chkdsk

Infopackets Reader Carol G. writes: " Dear Dennis, Since last week, my Windows 10 computer keeps showing a constant spinning blue circle instead of a white pointer. The spinning blue circle will appear for minutes at a time, then switch back to the ... white pointer for a brief second, then back to the spinning blue circle. Most of the time I can't click the Start button (or anything, for that matter) because the spinning blue circle won't let me click on anything. Even if the white pointer appears, if I click on something it takes 5 minutes for anything to happen. It's maddening! I've tried ... (view more)

Infopackets Reader Paul D. writes: " Dear Dennis, I have an external drive I use for backups. The other day I went to restore from backup but it aborted, stating the backup was corrupt. I have since run chkdsk (check disk) on the external drive and ... chkdsk reported that ' The Volume Bitmap is incorrect ' and to 'run chkdsk /scan to find the problems and queue them for repair.' I did that, but chkdsk says ' The shadow copy provider had an error ... A snapshot error occured while scanning this drive .' I have searched the Internet for an answer to this problem but can't figure out how to get ... (view more)

Infopackets Reader Joe P. writes: " Dear Dennis, I have Windows 7 Ultimate 64bit. I am trying to install 'ON1 Photo Editor' on my machine which requires Microsoft Visual C++ 2015 Redistributable. The installer package for the ON1 Photo Editor ... includes the Microsoft Visual C++ 2015 Redistributable as part of the installation. During the installation, however, the Microsoft Visual C++ hangs during the install and does not proceed. I have let it sit for over 24 hours and nothing happens - the installation hangs and ultimately fails . I should also mention that my Windows Update is also broken ... (view more)

Infopackets Reader Bob G. writes: " Dear Dennis, I am running Windows 10. Last week my system attempted to perform a major upgrade (to version 1803, April Creators Update), but the update failed and it rolled back to version 1709 (Fall Creators ... Update). Now when I try and sign into Windows 10, it says: 'Preparing Windows', then it says ' We can't sign into your account . This problem can often be fixed by signing out of your account and then signing back in. If you don't sign out now, any files you create or changes you make will be lost'. I then get a notification near the clock that says ' ... (view more)

Infopackets Reader 'Cindy' writes: " Dear Dennis, I have Windows 8.1 on my laptop which has been very, very slow. I decided to upgrade to Windows 10 hoping this would fix my problems, however I keep getting a message that ' The installation failed ... in the First_Boot phase with an error during Sysprep Operation ' (pic). I have been researching this problem for 2 days using Google, and have yet to find a fix that makes sense! Absolutely nothing I do seems to work! Can you PLEASE help? " Update 20200116 : I'm getting a lot of emails from folks asking for help on this. If you want this problem ... (view more)

Infopackets Reader Jeff W. writes: " Dear Dennis, I am having a problem with Windows 10 not updating - it keeps telling me that KB4058258 and KB4074595 won't install. It will attempt to install the updates, then when I check Windows Update again ... those two updates are there again. KB4058258 is a cumulative update for Windows 10 whereas KB4074595 is a security update for Adobe Flash update. Can you help? " My response: I asked Jeff if he would like me to connect to his system using my remote desktop support service , and he agreed. I have been receiving a lot of inquiries about this lately and ... (view more)

Infopackets Reader Steve H. writes: " Dear Dennis, I have a RAID 1 set up with 4 hard drives in a mirrored array. Recently my RAID software reported that one of the drives was dropped from the array and has since been marked as 'rebuilding', ... however, during the rebuild process I keep receiving RAID controller errors that data could not be synced / written to the drive. I'm not sure what to do from here. Is there any way for me to independently check the drive for errors? I understand that if the drive is bad I should replace it, but I'm not even sure which drive is which. " My response: This ... (view more)

Infopackets Reader Sam G. writes: " Dear Dennis, My Windows Update won't update. It happened when I upgraded to Windows 8.1; I had over 100 updates to download. I managed to download most of them but there were a few that failed. Windows Update says ... the error code is 8007045B on the failed updates . I did a search for 8007045B in Google but the information is conflicting, confusing, and for the most part all the articles I've read go around in a loop. I also came across an article on PC World which says to do revert my restore point - but that didn't work, either. Apparently ... (view more)