

What to do: Leave all offered nonsecurity updates until after the Aug. 28 Patch Watch.

Regularly updated problem-patch chart

For Microsoft’s list of recently released patches, go to the MS Security TechCenter page. See our “Windows Secrets master Patch Watch chart” post for a more extensive list of recent updates.

Patch	Released	Description	Status
2871997	05-13	Enhancements to Local Security Authority	Optional
2952664	05-13	Migration compatibility	Optional
2976897	08-12	Kernel update	Hold
2982791	08-12	Kernel update; reports of BSoDs	Hold
2939576	06-10	XML Core Services; also KB 2966631 for Win8.1 (non-Update)	Install
2957189	06-10	TCP Protocol; also KB 2961858 for Win8.1 (non-Update)	Install
2957689	06-10	Internet Explorer; also KB 2963950 for Win8.1 (non-Update)	Install
2965788	06-10	Remote Desktop; also KB 2966034 for Win8.1 (non-Update)	Install
2967487	06-10	MS Graphic Component; see MS014-036 for full list.	Install
2969258	06-10	MS Lync; KBs 2969258, 2963288; see MS014-032.	Install
2969261	06-10	Word; KBs 2880513 and 2880515; see MS014-034.	Install
2961072	07-08	Windows AFD; also KB 2973408 for Win8.1 (non-Update)	Install
2962872	07-08	IE cumulative update; also KB 2963952 for Win8.1 (non-Update)	Install
2971850	07-08	Windows Journal; also KB 2974286 for Win8.1 (non-Update)	install
2972280	07-08	Windows DirectShow; also KB 2973932 for Win8.1 (non-Update)	Install
2972621	07-08	Microsoft Service Bus for Windows Server	Install
2973201	07-08	Windows on-screen keyboard; also KB 2973906 for Win8.1 (non-Update)	Install
2880994	08-12	SharePoint Server	Install
2881071	08-12	Office 2010; reissued	Install
2962490	08-12	Windows installer	Install
2976627	08-12	Internet Explorer	Install
2977201	08-12	OneNote 2007 SP3	Install
2978742	08-12	Windows Media Center	Install
2978668	08-12	ASLR bypass	Install
2984340	08-12	MS SQL Server	Install
2984625	08-12	.NET; see MS14-046 for full list	Install

Status recommendations: Skip — patch not needed; Hold — do not install until its problems are resolved; Wait — hold off temporarily while the patch is tested; Optional — not critical, use if wanted; Install — OK to apply.