Defrag: SSD Questions, Tagging Files, Mirroring Drives, Hardware Hacks
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Description
Microsoft tech troubleshooter extraordinaire Gov Maharaj and I help walk you through troubleshooting solutions to your tech support problems. If you have a problem you want to send us, you can use the Problem Step Recorder in Windows 7 (see this for details on how) and send us the zip file to DefragShow@microsoft.com. We will also be checking comments for problems, but the email address will let us contact you if needed.
[01:10] Handing the 3TB limit on drives in Windows.
[06:30] How bad is a forced shutdown for your system.
[11:20] How long to wait before turning off hanging shutdown.
[13:05] Can someone tell what files were on my USB drive after taking out?
[15:15] How can user find the biggest files on D: drive?
[16:29] Suspected malware problem.
[19:10] Does switching to Win7 from XP really cut CO2 emissions?
[22:00] Changed number of boot cores and now Windows won't start. [link]
[25:00] How can I optimize Windows for best perf on a netbook?
[26:30] How can I get my old PocketPC working in Windows 7?
[28:00] How to configure Aero settings per user.
[29:52] A sound plays occassionally, how can user find where it's coming from?
[31:17] Rotating screen on a machine for using as eReader.
[32:47] What's the proper way to restart Explorer.exe after ending process?
[34:17] Hardware hacking pick of the week: 8020.net.
Note: Gov will be on vacation for the next two weeks to lock down some things. Keep your questions coming and we'll see you back here in a couple weeks. 
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The Discussion
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dentaku SequoiaView is very nice for finding the biggest files on a drive.
http://w3.win.tue.nl/nl/onderzoek/onderzoek_informatica/visualization/sequoiaview// -
MagicAndre1981 For the malware and the sound issues I would run ProcMon from Sysinternals to see what is going on there. Mark shows in his blog how to get the cause of a playing sound:
http://blogs.technet.com/b/markrussinovich/archive/2011/07/18/3439288.aspx
And Windows 7 uses less power because it runs by default (like Vista) in the power plan "balanced" instead of full power/high performance like XP did. So if the PC is idle the power saving features are active and can reduce the CPU speed and park CPUs (Core parking) to reduce the power consuming compared to XP.
@Gov
enjoy your vacation and come back and feel rested
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Moumen Thank you guys for the show! very informative
and hearing my name on the show was kind of cool too I asked that question (about the forced shut down) because it happens to me fairly often, and I was afraid it would harm my system in some way. Good to hear that I just need to be careful about my unsaved data.
I have another problem though, for which I don't seem to grasp the cause. This happened more than 4 or 5 times, where I set my computer to "Sleep", but then have it reboot! or just when I start my computer from a "Sleep" or "Hibernate" state, it starts as if it was just "Shut Down".
For the "Screen Rotation" question, I'm not sure if you're looking only for hot keys, because it can be easily done manually by right clicking on the Desktop, choosing "Screen Resolution" and changing the "Orientation"
Have a good day everyone
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RhymesWithOrange Jul 29, 2011 at 7:43 AM,MagicAndre1981 wrote
For the malware and the sound issues I would run ProcMon from Sysinternals to see what is going on there. Mark shows in his blog how to get the cause of a playing sound:
http://blogs.technet.com/b/markrussinovich/archive/2011/07/18/3439288.aspx
And Windows 7 uses less power because it runs by default (like Vista) in the power plan "balanced" instead of full power/high performance like XP did. So if the PC is idle the power saving features are active and can reduce the CPU speed and park CPUs (Core parking) to reduce the power consuming compared to XP.
@Gov
enjoy your vacation and come back and feel rested
XP also had power saving features based primarily on APM, but were not nearly so advanced as that based on ACPI, and of course added hardware benefits in the CPU, ram, etc that Win7 really takes advantage of.
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MagicAndre1981 yes, but afair the power plan is set to use full power by default.
btw, the hotfix which caused to display the bootmgr in English was updated and now the language is ok. But I removed the fix, because I don't need it on my PC.
I currently have some sporadic bug checks and I see this in WinDbg:
SYSTEM_THREAD_EXCEPTION_NOT_HANDLED (7e)
DEFAULT_BUCKET_ID: CODE_CORRUPTION
PROCESS_NAME: System
ERROR_CODE:(NTSTATUS)0xc0000005
nt!KeBugCheckEx
nt!PspUnhandledExceptionInSystemThread+0x24
nt!??::NNGAKEGL::`string'+0x227d
nt!_C_specific_handler+0x8c
nt!RtlpExecuteHandlerForException+0xd
nt!RtlDispatchException+0x415
nt!KiDispatchException+0x135
nt!KiExceptionDispatch+0xc2
nt!KiGeneralProtectionFault+0x10a
ndis!NdisMCreateLog+0x286b
ndis!NdisMPauseCo}plete+0x4364
ndis!NdisMQueueDpc+0x7f5
ndis!NdisAllocateNetBufferAndNetBufferList+0x2233
ndis!riteLock+0x925f
ndis!NdisFOidRequestComplete+0x5a8
ndis!NdisFOidRequest+0xc9
nm3!NetmonOidRequest+0x109
ndis!NdisMSynchronizeWithInterruptEx+0x842
ndis!NdisAllocateNetBuffer+0x177c
nt!ExpWorkerThread+0x111
nt!PspSystemThreadStartup+0x5a
nt!KiStartSystemThread+0x16CHKIMG_EXTENSION: !chkimg -lo 50 -db !ndis 3393 errors : !ndis (fffff88001649048-fffff88001717fe0)
FOLLOWUP_NAME: memory_corruption
MEMORY_CORRUPTOR: STRIDE
so the ndis.sys is corrupted in RAM and differs from the file on the symbol server, but I used the Windows Memory tester and memtest86+ and both didn't detect any errors. chkdsk and sfc also didn't detect anything.
Currently I have no idea other than removing Network monitor 3.4 driver from the network adapter and watch if it happens again the next days.
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RhymesWithOrange 4 days ago,MagicAndre1981 wrote
yes, but afair the power plan is set to use full power by default.
btw, the hotfix which caused to display the bootmgr in English was updated and now the language is ok. But I removed the fix, because I don't need it on my PC.
I currently have some sporadic bug checks and I see this in WinDbg:
SYSTEM_THREAD_EXCEPTION_NOT_HANDLED (7e)
DEFAULT_BUCKET_ID: CODE_CORRUPTION
PROCESS_NAME: System
ERROR_CODE:(NTSTATUS)0xc0000005
nt!KeBugCheckEx
nt!PspUnhandledExceptionInSystemThread+0x24
nt!??::NNGAKEGL::`string'+0x227d
nt!_C_specific_handler+0x8c
nt!RtlpExecuteHandlerForException+0xd
nt!RtlDispatchException+0x415
nt!KiDispatchException+0x135
nt!KiExceptionDispatch+0xc2
nt!KiGeneralProtectionFault+0x10a
ndis!NdisMCreateLog+0x286b
ndis!NdisMPauseCo}plete+0x4364
ndis!NdisMQueueDpc+0x7f5
ndis!NdisAllocateNetBufferAndNetBufferList+0x2233
ndis!riteLock+0x925f
ndis!NdisFOidRequestComplete+0x5a8
ndis!NdisFOidRequest+0xc9
nm3!NetmonOidRequest+0x109
ndis!NdisMSynchronizeWithInterruptEx+0x842
ndis!NdisAllocateNetBuffer+0x177c
nt!ExpWorkerThread+0x111
nt!PspSystemThreadStartup+0x5a
nt!KiStartSystemThread+0x16CHKIMG_EXTENSION: !chkimg -lo 50 -db !ndis 3393 errors : !ndis (fffff88001649048-fffff88001717fe0)
FOLLOWUP_NAME: memory_corruption
MEMORY_CORRUPTOR: STRIDE
so the ndis.sys is corrupted in RAM and differs from the file on the symbol server, but I used the Windows Memory tester and memtest86+ and both didn't detect any errors. chkdsk and sfc also didn't detect anything.
Currently I have no idea other than removing Network monitor 3.4 driver from the network adapter and watch if it happens again the next days.
Regarding the bugchecks, I will have to check is nm3 modifies ndis, but you should also check any AV/antimalware software that may be installed.
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MagicAndre1981 it looks like the Power Saving feature IES was the cause:
http://www.asrock.com/feature/ies/index.asp?c=Interface
after removing it and using the balanced powerplan, the freezes and bug checks are gone.
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RhymesWithOrange 6 days ago,MagicAndre1981 wrote
it looks like the Power Saving feature IES was the cause:
http://www.asrock.com/feature/ies/index.asp?c=Interface
after removing it and using the balanced powerplan, the freezes and bug checks are gone.
Ok, that I haven't seen before... what MB are you using specifically, and what is the overall config? I would like to see if we can repro this.
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MagicAndre1981 AMD Phenom II X4 945 3GHz
8 GB DDR3 RAM (Crucial DDR1333)
ASRock 880GXH/USB3
ATI Radeon HD 5770
Enermax ECO80+ 400W
1 TB Samsung F3If this feature is on, the CPU uses less power and I always got the freezes when the CPU was idle. I got the freezes when I browsed the web with Firefox and had my RSS Reader running (Feeddemon). It worked for over 1 year, but 3 weeks ago it started. It looked like the NDIS.sys is corrupted in the CPU L2/L3 cache becasue the CPU is not stable anymore with less power. After disabling this feature I also see the blue color of a bug check (I created 1 manuallay with my keyboard) and no artefacts like I saw before.
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