Author Topic: (Solved) Problems with Lenovo bloatware (Read 73452 times)

Lady · « **Reply #50 on:** September 13, 2015, 03:35:49 am »

I thought about this for a while. I believe what went wrong was that I thought a systembackupimage was saving the basic software, similar to what you get after a re-installation. (I don't know the jargon to put it differently. :S)

So in my SBI I just copied the C: and some system reserved part that were default anyway. Because I backup all my files I have on D: and E:.

You, Boggin, on the other hand, save a lot of your other data and current system settings in the SBI as well. That's where it went wrong. I got puzzled and had a bit of a meltdown. Mainly because I had been working on several pc issues for months and it hadn't been easy for me.

I thought about it but it still feels like too much for me to also keep a SBI up-to-date. With all the maintenance that I'm doing already (running various spyware/antivirus scans, cleaning the pc (I use Wise Disk Cleaner), trying to keep my privacy protected, solving problems with Windows that never seem to stop appearing :S, I think it's enough.

Re your tip about smileys: yes, I'm no IT expert but not a total nerd.

) I assume that came about because you don't know this one: :S which I use a lot and means: "oops, that went wrong/feeling awkward or confused". At least, that's the kind of face I pull with these emotions, hahaha.

Among you guys I'm a novice, absolutely, but among my friends I'm the only one who takes care of her pc and laptop this meticulously. Some of them don't even back up their files or have an antivirus program!! Among them I'm the one-eyed queen, hahahaha. So I think I'm all set with just a basic SBI and my regular routine.

Don't you agree?

Oh, still no answer on the Lenovo forum. Repeated my question just now and put in the link that Samson gave me about the Lenovo Search Engine to perhaps wake some Lenovo users up.

Still immensely grateful for your help, Boggin. And for your patience going thru ALL these words of mine.

Boggin · « **Reply #51 on:** September 13, 2015, 04:54:22 am »

I'm not sure if this is one of my off days, but what is a SBI

I'm not familiar with :s but that would only produce an emoticon if it was part of the forum's emoticons.

Lady · « **Reply #52 on:** September 13, 2015, 05:45:20 am »

To avoid having to type it again and again: an SBI is a systemimagebackup. Not an official abbreviation, surely, but you COULD have guessed it. Off day it is, Boggin!

But you're right, next time I'll introduce it when I'm using an idiosyncratic abbreviation.

Yes, I know the :S is not part of the forum's emoticons, but that's not keeping me from using it.

So now you know what an SBI is: do you agree with what I wrote?

Then we can close this and move on.

Boggin · « **Reply #53 on:** September 13, 2015, 06:02:55 am »

If it had been SIB perhaps, but I just type image if I've already referenced system image.

Are D: and E: external HDDs ?

A system image is a snapshot of what is on the computer at the time, but where you also have a Recovery partition, you can also include that in the image so that it is a full snapshot.

The downside of just relying on that is that when you restore with it, it's a all or nothing restore in that you cannot be selective in what you want to restore and backing up personal stuff separate is the way to go - as I do with my Wordpad Docs onto Flash drives.

It sounds as if you have everything under control, so I guess you could wrap this up.

Lady · « **Reply #54 on:** September 13, 2015, 06:19:14 am »

Oh my goodness gracious me, I messed the letters up.................... :S

Boggin · « **Reply #55 on:** September 13, 2015, 06:31:34 am »

Quote from: Lady on September 13, 2015, 06:19:14 am

Oh my goodness gracious me, I messed the letters up.................... :S

Lady · « **Reply #56 on:** September 13, 2015, 07:15:29 am »

Talking about idiosyncrasies.............

But I could very well use my smiley there! Hahaha. Feeling VERY awkward indeed.

D: and E: are partitions of my internal HD where I keep my personal files and music files respectively. I have all these data backed up on my two external HDs F: and G: which are connected to my desktop pc permanently. Some smaller-sized important personal data like Word I also back-up sometimes on USB-sticks. And then I have my laptop now as well. Only when my house gets on fire I'm in trouble.

Do you use flash drives for backup as they are more reliable than external HDs? And do you mean USB-sticks or external SSDs? Probably USB-sticks for Wordpad documents. I need a lot of backup space due to my large amount of audio, video and music files. SSDs are still too expensive.

I'd like to secure my external HDs (and USB-sticks) with a password. I read about it online, there are various programmes for it but what would you advise?

Or do you want me to start a new topic about this?

Boggin · « **Reply #57 on:** September 13, 2015, 09:40:49 am »

As I don't have anything sensitive or of import to anyone else and no one else has access to my bits and pieces, I've never considered password protecting either my laptops or external HDDs.

I did a Google on how do I password protect external hdd and a number of links came up, but nothing seems to be free - although StorageCrypt may suit your needs if you want a paid for program. https://7labs.heypub.com/tips-tricks/lock-external-hard-drive-with-password.html

Some external HDDs include encryption from what I've read, but any form of security lock on the HDDs you will be using for the system images could hamper Windows accessing them if you ever needed to restore with them.

Yes, I do mean USB sticks as the Wordpad docs aren't that large, although prior to factory resetting I will back up my Downloads and Documents folders onto a 16GB stick.

As D: and E: are internal partitions, I would expect those to be also listed to include when using Windows Create a system image to give you a full image of your computer.

Lady · « **Reply #58 on:** September 13, 2015, 11:39:23 am »

Very good point there about access in case I need the SIB. (I did it right now, haha.) I forgot to mention it but data encryption programmes I ruled out earlier, as I read that those carry no small risk of permanently damaging one's data. I'll look into it later for my USB-sticks because recently I lost one with photos on it. Using one of these password programmes sounds alright.

Do you mean that you keep all your setup files that you download? For the sake of knowing which ones to download again? That might be a good idea. My solution to knowing my programmes is making a few screenshots of Programs and Features and saving those on my various backups.

See, now I get confused again with this SIB thing. If it's a snapshot of what's on the computer, doesn't it contain all the programmes that I downloaded? So why keep the download folder then? Does an SIB even copy all the tabs I have open in Firefox too e.g.?

Yes, D: and E: are listed in the SIB creating process but they only contain personal data, no system things (as far as I know). In fact, there's nothing more on them than there is on their backups on F: and G:. And they're large: 320 and 456 Gb resp. That's why I didn't include them in my SIB. It would only mean a double backup on the external HDs, wouldn't it?

No, there's one thing different. This file: 749dfcf3fecb51fcd07aca2b4b. I was told this was some malicious software removal tool by Microsoft and that I should leave it. Don't really know what to do with it, or does it do something on its own? What a stupid way of Microsoft to just install it like that. It just was there one day. Who of us non-IT people would know what that is. It actually looks like malware like this.

Boggin · « **Reply #59 on:** September 13, 2015, 12:31:57 pm »

There are some programs that don't actually install but run as a one off, so their Application stays in the Downloads folder, but there are others that have now been updated but I need to run the older version - the Downloads folder is also a handy place to keep trial versions of programs, so that once you have used them - you uninstall and then run it again from there which stops the clock on them.

Naughty I suppose, but why pay for a program that hardly gets used.

When you have valuable stuff like photos and music backed up, it's usually advocated that you have more than one back up should one of them fail.

External HDDs can fail or become corrupt just as internal ones can and I prefer to keep a separate back up of those folders should a system image fail, which has been known because of corruption.

I've only experienced one failure when I used DVDs and wanted to go back to the one before the last, but with an external HDD, you don't have that option.

Once you have created a system image you should restore with it to see if it works.

Lady · « **Reply #60 on:** September 14, 2015, 10:00:34 pm »

Thank you, that was very informative.

Yes, I did that with Revo Uninstaller Pro until this friend of mine, the head of the tech dept. of my pc shop, told me to use the portable version which was freeware. But then I got into trouble as I didn't know that version only finds the 32-bits programs as you told me. So back to the naughty routine.

I thought we were finished, Boggin, but now I just found out I cannot make SIBs of my desktop pc. I'll make a new topic.

THANK YOU for all your help with this thread!!! <3

Lady · « **Reply #61 on:** September 14, 2015, 10:39:08 pm »

Second post:

To be clear: i'm now trying to make a SIB of my desktop pc.

I get an error message indicating there's something wrong with the I/O devices. See attachment. It's in Dutch, I'll translate:

-----------------------------------------------------------------

Making a system image backup

The backup failed.

One of the backup files cannot be made (0x8078002A)

Additional info:
The request could not be performed because of an I/O device error (0x8007045D)

-----------------------------------------------------------------

The backup failed for both my external HDDs with the same error message. I looked up the codes and different solutions are being given, like chkdsk for the external HDDs, but I don't understand. These HDDs are fairly new.

My intuitive feeling is that I first should do an overhaul of my desktop pc like I did with my laptop, remember? I wanted to do that after I cleaned my laptop as I have been feeling for a while that the desktop is not functioning properly anymore. FYI: after I bought this desktop I had MAJOR problems with bluescreens and all kinds of nasty stuff. That's how I came here. Somebody told me to do a Windows Repair. And after a year of trying everything in the book on another forum and I was near a meltdown again as you can imagine, everything was solved after the Repair. I mean, Shane is my HERO now!

But I feel it's time to do some cleaning again. Would you mind helping me out again?

So the first step should be doing a Windows Repair All In One, right? I run all kinds of scans regularly, like MBAM and my BullGuard Antivirus programme, and ESET Online scanner, so there is no malware to be seen in miles around!! Or do you have any other suggestions to do first?

The Repair All In One should be run in Safe Mode if I remember correctly. I'm always scared of doing that, but I think I'll just pull myself through it again. :S

Boggin · « **Reply #62 on:** September 15, 2015, 01:58:21 am »

What is the OS on the Desktop and have you been able to use these external HDDs on the Desktop before ?

Reading this article http://gadgets.itwriting.com/998-why-your-new-2tb-or-3tb-drive-will-not-work-with-windows-backup.html suggests it could be a compatibility issue as they are new HDDs, but run the command on each HDD as suggested in the article to see if this applies to your HDDs.

Lady · « **Reply #63 on:** September 16, 2015, 06:43:02 am »

My desktop OS is Windows 7 Home Premium, Service Pack 1, 64 bits.

My external HDDs, both Seagate 2 Tb, were bought in August 2014 and February 2015 and are permanently connected to my desktop pc and have been performing flawlessly since they were attached. I use them daily for backing up files manually.

I read the article and ran the command for each HDD and they both have a 4K sector size, both physical and logical, so they're 4K native. I don't understand much of all kinds of related articles I read but I gather there is no solution if they're 4K native, only if they have a 4K logical and a 512-byte physical sector (Advanced Format). I looked on the Seagate site but they just say: use software that is 4K-aware.....which for the backup programmes is Windows 8 (my laptop has W8, indeed no problem with the SIB). I tried to make a SIB on my 500 Gb Seagate portable HD that I have for my laptop, but that didn't work either, although this HD has 4K physical sectors and a 512 logical sector (error code there was 0x80070015, searched on that code but nothing.) I guess I have to use the fix that is available for the Advanced Format HDDs, but I don't really want to use the small HDD for this SIB, it takes up more than 66 Gb.

Do you still follow me?

So, I wasted a lot of hours reading difficult stuff and as far as I know now, this cannot be solved. Seagate points at Microsoft and Microsoft only made a fix for the Advanced Format HDDs. Western Digital seems to have made a fix for their 4K native HDDs......

I hope this is all correct what I'm stating. Well, I suppose I can live without the desktop SIB. :S (See how often this smiley comes in handy, hahaha. The emoticon for "confused" looks the part, but it shouldn't be meaning confused, it's more like: oh, bummer.) In case of a total crash, I just re-install the old-fashioned way.

Or can you come up with any ideas, Boggin?

Boggin · « **Reply #64 on:** September 16, 2015, 07:43:35 am »

Not if Seagate can't

- compatibility is compatibility or lack of it.

Each system image for the same machine won't keep taking up 60 - 70GB each time as it just overwrites the previous one and would only grow by how much extra you had put on the machine.

I have system images for 4 laptops on a Seagate 500GB external and there's still ~240GB free - although there isn't a great deal on each machine.

I have a 1TB Seagate that works okay on a Win 7 laptop but I formatted that to NTFS before I used it, although from the article, only 2 and 3TB HDDs are afflicted with this problem.

Lady · « **Reply #65 on:** September 16, 2015, 11:04:22 am »

BTW: I said it wrong: the portable HDD is 1 Tb, not 500 Gb. I forgot. :S But it contains all backup data from the laptop, the biggest being my music file of over 400 Gb. That's why I was worried about all these Gbs of a SIB. But with 1 Tb it's no problem.

So it seemed the SIB on the portable HDD had failed. I got a hunch. [Hey, I'm a woman.

] I removed the SIB that was on the portable (there were files missing and the volume of the HDD didn't increase after removing it, so it had failed). With the first attempt I had connected the HDD to my desktop via a USB hub and I have had trouble with transferring data via one of my hubs before, so I decided to disconnect one of my Big Boys HDDs which are both directly on a 3.0 USB port and I put the portable on that port. Closed all applications and tried again. It was done in no time and the volume decreased with 53 Gb. Only the MediaId file contains 4 Kb, the rest 0 Kb. So it worked! Not sure why it didn't work in the first place as it should have worked with the 512 sector. Didn't want to do any fix with my beautiful little blue HDD either.

We solved another issue!! Hurray for us!

So..............big sigh...................let's continue, dear Boggin. This is where we left off. Is this the correct way to go about it? If so, please remind me how to do the safe mode again. I can look it up but my eyes are squared now. :S

Quote from: Lady on September 14, 2015, 10:39:08 pm

But I feel it's time to do some cleaning again. Would you mind helping me out again?

So the first step should be doing a Windows Repair All In One, right? I run all kinds of scans regularly, like MBAM and my BullGuard Antivirus programme, and ESET Online scanner, so there is no malware to be seen in miles around!! Or do you have any other suggestions to do first?

The Repair All In One should be run in Safe Mode if I remember correctly. I'm always scared of doing that, but I think I'll just pull myself through it again. :S

Boggin · « **Reply #66 on:** September 16, 2015, 12:34:36 pm »

There's a button in WR to boot into Safe Mode for you but if you ever need to boot up into Safe Mode for trouble shooting purposes, this article will show ways in which do it. http://www.7tutorials.com/5-ways-boot-safe-mode-windows-8-windows-81

Personally I don't think you need to run WR on your new machine unless you think it isn't performing as it should.

Is the Hub's cable integral or is it replaceable ?

Lady · « **Reply #67 on:** September 16, 2015, 02:40:36 pm »

Boggie,

you gotta stay with it! We're still working on the desktop pc now. With Windows 7. The laptop (W8.1) is all done! It's the scanning and repairing you showed me after I did WR on the laptop that gave me the idea to do the same with the desktop. Since I had so much trouble with it in the beginning. Maybe we can fix it to a tee now.

And after that, I'm ALLLLLLL done! And I'm going to enjoy the pc and the laptop for fun and regular things ONLY!!

Oh, apart from the partition problem I'm having. [See my other topic.]

Oh yeah, I remember the button in WR now. I think I used it and it was easy. I'm just always scared to get it back into normal mode again but if I remember well, the pc returns to normal mode after reboot by itself, right?

The hub's USB cable is replaceable. Does that make it less reliable? I have two hubs. Both with replaceable cables, one with power chord.

Boggin · « **Reply #68 on:** September 16, 2015, 04:33:38 pm »

There have been a couple of instances posted on the forum where normal mode hasn't returned after the reboot, but that is easily resolved by going into msconfig (type that at Start and press enter) and under the Boot tab, uncheck any boxes under Safe Mode and then uncheck Safe Mode - Apply - OK and reboot.

A bad cable or cable connector can cause problems with Data transfer and changing or swapping over from the other one if compatible, could ID those as the cause of the previous SIB fail/corruption.

Lady · « **Reply #69 on:** September 17, 2015, 03:09:24 pm »

Alright, no problem then.

I'm working on the partitions first because if that ends in a total crash, then I don't have to worry about a WR and scans/repairs etc.!

Hahahaha

Still laughing now.........

Boggin · « **Reply #70 on:** September 17, 2015, 03:47:24 pm »

You have a point

Did you try swapping the cables over to see if a SIB would complete using one of the Hubs - or will that be for later ?

Lady · « **Reply #71 on:** September 17, 2015, 04:07:28 pm »

Yeah, I just saw the one point!!! But now I have two!!! I don't know how I get those. Is that for working so arduously on my computers?

))

If I continue like this, I'll be joining you guys in answering questions, hahahahaha.

No, I'm not trying out the cables. Have so much on my plate right now. The partition thing is really BIG. Did you read my post about that? You're a Brit, you might have laughed out loud about the joke I just made there about my Partition Adventure!

Boggin · « **Reply #72 on:** September 17, 2015, 04:14:12 pm »

Yes I did - and have you read my post on there ?

Lady · « **Reply #73 on:** September 17, 2015, 04:25:16 pm »

I just did.....

You guys are SO SWEET!!!

<3<3<3

Lady · « **Reply #74 on:** September 21, 2015, 04:14:48 am »

Boggin, I just now understood your trick of using Revo Pro over and over again for free. Could I in some way get the trial verson again without them knowing who I am? I threw the download away and cannot use Revo Pro without buying the licence. You mentioned using IOBit Uninstaller but when I clicked on the link you gave me earlier in this thread, MBAM blocked a malicious website (www.reimageplus.com). I thought MajorGeeks were clean? Can I still download the IOBit? I'd prefer to have Revo Pro though, 'cause I'm used to it and am very tired now of trying to find out how a new programme works. Hope you understand.

Then: I just checked to see if I got an answer on the Lenovo forum on the Search Engine. Nothing. But I clicked on a related article about Superfish and got a bit scared reading thru the comments. Apparently you can uninstall Superfish but it leaves hackable traces in the root certificates (?) and the registry. How do I know I still have those? If you read through the comments, people are pleading for clean OS disks. The last comment on page 2 by Fuzzilla is interesting but I'm not fully understanding all that is being said. Could you take a look and see if there's anything I should or could do to further secure my Lenovo laptop? And maybe get a clean recovery install set?? To refresh your memory: Superfish had been detected and removed by both MBAM and BullGuard the minute I opened up the laptop.

https://forums.lenovo.com/t5/Lenovo-P-Y-and-Z-series/Removal-Instructions-for-VisualDiscovery-Superfish-application/ta-p/2029206/show-comments/true