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Your experience with the Epson Ecotank printers and my experience are the same.

HP thoroughly antagonized me with the program to send printer cartridges periodically. I did not realize that the printer is electronically controlled by HP.

When I could not print at all, I contacted HP, and they told me that I had not paid a monthly bill. They had not billed me, and I didn’t know they wanted more payment.

After I got the new cartridges, I decided to end the automatic replenishment. Then, I discovered that although I had four new cartridges, I could not use them. They cut off the ability to use them for anybody not in “the program.” Thus, I could not use cartridges I had already paid for.

I filed a complaint with the Federal Trade Commission, which basically did nothing.

I bought an Epson Ecotank printer, and I have saved a bundle. Performance is essentially flawless. No more HP–EVER.

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Patricia Grace, Cijan, windbg

Unfortunately, the fix for the Blue Screen of Death on my Dell Inspiron desktop did not last.  After a couple of successful reboots, it went back to its old ways.  The BSOD occurs, the machine goes into a cycle, and repeats.

None of the above suggestions work, period.  At one time, I got a choice to do a fresh install, but now I cannot even do that.

I discovered that all my important files had been put on storage devices, and that no important software was not on other computers.

Is there any way to completely refresh the computer when it won’t boot?

 

PS I have tried booting from the optical disk version, but it has the same problem as with trying to boot from a USB stick.  Being as old as it is, I could write off the Dell (I bought a new laptop, which I needed for travel.)  However, I need to completely wipe the hard disk.  Is there a way to do that after removing it from the computer?  Otherwise, I may have to resort to the sledgehammer method of permanent “wipe.”

Thank you to all who provide suggestions.  All where good. The problem has been resolved, and I lost nothing on the computer–just many hours of hassle.

I tried multiple times to change the Dell BIOS so that it would accept a boot from the USB stick.  Nothing worked.  Then, I found on the Dell site a way to make a bootable USB stick for recovering from a situation such as this.  Alas, it would not boot, even after I changed the boot order using F2, and even after I tried F12 (one time boot) multiple times.

Success came when I had the USB stick inserted and got one of the many repeating blue screens, saying, “Something went wrong.  We will boot the computer.”  Being exasperated, I slammed my hand on the computer, used naughty language at the computer, and sat there.  Instead of getting the usual blue screen, I got a new message saying something like “Boot in progress.”  It took about 20 minutes, and then I got the sign-on screen, signed in, and got my normal desktop.

Because I had a Macrium Backup, but could not earlier get booted, I immediately restored a backup from 15 July.  All is well.

That is, until I got another blue screen saying that there was an interrupt error.  I coaxed the machine back to normal.  At the moment, it is working well.  (I am typing this from another computer).

Thank you for all your advice.

 

 

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DrBonzo

Thank you, that is correct.  The problem is that I can’t seem to make it happen. I do that, but it does not seem to last long enough to be recognized in the booting process.  There are all sorts of people on the internet and YouTube talking about how to do that, but none of their suggestions seem to work.  The Dell site goes into great detail on how to set up a bootable USB stick, but almost nothing on how to configure the BIOS to make it happen.

I am about ready to conclude that Clark Maxwell (of electricity fame) had his Maxwellian Demons, and that they are real.  <grin>

Because this was a home computer, I do not believe my program was directly related to the Microsoft/Crowdstrike problem.  However, I also suspect that Microsoft issued an update to Windows 10 that was somehow related to the problem (and installed without my permission).

I have gotten deep into the machine and have not found the Crowdstrike problem itself.  If I had, I could already have fixed the problem.

I am close to recovery, but not yet there.  The computer is a Dell Inspiron.  I went to the Dell site and downloaded their program for booting from a USB stick.  That would let me get to a backup re-installation program on the computer.  There is only one problem, after I burned the recovery USB stick, I cannot boot the computer from it.  There is something in the BIOS that I need to change to force the booting from the USB.  I have tried everybody’s suggestions, but none work.

If anybody knows which BIOS settings I need to boot from a USB, please let me know.

 

Susan,

Thank you for the additional comments.  Does anybody have any statistics regarding the
“dirty” IP addresses for free VPN sites, vs. paid sites?  In principle it makes sense that free sites would be worse, but what is there to prevent a spammer from using paid sites?  Given the amount of traffic on ANY server, wouldn’t it be very difficult for a VPN to identify spammers?

 

 

 

Well said, my friend!

Part of the problem is definitely attitude-related.

The whole problem was caused by overly-aggressive email clients (Defender, as well as Malwarebytes) deciding to screen all emails before letting me control Thunderbird. Unfortunately, they were slow.

There are better ways to ensure that viruses are not a problem, and the best are things such as not falling for social engineering, or not clicking on a physhing link in an email.

I do separate, frequent virus scans, but not before I see each email.

Thank you to all who responded to my problem.

It turns out that Windows Defender was surreptitiously upon startup (without my asking for it) screening every email.  Unfortunately, I get a lot of spam in my Thunderbird email, so each time, Defender was taking a lot of time.

I have now prevented Defender from doing that, without disabling Defender’s highly effective virus protection (not an easy task).

Speaking of spam, the spammers have apparently found a way to circumvent spam protection:  when they are identified by my software as a spammer I have listed, they use an alternate email address for themselves for the next time , which lets their spam through.  If any of you know a way around that tactic, please let me know.

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windbg

That is a great suggestion.  Unfortunately, when I checked it, there was no unusual activity shown.

I suspect that there is some sort of Microsoft service that runs deep in the background.

I am not using a mesh router with this computer.  I am aware of that issue, and you are quite correct that it causes problems with some mesh routers;

I have tracked the problem simply to servers that are used by nefarious people and whose presence is difficult to eliminate.  By using the same VPN and servers not used so much, it eliminates the problem.

Thank you for staying op top of the issue you raised about mesh systems.

My issue is resolved.  I contacted my VPN (certainly one of the better ones).  They recognize the problem, and they are working on how best to overcome it.  In the meantime, they suggested that I use one of the lesser used servers.  By doing that, my problem has been overcome.

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PKCano, TechTango

Are you saying that all VPNs should be eliminated, and that you block all VPNs?

What about privacy?

What we need is effective means to block nefarious sites but not legitimate sites.

I am using a highly-secure (non-US) VPN. There are multiple US sites that go crazy when I use the VPN. It’s as though they cannot handle a VPN.

I have done a deep dive, and those sites are taking liberties with all sorts of standard protocols. I have told several sites that if they cannot handle VPNs, I will not use their sites.

Thank you for responding.  However, the problem persists.

The t toggle only changes back and forth into full-screen.  My problem is that when the video is not in full-screen mode, only one video is displayed.

Any time I hit Control-t, whether watching a video or screening for videos to watch, that key combination simply kicks me out of YouTube back to whatever I was doing before calling up YouTube.