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I always back up my two Win7 computers before ANY major updates or additions, especially prior to any Windows Update. In addition, I wait for Susan’s posts regarding Windows Updates on Windows Secrets before installing them, and I always do one computer and check it out there before doing the second so that, if there is any problem, I don’t have to restore two backups.

Why people won’t do backups is beyond me. Are they too cheap to buy an external backup drive? Do they not want to take the time for a backup to run before doing an update? (I always run mine before my bike ride or before going out for whatever, so they’re done when I get back.) Or do they just want to do something NOW when it pops up, and not have to wait and remember to do it later?

I have had slow updating the last two months, but especially this month, on my two Win7 computers. Previously, the one running x64 updated slower than the one running x86. The opposite was the case these past two months. In all cases, downloads were slower but not excessively so, but install was stuck on zero. The x64 computer updated in about an hour, or slightly less. When the x86 computer remained stuck for longer, I tried both the MS FixIt and MS Update Troubleshooter, with the latter also stuck, seemingly eternally. When I stopped out of that, Windows update wouldn’t even run, so I loaded a system image made earlier in the day, prior to running Windows Update- something I always do, BTW. I knew it would DEFINITELY take longer, as after such a process< WU acts as if it had never been run, and has to search the entire database to find needed updates. Once it had done so, it did finally install everything I wanted to install, but that process took almost two hours to complete.

After reviewing all the comments above, I agree that the problem is with Microsoft. However, I do find interesting the experience of one poster who updated in batches, rather than all at once, and found that some patches installed far more quickly than others. Did anyone who ended up installing the patches one-by-one find that any particular patch or patches took longer than others? I wouldn't put it past MS to throttle updates on non-Win10 computers, but I wonder if the poor construction of one or more of the patches themselves might be the source of the problem? If so, MS may be paying less attention to crafting the patches for OS's older than Win10, in which case it may pay not to even install SECURITY patches immediately, until Susan Bradley runs her tests on them, as well.

If my facts are straight, you are a 3- person company- a boss who is largely offsite & uninvolved, a woman who is causing the problem who the boss will not fire & replace, and you, stuck in the middle, as the person who has to assume all the duties that the employee cannot handle herself, and the boss will not take the time to address. So you get to do most of the work. I’m guessing you’re overloaded, as a result. If you weren’t, fixing her computer might be an annoying recurring task, but it wouldn’t be so stressful.

Going on from here to a bit of inductive reasoning: it would appear you are tasked with whatever the boss WON’T handle and the woman CAN’T handle. So YOU are the most valuable person in this threesome, in actuality. I’m also strongly suggesting that, unless the woman possesses job-related skills that are difficult to replicate, that she is most likely either a relative of the boss, a relative of a close friend of the boss, or is in a sexual relationship with the boss. If none of these are true, then it is most likely that the detached boss just wants to remain detached, rake in his profits, and not have to be bothered with the effort to hire anyone new.

The next question, then, is why YOU elect to stay in this position. It would seem to me that your best solution would be to find another job that would be less frustrating. Unless you have a black mark on your record that makes securing a new job very difficult, or you are now working at a self-learned experience level and (hopefully) a commensurate salary that would be beyond your reach at another company, because of the lack of proper “credentials”, why are you not testing the waters and looking for an alternative position? Are there issues in your own family (ex. small town without other similar opportunities and a spouse who doesn’t want to move) that are keeping you from doing so, or do you have personal insecurities that are holding you in place?

Note: “Inductive reasoning” means (largely) guesswork, and NONE of the above may be applicable in your situation. It’s just that I’ve seen so many others in similar situations discussed on blogs for my non-computer-related profession that I think they MIGHT also be applicable here. If none of the above are true, why not start searching for another job opportunity, especially if you can do so without your boss finding out? If you secure one, you can then either accept it outright, or use it as a cudgel to extract better working conditions and better salary at your current job, and perhaps even a firing of the miscreant employee, as he may well fear losing you and your jack-of-all-trades capabilities more than he fears firing the employee, or undergoing the effort of finding a replacement for you.

Two caveats and one recommendation-

First, are you certain the hard drive is the problem? While others have mentioned batteries and fans, the motherboard can also be a problem, although rarely so these days.

Second, if the hard drive IS, indeed, the problem, make sure any drive you get is compatible with your SATA II connections- some are only compatible with SATA III.

The recommendation is that you get NTI echo software and a USB-to-SATA cable when cloning your HD. The cable is the fastest way to connect the new drive to you laptop. If you have partitioned your HD, NTI Echo software allows you to resize partitions on the copy, which is especially important if your new drive is different in volume than your old drive. If the new HD is smaller, you can make sure any restore partition from the OEM isn’t sized so small it won’t copy over. You can also adjust the OS partition and the data partition- a wise partitioning to do, if you’ve already done it- in order to make sure your OS partition is large enough (at least 20% free space) and then use the remaining space to store as much data as possible.

For those of you who routinely help older family members, friends, or others with computer problems:

I, too, help a number of older people, primarily through our church, with their computers. The problem I see with many is that they use them primarily as communication devices, using mainly e-mail, Skype, Facebook, etc. Their other main use is searching for information, or entertainment- primarily “filling time” things, searching subjects and following links. However, they have little to no knowledge of how computers work, or have any real knowledge about how scammers operate. So when they get a scam e-mail, or hit an unsafe website or pop-up, they frequently fall for it. A significant subset have no patience. When something goes wrong- even a program that malfunctions WITHOUT any malware involved- and they can’t reach me, or I can’t fix it over the phone and I can’t go to them immediately- they try to fix it themselves, or enlist the aid of a “helpful” neighbor- and thereby only make things worse.

My solution involves several things. First, I have all on automatic update for Windows Update. Second, I visit them monthly, do virus & malware scans, defrag their drives, (none have SSD’s,) and run a full system image. Second, I have their User files on daily incremental backup, running in the wee hours of the night. Third, I tell them to call me if they have ANY questions about updates from other programs that are offered, pop-ups, etc. Some of the latter I can handle over the phone, but I tell them to ignore others until I can come over and check them out. Fourth, I tell them that if they let ANYONE else “help” them with their problems, because they don’t want to wait until I can help them, that I will no longer be responsible for helping them with their computer.

Fifth, and the biggest timesaver, whenever they have a problem with a program, I tell them to reboot their computer and then see if their program will work, and I tell them that this is the thing to do whenever they have ANY problem! This alone probably reduces the need for calls and/or visits by at least 80%!

With my people thus properly “trained” I almost never have to resort to a system image restore. When a program (usually the e-mail client) changes its interface, I can usually fix it quickly so that the person can access it through a desktop shortcut, as they used to, or I can teach them how to do the (usually) one thing different so that it’ll work for them.

I hope this helps those of you who assist others less technically clued-in than you are with their computers.

If you’re using your computer at a non-home workplace, such a hybrid may well make sense. I noticed a comment from a semi-retired person. Allow me to add my perspective as one who is fully retired. I use a Toshiba 13″ BUSINESS-MODEL tablet, which means it has a FULL docking station, not just a USB 3.0 port replicator, which provides much faster connections than USB, and has more ports. So my first recommendation is that, if you get a new computer, I would get one that has such a docking station. It also weighs only 3 lbs. and, as a result, I can carry it in a briefcase-size laptop bag when I travel, and not only keep my computer and all needed peripherals in it, along with travel documents, e-reader, etc., and easily carry it by hand. (my former computer and its accoutrements were heavy & bulky enough that I needed a wheeled computer bag.) With a larger monitor, good keyboard, as well as all other peripherals on the dock, I get the benefits of a “standard” computer when at home, and an easily-carried portable when on a trip. The only drawback is on-CPU graphics, which can slow things down or even freeze at times, if running multiple programs.

I rooted a Nook to use as a tablet, found it fun for about a week, and haven’t used it since. When away from home, I get all the connectivity I need to keep up on e-mail, ongoing games, etc., on my smartphone. Anything requiring more screen real estate or processing power can wait until I return to my computer (home or away), and a tablet, for me, is just something bulkier to carry that you can’t put in a pocket, and is only marginally more capable than a smartphone. This does prevent me from dealing with 30+ e-mails in the evening, on days when I’m mostly away from home, as I can “catch up” while waiting in doctor’s offices, restaurants, etc. Again, business users may find the tablet far more useful than I.

Not needing or wanting a touch screen on my laptop, I’ll probably upgrade my current setup to Win10, after the bugs are worked out by the first adopters, and if it proves not to be another Win8 disaster. If I ever do get a new laptop, it’ll be another lightweight with a true docking station, with the hope that, even if weight & cooling concerns again preclude a separate graphics card, that advances in chip technology will provide better on-chip graphics performance.

I’ve always loved the pipes (even though I’m of Finnish-German extraction)! When still living up north, one of the highlights of going to the Yankee Peddler Festival near Massillon, OH, and the Johnny Appleseed Festival in Ft. Wayne, IN, was the bagpipe bands that roamed the grounds playing. After checking out the vendors, I’d follow the pipers around until I’d heard their entire repertoire. I have three CD’s of bagpipe music, and occasionally view & listen to online sites playing bagpipe music. Needless to say, I was extremely pleased to see this video, and to see bagpipes enter the realm of the flash mob. Thanks, Aussies!

My computing includes much financial “stuff” that I wouldn’t want in the cloud. I want to keep it on my own SSD, encrypted, and with redundant backup. A cloud-only Chromebook is not an option. Plus, if you can’t connect to the cloud, how can you access ANY of your data? Even if we have a power loss, I can access my on-computer data by battery- and with my generator, if the power loss is prolonged.

When I bought my last laptop, I considered a MacBook, but I found a major problem in that Quicken for Mac doesn’t mix well with Quicken for Windows. I would have risked or lost decades of financial records, had I switched, or would have been forced to keep my old Windows computer just to keep access to those records- a classic garden wall problem.

I DO use an iPhone for access to e-mail when traveling locally, checking weather when biking, playing a few games, and I can sync my Outlook data to it through the dreaded iTunes. Anything else can wait until I get home, and with that usage pattern, who needs a tablet? If I’m doing “distance traveling”, I can take undock and take along my 3-pound Toshiba laptop, which I chose as it has all the capabilities, except a few less USB ports, as other laptops weighing 1-2 pounds more. I run my own business, so interoperability with the “boss’s” computer is tautological.

I actually WORK on my computer, and don’t just want to use it as an Internet social connection device. Even if I were to keep a “legacy” Windows computer & go to Apple, it would cost me at least twice as much to gain the same capability as I get with a computer running Windows. So why would I ever leave Windows? Google will have to build a true computer you can use without Internet access, and Apple would have to reduce prices markedly, before I’d ever consider such a move!

I use Password Safe, which requires you to select your site to be accessed, then click-and-paste your username and password. A bit longer than the tools that automatically paste in these items, but never causes a problem if the site you are trying to access changes its code. It also allows you to go in and unhide the password when you hit that rare website that won’t allow copy-and-paste to enter the password. As with other such programs, you only need to remember your master password to access it.

This may be a bit tangential, but ANY document, spreadsheet, or other material I want encrypted, I encrypt with the same, separate program-7-zip, in my case, but there are many other good programs out there. I don’t use any internal encryptation on any Office or other programs. That way, I have one program, and one password, to encrypt and decrypt any sensitive material. Were I to upload it to the cloud, I would encrypt it before uploading. It makes management much easier. BTW, when I do my monthly offsite backup to an external HD i keep in a safe deposit box, I also decrypt the encrypted files on a separate flash drive, and make a copy- one in the safe deposit box, and one for the home safe- in case of sudden death and the need of anyone managing my estate to have access to these documents rapidly, even though I also have the password key on paper in my box and safe.

BTW, I also use a password manager, and NEVER store passwords within my browser(s).

StarLounger is right- some people are just gullible. Others are lacking in confidence- they don’t really know squat about computers, scams, etc., but don’t want to admit their ignorance, so someone can sell them a good story about computer vulnerabilities, so they accept a good story from a “helpful” person who can “fix” their “problem” remotely, and they never have to confront or admit their ignorance to a REAL person they know and should be able to trust. In terms of scams, some people just have overweening greed, and will fall for a story that offers something for nothing- or, at least, huge reward for relatively little investment. I know of one other group I really feel sorry for- the older person whose mental faculties are failing, and who may have been a lower-level journeyman computer user in their younger years, but now doesn’t remember enough to avoid scams, avoid clicking on obviously dangerous or questionable websites, and, once coached, fears clicking on truly genuine update messages, such as those from MS Update, Java, etc. Some are just too stupid to know and too stubborn to learn.

I think bigbadsteve has the right approach. I have one such old lady whose old XP computer I fixed repeatedly, and eventually had her replace with a used Win7 model. Because of the OS, she now has far less problems. I set essentially all genuine-source updates to automatic, and also have the defragmenter and antivirus scanner run automatically, nightly, as well. I gave a variant of bigbadsteve’s ultimatum- NEVER load anything over a warning window without consulting me. I visit her about monthly, run a Malwarebytes check to hunt out any malware missed by her antivirus program, check out everything, and then run a backup, so that if she does screw anything up, I can restore from that & lose only a month of data- usually next to nothing for her now, as almost everything she still does is e-mail and on the web. If she has a problem on a major program she needs to use ASAP, I’ll go over and fix it as soon as I can. She used to have a neighbor who she would have “fix” her problems, who usually only managed to make things worse, so she wouldn’t have to “bother” me, (I live on the other side of town,) or, more likely, because she was too impatient to wait until I could come over 1-2 days later. MY ultimatum to her was that she had to choose between the neighbor and me to do her computer work, and if she chose me and ever let the neighbor in for a fast fix, I would stop servicing her computer entirely. Since then, I’ve had no major problems.

I’ve posted this basic info before, but it bears repeating in this post.

Like kgiov, I always create a logical D partition on my laptop drive, when I get a new one, to hold all my data, keeping the OS and programs on the C partition. That way, if I have to do a restoration because of an unrepairable OS glitch, I can restore only the C drive & not even touch the current data backup on the D drive.

Like alan.b, I always do a drive image immediately BEFORE doing Patch Tuesday, in case anything goofs up with the patches, to my pocket-size external HD. I also do an automatic daily backup to my larger desktop external HD, with a new image of the C disk, which runs in the wee hours of the morning.

After a week or so- and after the Windows Secrets letter describing any problems with Patch Tuesday patches (fortunately, none have ever surfaced on my computer)- I re-image the entire system to both external HD’s, do a copy of my data to the smaller EHD, (confession- borderline OCD personality), and swap it out with last month’s copy on my second pocket-size EHD, which I keep in my safe deposit box for offsite backup. When I travel, I change the daily external early-morning backups to the pocket-size EHD and take it with me. This has served me well, as I’ve had HD failures on trips TWICE, with previous laptops. In these cases, I get overnight shipping of a new internal HD, restore my backup to the new internal HD with my boot disk (copy also carried in my computer case) and the pocket EHD, and am up and going again in 36 hours, at the longest.

IN ADDITION, when I work on a new file or modifying a file in my D partition, I immediately copy it to a 128 GB flash drive using Windows Explorer. This way, if I get a crash in midday that involves the D drive, and I have to restore the image from the EHD, I can search through files I think I’ve worked with on the flash drive, and look for ones with the current date, and copy them over. I’ve also accidentally deleted files, including from the recycle bin, or hopelessly messed up their format (mostly with spreadsheets), and can just copy over the file from the flash drive to quickly get my original file back.

If I were REALLY paranoid- or more of an OCD victim- I’d unplug the flash drive after each use, and only plug it in only when making a backup, as the only recovery scenario I don’t think I’ve covered is the power surge that fries ALL my equipment at home. I’d still have the offsite backup to restore to a new system, but I’d lose any new files or file modifications made since the last offsite backup.

I don’t do backups to the cloud for two reasons- security, and the much slower speeds over the web, were to I do a total restoration over the Web, vs. a USB 3.0 EHD.

Another factor to consider in a 90-year-old, besides cost and (in this case) volume occupied by the device, is readability. Whatever device you choose, make sure you adjust the settings in the browser/e-mail reader so that the font size is PERMANENTLY set at a magnification she can read easily.

If she doesn’t have “bionic eye” mutifocal implants from cateract surgery, she may need a fairly large font size to read easily. If the screen is too small, she may only be able to get a few words per line, which makes reading anything difficult for continuity, especially for an older brain. So if her current desktop (I assume) has a 15-inch or larger monitor, consider what the screen size of her new device will be, and the limitations it might impose. If this might actually BE an issue for her, then I think scaisson’s recommendation of a refurb XP laptop is great. You can find 15″ laptops for less that $200 online, the OS wil be familiar, and the free Microsoft Security Essentials/Windows Firewall should provide sufficient security even afte XP support disappears next year. She can fold up the laptop and even store it on its side to save space when she’s not using it, and hook it up to the power source wherever she can find the space, and open it up there, when she needs to use it.

Finally, if money’s a very tight issue for her, but not so much for you, and you opt for one of the somewhat more expensive other options given by other posters, consider giving it to her as a gift- birthday if hers is still to come, or an “advance” Christmas gift.

If you’re buying a new computer, especially a laptop/notebook/ultrabook, go Win8. It’s what they offer now (unless you’re picking up a refurbished or leftover model where you might still get Win7 as an option.) This is especially true if you don’t have a lot of peripherals you hook in via USB. If the latter is the case, then check first to make sure you gan get Win8 drivers for most or all of those peripherals. If you can’t, consider the cost factor. You can probably pick up a leftover or a refurb computer at a bargain price and not have to replace any peripherals. But except for this circumstance, go with the newer OS- your laptop will be configured to run with it, and it- and any new peripherals you get subsequently- will have a longer shelf life.

Not your particular circumstance, but if you’re upgrading from XP, I’d go with Win7. The interface will be more familiar, there will almost certainly be compatible drivers available, and the support lasts for another 7 years! Your already-used computer and peripherals will undoubtedly need replacement long before then, and there’ll probably be a new and even-better OS available at that time.

To use the old medieval classification, I’m neither a computer apprentice nor a master, but am somewhere on the journeyman spectrum. Noting that Windows seems to alternate between excellent (Win98, WinXP, Win7) and buggy (WinME, Vista) systems, I’ve always tried to purchase a laptop as the good system reaches maturity, and just before the next (and most likely buggy) system is introduced. So I bought an XP laptop just before Vista (thank God), and just bought a Win7 laptop last year before Win8. I usually need a new laptop for power/features/form factor by the time the OS I’m buying has it’s support expire- especially likely with Win7!

That being said, with Win8, Windows is clearly working toward an OS that will work on all platforms from desktop/laptop to tablet to smartphone. When and if they get to that point, I’ll gladly jump to that new OS- as soon as SP1 becomes available for it.

AutoPlay is probably turned off, which is why you.’re getting no prompt when you insert a disc. Type in AutoPlay in the Start menu window, click on AutoPlay in the Control Panel listings, and choose tthe action you desire for Blank CD and Blank DVD, or choose Ask me every time.