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PKCano, looks like you win the prize. It is indeed an icon for an offline network drive. Why it would just recently start popping up in the tray when it has never done it before only M$ knows. I guess M$ just can’t keep their #$% hands off things that have always worked satisfactorily. Thanks to all who gave input.

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Elly

>>The icon has no info when hovered over.

I get a popup box on startup when my network drive is not on… much, much larger than an icon.

>> Have you checked the startup in task manager to see if you have something starting there?

Everything in startup is stuff I have used for years.

It does not appear to be the same as file explorer icon. Am including images of icon & tray

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Cybertooth

As I stated in the first post, it is windows file explorer which opens when the icon is clicked.

Windows 10 Pro
version 2004
OS build 19041.572
32 bit

As stated… “Recently my Windows 10 Pro has…”.  The only thing I can add is ver. 2004, 32bit.

Ebay currently has 31 results for “windows 7 professional retail”–I see discs in some of the offers around $60.

Many of those are for either oem or upgrade license which is not the same as retail. Of those which appear to be retail many have been opened(no longer factory sealed) some even claimed they can’t guarantee the key and most of the rest have so few ratings that I personally wouldn’t trust them(I’m not saying they are illegal or would try to cheat anyone, but… I have been cheated three times in the last six years on versions of windows that were misrepresented). Just saying…
Al

Well, I suspected that the origin had something to do with my issues – it didn’t, really, but it seems to be affecting my hopes of an early workaround, at least. I’m expecting to rebuild this baby sometime after Christmas, so with the original motherboard in and the ability to first install XP restored, I should be able to get all this sorted out. I never used to have this much trouble – either I’m getting old, forgetting what little I knew, or if it’s the manufacturers either getting lazy or getting lower-quality materials – I really don’t know. Most likely it’s a combination of all those things.

What I meant was, and I see now after rereading what I wrote that I didn’t express it very clearly at all, was that a computer that’s sold with Vista Home Premium (for example), if you have to reinstall the OS, needs to have Vista Home Premium installed – or else you will soon get the warning that your Windows installation is ‘not authentic’ (I forget the exact wording). Instead of Vista Home Premium, I installed Vista Business for that friend (it was the only Vista DVD from Dell that I had available) and about a week later, he started getting that alert.

And based on the info I’ve received in this thread, I think I will be getting that Windows 7 disk from Dell – with the e-gift card they provided it will be less than $100 and will definitely come in handy at some point.

I too have been searching for days for a full retail win7 to buy, but it appears there are none to be had. So I finally bought another oem license which is what I already have. Here is a link to an article which will explain the differences in ms windows licenses: http://www.zdnet.com/article/what-microsoft-wont-tell-you-about-windows-7-licensing/
It certainly helped me to understand.
You were right about one thing… if a pc came with for instance windows 7 home premium, you can’t install windows 7 pro or enterprise using the product key for home premium. You will get those error messages you mentioned and maybe others as well. It certainly won’t activate.

edited: You surely can install a different version of windows(from home premium to pro or enterprise) IF you bought a license for the different pro or enterprise version. Then no problems.

edited again: Another thought… as you are rebuilding your pc there is another path you might consider. Cloning your hard drive. Buy a new matching size hard drive and clone it with a backup app that has that capability. I have never done this but I’ll go out on a limb here and say that it should work because it would be an exact copy of your present hard drive complete with os, apps, & data. I have a friend at church who has done this more than once in order to keep using xp apps that don’t work under newer versions of windows than 7.

I had a lot of trouble with this a while back, and could not (and still don’t) understand why chkdsk doesn’t fix the dirty bit itself. Before I type the rather obscure instructions I found, I suggest you try “chkdsk c: /x” at the command line. This won’t try to recover data (which speeds it up), but (in my case) does reset the dirty bit. Then chkdsk may want to run after a reboot, and with luck it will. Let me know if that helps, and if not we’ll try the more cumbersome approach.

NB test the dirty bit with “fsutil dirty query c:“

Due to this being Thanksgiving holiday week I won’t be able to try this until next week, but will try it too. Thanks. Al

Try running “TestDisk” after booting from your Hiren’s BootCD.

I’ll try that next, thanks. Al

Boot from a Windows CD/DVD, go to the command prompt and run CHKDSK from there.
Make a backup first, of course.

cheers, Paul

Been there, done that, still dirty…
Al

This article describes using a different hex editor – https://www.raymond.cc/blog/manually-reset-or-clear-dirty-bit-in-windows-without-chkdsk/

Read that article too. Forgot to mention that I had also tried DMDE hex editor with same result as HxD. Does anyone know of an app that will read the disk, find the string, and let one change the appropriate bit(kinda automatically)? How about one of you wizards whip one up real quick???;)

I like to use the search box for searching my own local stuff, and I’m learning how to use it better. (In spite of its occasionally finding files that aren’t there any longer).

This won’t help with your problem of phantom files, etc. but may I suggest one of the following search programs instead of Cortana or Ask Me Anything…

Agent Ransack — https://www.mythicsoft.com/agentransack/download

Search My Files —
http://www.nirsoft.net/utils/searchmyfiles.zip (32bit)
http://www.nirsoft.net/utils/searchmyfiles-x64.zip (64bit)

both are super fast and have numerous search options as well as the capability of searching inside files. On my computer, I find Agent Ransack slightly faster searching by filename, but Search My Files slightly faster searching inside files.

The answer will be “no”, unless you deliberately save / run the ransomware outside the sandbox.

cheers, Paul

Could you be more specific, Paul?
no “browser/email client in a sandbox will not prevent them from encrypting any files outside the sandbox” or
no “ransomware could “break out of” the sandbox”
Thanks