Replies

Hi everybody,

Thanks to Batcher for his comments and the enclosed link. Unfortuanately it does’t address having nowhere to start an uninstall.

It’s now 29 July and I guess the free upgrade has probably finished. This is taking up too much of my time and I’m getting nowhere. I need another plan.

So, here are a couple plans.

Plan A: Continue with Windows 10 and keep on trying to solve this problem
I feel it should be easy’ BUT….!
I believe I have the correct driver that I need to install for bluetooth. But – when I click on the ‘setup.exe’ it EITHER tells me to extract the softrare as it is a .zip file and it can’t handle zip files OR it runs the setup.exe file and immediately comes back with ‘please uninstall current bluetooth installation before continuing’, as mentioned above.

Plan B: I have been busy trying to resolve this.

I have a registered copy of JV16 Power Tools and I searched in the Registry for all instances of Widdcom (180 of them) and deleted them. This made no difference (still being told to uninstall …).
I restored the 180 items.

I searched for Broadcom (73 of them). This made no difference
I restored the 73 items.

Can anyone suggest another word to search for? Is there any value in continuing like this?

I am aware that I am not necessarily being very logical in my approach.

I also tried to uninstall any bluetooth drivers and registry keys using Revo Uninstaller Pro.
This could get no further than the WIN 10 response of ‘please uninstall current bluetooth installation before continuing’

Don’t think this Plan is going much further without additional help.

Plan C: Return to Windows 7 temporarily. I have Paragon Hard Disk Manager image back up files for 17 July 2017. Following restore I could do an in situ re-install of Windows 7 (which leaves my data alone) and should put the system in better condition.

If I now want to go back to Win 10, I could restore from my latest Paragon image (which is currently 27 July 2016). Then accept that my bluetooth mouse is not working.

I appreciate people taking their time to read my lengthy posts.

I hope someone can help, as I believe installing the Bluecom software should fix the problem.

Thanks again,

Geoff

Hi Satrow,

OOPS. I did not attach picture.
It should be attached here.

43414-SSD-Driver-1

Geoff

Hi satrow,

Device Manager / Disk Drives shows one item:

SanDisk SDSSDHIII480G SCSI Disk Device

Does the attached picture give you the information you requested?

Geoff

Hi Paul T,

Sandisk Dashboard indicates that Windows TRIM is ‘Enabled’.
Trimcheck results displays that ‘TRIM appears to be not working’.
The Sandisk Ultra II drive is installed in a Dell XPS1340 which must be 4 or 5 years old.
It is running Windows 7 SP1.
The SSD is replacing a 7200 rpm HDD
The BIOS shows AHCI enabled.
Device Manager shows a Microsoft Disk driver version 6.1.7600.16385, 21/06/2006
Microsoft Windows Experience Index shows ‘disk data transfer rate of 7.6’.

Subjectively, it seems to be slow to boot up to the Log In screen. Then log in proceeds at a reasonable speed and some programs open and run quicker than before.

Any ideas?

Thanks

Geoff

Hi all,

Thanks once again for all your help – knowledge, experience, references etc.

Well, would you believe it, I have succeeded. The SSD is now working in my laptop.
This is what I did:

1 with the HDD in the laptop, booted the laptop from the Paragon WIN PE recovery DVD
2 created individual images of each of the 4 HDD partitions onto my Toshiba external portable hard drive
3 powered down and swapped the HDD for the SSD
4 erased all partitions on the SSD which had been made during my original attempt to produce a clone of the HDD
5 individually restored each of the 4 partitions from the Toshiba to the SSD.

I then shut down the laptop and removed the Paragon DVD and the Toshiba external HDD.

I switched on the laptop and it booted to the Login screen. I logged in, and after a short delay the desktop appeared and I had a working laptop again!!

I think I’ll go for a lie down ….

I decided to have one more go installing my SSD.
Cut a long story short – with the SSD replaced in the laptop I still get the following symptoms:
Boots ok to user login screen. When I login, I get ‘preparing desktop’ for a number of minutes followed by a screen displaying ‘not a genuine copy of Windows’. At this point, all I can do is Shut Down.
I believe that my problem may be that partition drive letters were changed during the cloning
On HDD drive letters were C: System, D: Data, E: Programs, F: DVD; G Media
On the SSD they are C: System, D: Data, F: Programs, E: Media
So I need to re-assign the letter E: to Programs and G: to Media: on the SSD.

I have not found a way of doing this. I expected to find it in Paragon Hard Disk Manager. I can only remove a drive letter from a partition, not assign a letter to a partition without a letter.
Can anyone advise how to do this?
When running the WIN PE version of Paragon HDM, there is an option to run a Command Prompt. Can I run the equivalent of Disk Management in Windows which allows you to assign disk letters?

Thanks again for any help

Geoff

It is now the following day, early morning.
The HDD is in the laptop.
I thought I’d have one more look around before restoring the system and programs partitions using Paragon Hard Disk Manager Suite
I rebooted the laptop from the hard disk and once again it would not boot. I noticed that during the attempted boot, 2 or 3 messages from Nvidia were displayed before a message saying it could not boot. I had seen and read them when this had happened before. BUT, I had not appreciated the significance of the final message including a note to ‘check connections’.
So, I removed the back from the laptop and checked the plug connecting the SSD to the motherboard. I noticed that one side of the plug did not seem to be fully home into the motherboard. I pushed it a bit harder and it snapped into position. I replaced the laptop back and tried again to boot from the HDD. Success! It behaved just as it had before I removed and replaced it.
It may have been a similar problem with the SSD install. However I think I may delay the task of swapping in the SSD……
Many thanks to all who followed this thread and provided much needed assistance.
I should have remembered to check every step of what I had done that may have been responsible for the problem. I was concentrating too much on the software and not enough on the hardware.

Geoff

I’ve swapped the SSD out and the hard disk back in to the laptop. So I have the original system.
AND – it WON’T BOOT.
Also Start up repair ‘can’t fix the problem’. This is getting serious.

I’m about to break out the images I made earlier of all the hard disk partitions I made with Paragon Drive Manager Suite. Before I do that, a question:
Why won’t the hard disk boot now. It has been out of the laptop all the time so no data can have been written to it? Does that mean it’s picked up some bad information from the laptop? where could that bad information come from? Has the information come from the SSD, and been picked up by the hard disk during boot up?
You will see that I don’t really understand what is going on during the boot process.

Thanks for all help

Geoff

Hi RetiredGeek

I should have mentioned that when I get the ‘this copy of Windows is not genuine’ screen, the whole computer becomes non responsive. i.e. there is no response to any of the keys. The only combination of keys that respond are Ctrl-Shift-Delete. this changes the screen to some icons associated with power down, lock the computer, etc. So basically all I can do is power down.
About 2 hours ago, I called the Microsoft line 0344 800 2400. During the next 45 minutes I spoke to 4 different helpers (including 1 ‘technician’). They all wanted the Product Key characters spelt out to them phonetically. I had difficulty hearing them on their phone system and difficulty understanding their accents. 2 of them claimed to have verified the Product Key. None of them listened to what I said – they couldn’t understand that the keyboard was not responding so I couldn’t actually press the Windows and r keys. Then I got on to a technician. Apparently I had done something that ‘had corrupted the system’. After 45 minutes, I needed a break as I could feel my blood pressure rising. Not a happy or productive call.

I’m about to remove the SSD and replace the hard disk Fingers crossed that all will be well.

Apologies for not replying earlier. I haven’t tried the suggestions in post 4 by Coochin until today. I used my Windows repair disk and got a different list of options when I ran the repair DVD. I responded to the prompts re repair – but did not see a specific ‘startup repair’ option. However, the computer booted successfully. It eventually ended up displaying the ‘login’ screen. I logged in and the computer took some time performing a ‘Desktop organisation’ task. After some time the display changed to a screen with nothing displayed except the message that ‘this copy of Windows is not genuine’!!!

Needless to say I have the genuine Product Key which has been used on this computer only for many years.

I don’t know why this has happened, but I planned to call Microsoft activation centre to re-activate the Windows 7 running off the SSD but cannot find a suitable telephone number. All Microsoft Help seems to assume the computer is running OK before being directed to a telephone number from within Windows.

Does anyone have the telephone number for re-activating Windows 7 in the United Kingdom?

Thank you
Geoff (Original Poster)

Oops, pressed the submit button before adding the attached picture of the disk layout in the laptop.
Geoff42858-IMG_6442

Hi All,

Thanks for all your help to date.

Things I omitted to tell you in my original post:

Physically changing the hard disk for the SSD is quite scary! The hard drive sits right up against the case on the left hand side of the laptop. The drive sits under a ledge in the case and can not be removed without disconnecting a very small connector on the motherboard (for SATA on the drive). I am concerned that I might break the ribbon cable connections. So I’m trying to limit the number of times I have to change the drive.

The clone of the hard drive which I have produced on the SSD differs as follows:
as viewed in HDM 2015, the clone has No drive letters assigned to any of the partitions. Would I expect them to display, or are they assigned during the boot process??
Thanks again.

Geoff

I’m picking up this thread on 15 November.

Thank you all for your replies.
Microsoft troubleshooting could not find a problem. I rarely get a useful response from the troubleshooting.
I was going to follow Trev’s suggestion (post 4) when things went from bad to worse. I had stopped and then restarted the Windows Update service, and restarted the laptop. The laptop wouldn’t shut down and I had to power it off using the On/Off switch. When I restarted the laptop it was running very slowly. Task Manager was slow to display detail whilst showing 0% CPU activity. Control Panel was also slow to display. The slow running got progressively worse until it got to the stage that the laptop was unusable. I did some further (slow) investigation and eventually could not run the Windows Update programme. I had to use the power switch again to shut down the laptop. I decided it was time for the big guns – I would re-load my last disk image created with Paragon Hard Disk Manager. The image was ‘only’ 6 weeks old – but that was fine as the Win 10 has only light use, and any data is backed up separately weekly.

The restored image ran fine and I spent some time performing Windows Updates. I think all the required updates have been installed, though Windows Update does seem to find one more update every time I think the listed updates have been applied.

I have just looked at the Update History and it shows all updates ‘completed successfully’ on 13/11/2015, including KB3105213, however:
I see no sign of KB3105211 or KB3103688 mentioned by Berton.
Winver at the command prompt shows version 10.0 Build 10240.

I waited a day and on switch on, Windows 10 advised me that a restart was needed. I re-started and the installation of the update started. Some 2 hours later, the update was complete. I now have Version 1511 (Build 10586.3

Needless to say, I have made a new disk image.

Thanks for all your help

Geoff

I have just purchased a 2TB USB3 portable drive (Toshiba) which I use for backups and disk images.

The drive will be used with my 2 4 year old laptops, a Dell 1340 Studio XPS and a Dell VaioVPCEA3M1E. The Dell is running WIndows 7, and the Sony is running Windows 8.1

Of course both laptops support USB2 but not USB3.

Both laptops have an Express Card slot.

I have seen Express Card to USB 3 adapters available for sale. I have also read that they will not provide USB3 speeds if plugged into a laptop that only supports USB2.

So, will I see an improvement in data transfer speeds from my laptops to my USB3 Toshiba or not?

Thanks,

Geoff

Reporting back as promised.

Had a reply from a lady at WindowsSecrets Editor

Apparently it was due to a mistake within the marketing team. It has been resolved. I will not get any further duplicate emails.

Excellent service.

Pleased to hear it was not a scam.

Geoff