Dropbox makes the easiest way to send photos

Trying to make friends at Costco using song

By Kathleen Atkins Comedian Ellen DeGeneres sent one of her writers to Costco with an unusual assignment — to make friends with shoppers (on hidden camera). But to make the mission considerably more difficult, Amy could address new acquaintances only with song lyrics. Most of the sensible souls buying books and shirts weren’t open to pop-song fizz or soulful romance, so Amy’s conversational gambits were not well received. But all’s well that ends well when Amy meets a courtly shopper. Play the video

Dropbox makes the easiest way to send photos

E-mail, Facebook, texting, etc. are all good ways to share new digital stills and videos; but they’re typically an image-by-image, select-and-send process.

Dropbox can eliminate those extra steps with its Camera Upload option, available on Android and iOS devices.

Shoot, file, and send photos automatically

Managing photographs just keeps getting easier and easier. Fifteen years ago, we took our undeveloped film to a photo lab, looked over our snaps for a couple of minutes, and then dumped the prints and negatives into shoeboxes. Now we snap images with our phone or tablet and immediately e-mail them to friends or family or post them on Facebook for all to see.

Dropbox (site) adds a higher level of automation to digital-image sharing. All you have to do is snap the picture; if you’re connected to the Internet, Dropbox immediately uploads the image to its servers, then downloads it to a folder on your computer and to other Dropbox-capable devices. Once the photos are on your computer, sharing them with friends and family can be just as automatic.

Dropbox’s service works with iPhones, iPads, and Android-based phones and tablets. It’ll also work with one of the new Android cameras, such as Nikon’s COOLPIX S800c (info) or Samsung’s EK-GC100 Galaxy (info). You’ll also need a Dropbox account, of course, installed on both your PC and on your camera, phone, or tablet. (From here on, I’ll just use the word camera.)

In the following sections, I’ll tell you how to set up automatic Dropbox photo uploading. I’ll start by assuming you’ve already installed Dropbox on your PC and camera and you’re using the same Dropbox account on both.

From Android to PC, without lifting a finger

Here’s how to set up automatic photo uploading in Android. I used a Droid X phone running Android 2.3.4; your device might behave in a slightly different manner.

Open Dropbox on the camera, then press the physical Menu button. Tap Settings and then find and tap Turn on Camera Upload. The resulting screen will give you two settings, shown in Figure 1.

The first is Upload photos and videos using: Wi-Fi only or Wi-Fi or data plan. (As shown in Figure 1, Wi-Fi only is the default.) If you don’t have an unlimited data plan (and fewer and fewer of us do), select Wi-Fi only. If you’re one of the lucky few who still have an unlimited plan, enjoy it — you probably won’t have it for long.

The second option, Upload existing photos and videos, affects only what will happen immediately after you enable Camera Upload. Should Dropbox start its new uploading duties by transferring all photos already on your camera to your PC? It probably should — unless you have a huge collection of images on the phone. If that’s the case, consider physically connecting the phone to the PC one more time to move the entire collection faster.

Figure 1. When first setting up Camera Upload on Android devices, you can upload all camera images or just new ones.

Exporting snaps from iPhone or iPad to PC

Setting up Dropbox’s photo-exchange system on iPhones and iPads is similar to the procedure for Android. I used a Wi-Fi-only iPad 2 running iOS 6, but setup should be similar on the iPhone. Earlier versions of iOS might not have the Camera Upload option, but you can still manually upload selected images through Dropbox.

In the Dropbox app, tap the Settings icon in the lower-right corner of the Dropbox panel (which is on the left side of the screen). Tap Camera Upload, then turn the Camera Upload switch on.

Next, a pop-up dialog box will ask whether you want to Save All or Only New (see Figure 2). In other words, do you want Dropbox to upload the photos already on your device? If you answer Only New, it will ignore those photos and upload only the pictures you take from now on. As with Android, I recommend Save All, unless you have a massive photo collection to transfer. Make your choice and tap Enable.

Figure 2. When setting up Camera Upload on iOS devices, you can initially transfer all images or only new ones.

Finding newly uploaded images on your PC

Once you’ve changed these settings, Dropbox will automatically upload your images (stills and videos) into a new folder — Camera Uploads — inside the Dropbox folder on your PC.

At this point, it’s important to note that Camera Uploads doesn’t sync with your camera in the typical bidirectional Dropbox file–synching way. Your photos will move only one direction: from camera to PC. If you edit or delete a picture on the PC, the changes will not be reflected inside your camera. That could be confusing over time, so it’s best to clean out your phone’s picture gallery every so often — after ensuring new photos are on your PC.

Keep in mind that the Camera Uploads folder will appear for any device on which you’ve installed Dropbox and you’re using the same account — including your camera.

Sharing the right photos the right way

Your photos are now moving to your PC (and possibly other devices with Dropbox installed) with no effort on your part. You can share them with friends and family just as easily by sharing the Camera Uploads folder on your computer. However, there are two good reasons you might not want to.

First, if you give other people access to your Camera Uploads folder, you lose some editorial power over which photos they see. You don’t really want everyone puzzling over that accidental snap of the kitchen floor you haven’t had time to delete — or worse, that particularly unflattering picture your spouse took of you down by the lake.

The safer solution: Drag the pictures you want to share into a separate, shared folder within the Dropbox folder. (Dropbox’s default Photos folder will do.) This takes a bit more effort, but it’s still easier than uploading them to Facebook or Flickr. What’s more, you’ll know that others will see only the best pictures — including those you’ve had time to crop and fix. (You can even include some older, favorite photos, as well.)

Second, you probably don’t want the folder shared in the Dropbox, file-synching sense of that word. If you use standard sharing, your friends and family will need their own Dropbox accounts to access your folder. Worse, your photo folder might take up precious space in their Dropbox accounts. And possibly even worse than that, those you share with will have the ability to alter the contents of your photo folder. Do you really want that?

Instead, create a shared link. This allows anybody to view your photos (and access other files) via the Web — all they need is the right URL. To see what link-sharing looks like from the recipient’s point of view, check out this collection of recent cat photos. (Unlike my human family, my cats don’t object to being publicly displayed. Besides, what’s cuter than a new kitten?)

To provide your friends and family with a similar experience (your images, not those of my cats), right-click the folder you want to share and select Dropbox/Share link (shown in Figure 3). This pops up a Web page of the photos, with a dialog box of sharing options. You can add names or e-mails and have Dropbox send invites. I suggest simply clicking Copy link to this page (see Figure 4) and pasting the URL into an e-mail. It’s more personal and actually easier. Thereafter, friends and family can use the same link to see new photos added to the folder.

Figure 3. Right-click a file or folder within a Dropbox folder to share images via the Web.

Figure 4. Creating a shared-photos link lets others view your images without a Dropbox account.

Long-term photo maintenance

A few other touches will help with image sharing in the long run.

If you’re using Windows 7, make both of the photo folders (Camera Uploads and the one you’re sharing) part of Windows’ Pictures library. This will make the folders easier to load, and it will help photo programs such as Photo Gallery find them. To add a folder to the Pictures library, right-click the folder in Windows Explorer and select Include in library/Pictures.

If you’ve paid for additional storage on Dropbox, move all photos you’re willing to share with friends and family to a shared-link folder and just leave them there. With a free Dropbox account, you’ll probably have to prune the stored images every so often to keep within the limited storage space. This doesn’t mean deleting photos — just moving them out of the shared folder and back into your local My Pictures folder (outside of Dropbox).

Which reminds me: enjoy the cat pictures now. They’re going to disappear in a month or two.

Nothing lost in translation after all

This week, a Quicken user in Cornwall ran into frustration trying to restore his Quicken 2004 files after a brief, unsatisfactory experiment with Quicken 2010.

A Quicken user in Boston offered advice. Although the Cornish user worried that the Boston user had misread his original post, he tried the Bostonian’s suggestion, which worked — like a charm, he said, an expression understood perfectly on both sides of the pond. You can see the problem and solution using this link.

The following links are this week’s most interesting Lounge threads, including several new questions for which you might have answers:

Office Applications
General Productivity	Recommend simple macro writer?
Word Processing	Word 2007 formatting problem
Spreadsheets	Export to Excel from webpage no longer works
Databases	Access database sample for route deliveries
Visual Basic for Apps	Populating many occurrences of field in document from UserForm
Microsoft Outlook	How to set up out-of-office autoresponder
Non-Outlook E-mail	How to delete a folder in Outlook-style Live.com?
Other MS Apps	SkyDrive problem?
Windows
General Windows	Trouble with FileHippo Update Checker
Windows 8	Attitudes regarding Windows 8
Windows 7	Entry Not Found error message
	Erratic mouse behavior
	DVD writer not seen in notebook running Win7
Windows Vista	Definitive answer to the dreaded explorer.exe loop?
Windows XP	Programs hang when releasing control
Internet/Connectivity
Internet Explorer	IE 9 disappears again and again
Third-Party Browsers	Firefox 16 arrives — maybe
Networking	Wireless access issues: Can’t see network devices on primary router
Social Media	Downloading from YouTube
Other Technologies
Security & Scams	Need help with rubyw.exe
Maintenance	Win 7 backup
Hardware	PC to dual monitors connection
Graphics/Multimedia	Flash error message
Other Applications	Quicken won’t load account
The Lounge

starred posts: particularly useful

If you’re not already a Lounge member, use the quick registration form to sign up for free. The ability to post comments and take advantage of other Lounge features is available only to registered members.

If you’re already registered, you can jump right in to today’s discussions in the Lounge.

Diagnosing PC hangs and freezes redux

Sometimes the simple approaches to troubleshooting an ailing PC just don’t work.

But numerous free tools — including some that are built into Windows — can usually lead to a solution.

Unable to find the cause of frustrating freezes

Suffering from random PC freezes, reader Bill Wilson tried a technique described in a previous LangaList Plus column. Unfortunately, he’s still looking for the source — and a solution — to what’s bogging down his system.

• “Your [Aug. 23] article, ‘Apps temporarily — and randomly — freeze,’ suggests using the program ‘What’s my computer doing?’ [free; site] to diagnose the problem. Apparently, the guy who wrote to you had used it successfully.

  “But when my computer freezes, I don’t get a response until the freeze goes away. I tried using What’s my computer doing?, but clicking its taskbar icon does nothing during the freeze.

  “My freezes don’t happen very often — maybe twice a month. [But when the system stops,] it won’t respond to anything (including Ctrl+Alt+Del) for several minutes. Sometimes the hard-drive light will be continuously on; other times it will be off and doesn’t even blink. It’s scary to see the hard-drive light constantly on when there’s no network traffic and I’m not using the keyboard!

  “When the hard-drive light is constantly on and the PC won’t respond, I’ve tried forcing a shutdown. But when the system comes back up, it continues in its frozen state — I have no control.

  “Eventually, the PC frees up and works normally.”

First, Bill, I suggest using the What’s my computer doing? (WMCD, for short) utility in a slightly different way. Here’s what to do:

Make sure WMCD is running in the background. Then, next time your PC hangs, immediately open WMCD’s window when the PC resumes operation (i.e., the hang ends) and quickly click the Freeze option (see Figure 1). This prevents WMCD’s display from updating, keeping information the tool has already collected from scrolling off the screen.

Figure 1. The Freeze option in What's my computer doing? preserves the last 10–15 seconds of recorded activity.

With the WMCD display frozen, scroll down in the main window area. There, you’ll see all recently active programs and processes. (Again, see Figure 1.) The further down you scroll, the further back in time you’ll see.

With luck, you’ll see the tail end of whatever was consuming so much of your PC’s time and attention. One of the listed programs or processes is the likely culprit.

If that step fails, you can try a more powerful diagnostic tool that’s built into Windows — Performance Monitor. I discussed its function and use in the June 13 Top Story, “Exploring Windows’ Administrative Tools: Part 2.”

In particular, carefully read two sections of that article: “Using ResMon to cure hangs and delays” and “Beyond the basics.” The former might help analyze hangs as they happen; the latter will help you set up detailed log files that might show what’s going on with your software before, during, and after the freezes.

One of those three options — the WMCD, ResMon, or “Beyond the basics” method — should let you pinpoint the exact cause of your hangs.

Whether to leave free space on an SSD

George Holland is concerned about running out of space on his solid-state drive (SSD).

• “Everyone is talking about the reliability and speed of modern SSDs. However, I have a problem, and I can’t find an easy answer or fix.

  “My operating system (Win7 Home Premium x64) and data are on a 111GB SSD that now has only 45.3GB free. My user folder is the main culprit, and it will — of course — continue to grow over time.

  “There does not appear to be an easy way to move the user folder to my SATA drive. I’ve found instructions for moving parts of the user folder, but they’re complex and seem dangerous.

  “I would greatly appreciate an article or two devoted to this problem.”

With over 45GB free on your SSD, I don’t think you really have to do anything — yet. That’s actually a lot of free space! Plus, it makes sense to keep the SSD rather full so you’ll get its speed benefit for as many files as possible.

To put it another way, empty space on an SSD means you aren’t using some of the high-speed file-storage space you’ve paid for. The way to really get your money’s worth from an SSD is to let it carry its full share of files. Use its space!

So here’s my suggestion: Do nothing for now. Let the SSD gradually fill up in the natural course of events. When your free space gets down to, say, 15 percent or so (that’s about 17GB of your SSD’s 111GB capacity), consider taking action to regain some storage space.

One good way to free up space on an SSD (or any hard drive) is to enable file and folder compression for selected folders, such as My Documents. (Right-click a file or folder and, in the General tab, click Advanced. Select Compress contents to save disk space. Your results will depend on the mix of files you have (some file types compress far more than others), but it’s not uncommon for compression to open up 30 percent to 50 percent of the space occupied by the targeted files and folders!

Moreover, opening a compressed file on the SSD (and compressing the file when you save it) should still be faster than accessing an uncompressed file on your SATA.

When compression is no longer enough, selectively move least-used or least-important files to your conventional hard drive’s slower storage. For example, good places to start are your My Pictures and My Music folders; you won’t gain much, if any, space compressing JPEGs and MP3s (because those are file formats that are already compressed), and they’re typically accessed infrequently.

Vista and Windows 7 make it relatively easy to move folders such as My Documents, My Pictures, My Music, and so on. For an illustrated how-to, click to the Dec. 1, 2011, LangaList Plus column, “Different ways to move user folders.”

But for now, with 45GB free, I’m betting you won’t need to compress or move anything for quite a while.

In short: You paid for fast storage — use it!

A reader’s tip for extreme data security

Windows Secrets reader Ron sent in this impressive method for securing sensitive information on his PC. Although he goes further than I feel the need to, his technique shows how much you can do with readily available tools and a little effort.

• “I’ve been using SecurStar’s DriveCrypt [free trial, then U.S. $60; site] for over five years to encrypt my financial data. TrueCrypt [free; site] works as well.

  “First, I create two virtual containers (or virtual disks), one about 20MB and the other about 10MB. I have all my rarely accessed sensitive files in one and the more frequently accessed files in the other.

  “I never mount these virtual disks while connected to the Internet, and I always reboot and run CCleaner prior to and after accessing these virtual disks.

  “This disconnect/clean/reboot process takes only a couple of minutes prior to accessing my protected, personal files. The follow-up clean/reboot/reconnect adds a couple of minutes more. I’ve never had any type of breach.

  “Although this process might be overkill, the protected files contain virtually all my important family information. All other, less-secured files are stored in a folder backed up by DropBox.”

Awesome, Ron! I applaud your dedication to personal security!

Another reader security recommendation

Tom Dalton suggests an unusual anti-keylogger (Wikipedia definition) tool.

• “Consider Keyscrambler [site]. It protects your computer so no one can capture your passwords as you type them — ever.

  “Once the software is installed, no keylogger can steal any password you type.”

Thanks, Tom. Keyscrambler is highly specialized software that recognizes password-entry fields. One part of Keyscrambler inserts itself at the driver level to intercept and encrypt a password as you type it. The encrypted password is then delivered by the operating system to the target software — say, a sign-in dialog box in your browser.

A second part of Keyscrambler then decrypts the password and inserts it into the password-entry field you’re filling. Thus, any keylogging or other snooping software that resides in between the keyboard and the destination software sees only encrypted gibberish. (Check out the site for a fuller description of how Keyscrambler works.)

The free version of Keyscrambler recognizes and protects passwords typed into Internet Explorer, Firefox, and a handful of other software. Two paid versions work with various other programs. The utility’s info page lists the versions, prices, and capabilities.

If you’re in a situation where there’s a serious risk of password theft by keylogging software (mostly with shared PCs, I think), this software could give you an extra measure of password security.

Thanks, Tom! Interesting software!

The ultimate virus scan: Clean outside Windows

No matter how good your precautions, malware can still infect your computer.

If you suspect an infection but your antivirus program tells you otherwise, take Windows out of the calculation and run your AV in a non-Windows environment where the infection can’t hide.

Use Linux to run antivirus software on a PC

Malware can be extremely clever. Infections can block your AV app from doing its job properly; it might even defeat supplementary malware scanners. But malware that infects Windows is specific to that OS. It no longer works and can’t hide as easily from another operating system.

There are plenty of good, free malware scanners that run in other environments — many of them Linux-based. And the good news is, you don’t have to know anything about Linux to use them. Simply boot the non-Windows OS, and the scanner of your choice pops up.

Choose the best media for your AV system

Virtually all non-Windows AV tools are designed to boot from CDs. You can also put them onto a bootable flash drive, but that generally takes more work. And it might be worth the extra effort. Not all PCs have a working optical drive, but they all have a USB port. You can carry a flash drive in your pocket and, when you’re through using it as an AV tool, use it for something else.

But since these programs are designed to be put onto optical discs, let’s start there.

For bootable CDs, you need .iso-file support

You can’t copy AV and system files to a CD and expect them to boot a PC. You have to burn an .iso image (Wikipedia definition) onto the disc. Think of .iso files as downloadable CDs. Many AV applications can be downloaded as bootable .iso files.

With Windows 7 — either on the suspect computer or another one — creating the bootable CD is easy: simply download the file, double-click it, and follow the prompts.

Earlier versions of Windows lack this built-in .iso support. If you’re running XP, for example, download a third-party .iso burner such as Active@ ISO Burner (info). Once the app is installed, you can create a bootable CD by simply double-clicking the .iso file and following the instructions.

Below, I’ll explain how to turn an .iso file into a bootable flash drive for my two recommended malware scanning programs.

Picking the right bootable scanner

I applied the following conditions to my choice of scanners. First, they had to be from companies known to be effective at catching malware. (Well, duh!) For guidance, I turned to AV-Comparative’s most recent file-detection tests (downloadable PDF). I considered scanners only from companies whose conventional antivirus programs scored better than 99 percent.

I next picked companies that offer a free, bootable scanner that doesn’t require you to buy and install any of their other programs. Also, the scanner had to work reliably (you’d be amazed how many didn’t) and be reasonably easy to use.

There’s one thing I didn’t look for — speed. Sure, we want fast performance from our full-time AV apps that continuously run in the background. If they’re bloated and badly written, they’ll slow down everything. But a scanner run in another OS environment is running by itself — there are no other apps to slow down.

Based on these criteria, I picked Kaspersky Rescue Disk and F-Secure Rescue CD. Kaspersky is the easiest one to set up and use — especially if you’re using a flash drive. F-Secure might be just a bit better at catching the bad guys; the company scored 99.3 percent on AV-Comparative’s tests, compared to Kaspersky’s 99.2 percent. (Four AV products scored better than F-Secure, but they lacked either bootable or functional scanners.)

Keep in mind that picking between the two scanners is not an “either/or” decision. If you’re seriously worried about a difficult-to-remove infection, two scanners are better than one.

One quick note: Both these programs need to update their database after you boot them. Although they both support Wi-Fi, you’ll have an easier time if your PC has an Ethernet connection.

Kaspersky: Fast, easy, and familiar AV scanning

For a serious infection (which is probably why you’re using a bootable, non-Windows AV product), I recommend starting with Kaspersky Rescue Disk (info). Its graphical user interface will make any Windows user feel at home (see Figure 1).

Figure 1. Kaspersky's scanner has a friendly graphical interface.

Kaspersky, however, doesn’t automatically update its database. Before you start a scan, select the My Update Center tab and then click the big Start update button (see Figure 1).

Figure 2. Before running the scanner, you must manually update its virus database.

Kaspersky’s scanner is remarkably easy to set up on a flash drive. Along with the .iso file, download what might be the most artlessly titled program in computer history: the Utility to record Kaspersky Rescue Disk 10 to USB devices (download page; under Step 2). Put it into the same folder as the .iso file, run the utility, and follow the prompts.

F-Secure: Getting down to basics

You won’t find any of Kaspersky’s fancy graphics in the F-Secure Rescue CD (info). On the other hand, the plain-text screens might make you nostalgic for DOS.

F-Secure has one ease-of-use advantage over Kaspersky. You don’t have to tell it to update the database. If it finds an Internet connection, it updates automatically.

Figure 3. F-Secure's interface is bare-bones, but it updates its virus database automatically

F-Secure doesn’t provide a way to turn the “CD” into a flash drive, but there is a third-party tool available. The Universal USB Installer (info) is usable with just about any bootable Linux .iso file.

The Universal Installer isn’t as easy to use as Kaspersky’s utility, but it’s not hard, either. Insert a flash drive and run the Universal Installer (you don’t have to install it). Next, make the flash drive bootable in three steps:

• Select the correct Linux distribution (in this case, F-Secure Rescue CD, which is near the bottom of a very long list).
  

  Figure 4. Pick the F-Secure distribution.

• Tell the program where it can find the .iso file.
• Select the flash drive by drive letter (see Figure 5). If you don’t see it, check the Now Showing All Drives (BE CAREFUL) option.

Figure 5. Be sure to select the correct drive letter for the flash drive.

And do be careful. If you select another drive with important information on it, you’re going to be sorry. The .iso-writing process will overwrite that information.

Bottom line. Either of these programs should catch and clean out whatever infection is hiding on your PC. If not, you should consider the strong possibility that whatever’s wrong with your computer, it’s not malware.

Windows 8 learns lessons from Windows 7

As most Windows 7 users know, patching the operating system can result in both minor and major system failures.

Windows 8, due out Oct. 26, comes with new tools that should prevent or fix patching problems.

Using component-based servicing

When Microsoft built Vista, it completely redesigned how Windows obtained updates. Instead of retaining Windows XP’s multiple ways to install patches, Microsoft opted for one update system that not only installed patches more quickly but also could fix itself when the updating process failed. (System recovery no longer needed the original Windows installation media.)

Unfortunately, the system wasn’t perfect — problems cropped up that have persisted through Windows 7. With Windows 8, Microsoft finally added new tools and fixes that should make Windows updating easier and more reliable.

Today, when you click Install updates in Vista or Windows 7, Windows Update or Microsoft Update downloads the patch files, stages them, and then requests a system reboot. It’s during the reboot that the update system’s heavy lifting starts. An entry in TechNet’s The Windows Servicing Guy blog provides details on how this works.

When cracks in the updating system appeared not long after Microsoft released Vista, the company offered an IT tool — CheckSUR — that could detect and repair update servicing-stack failures, as discussed in another post from The Windows Servicing Guy.

Installing the utility — renamed the System Update Readiness Tool (SURT) — is explained in MS Support article 947821. SURT can be downloaded from the Microsoft Download Center site (article 947821 includes download links for the various versions of Windows), or it might show up in Windows Update when Vista’s or Win7’s update system detects an update-installation failure.

Here’s a list of annoying Windows 7 issues that SURT addresses:

• 0x80070002   ERROR_FILE_NOT_FOUND   The system cannot find the file specified.
• 0x8007000D   ERROR_INVALID_DATA   The data is invalid.
• 0x800F081F   CBS_E_SOURCE_MISSING   The source for the package or file not found.
• 0x80073712   ERROR_SXS_COMPONENT_STORE_CORRUPT   The component store is in an inconsistent state.
• 0x800736CC   ERROR_SXS_FILE_HASH_MISMATCH   A component’s file does not match the verification information present in the component manifest.
• 0x800705B9   ERROR_XML_PARSE_ERROR   Unable to parse the requested XML data.
• 0x80070246   ERROR_ILLEGAL_CHARACTER   An invalid character was encountered.
• 0x8007370D   ERROR_SXS_IDENTITY_PARSE_ERROR   An identity string is malformed.
• 0x8007370B   ERROR_SXS_INVALID_IDENTITY_ATTRIBUTE_NAME   The name of an attribute in an identity is not within the valid range.
• 0x8007370A   ERROR_SXS_INVALID_IDENTITY_ATTRIBUTE_VALUE   The value of an attribute in an identity is not within the valid range.
• 0x80070057   ERROR_INVALID_PARAMETER   The parameter is incorrect.
• 0x800B0100   TRUST_E_NOSIGNATURE   No signature was present in the subject.
• 0x80092003   CRYPT_E_FILE_ERROR   An error occurred while Windows Update reads or writes to a file.
• 0x800B0101   CERT_E_EXPIRED   A required certificate is not within its validity period when verifying against the current system clock or the time stamp in the signed file.
• 0x8007371B   ERROR_SXS_TRANSACTION_CLOSURE_INCOMPLETE   One or more required members of the transaction are not present.
• 0x80070490   ERROR_NOT_FOUND   Windows could not search for new updates.

Unfortunately, Windows 7 has a dirty little secret. There are still servicing-stack issues SURT can’t fix. For example, when you run the tool in Windows 7, it reports that there are missing files, which in turn point to missing parts of past security patches and updates.

As discussed in the September 2009 TechNet article, “Advanced guidelines for diagnosing and fixing servicing corruption,” checkSUR (as it was then named) would report that it was unable to repair some update files. The files had to be replaced by the Windows user. In Windows 7, this meant looking at the update-system log file, seeing whether the missing files matched a KB patch number, and manually copying the needed files from another, similar system.

The Windows updating rules change in Windows 8

Knowing that this manual file-copying process was a horrible customer experience, Microsoft made improvements in Windows 8. The new repair process is still far from perfect — you have to run it from a command line — but at least you don’t have to pick pieces of patches from a working system.

In place of the separate checkSUR application, Windows 8 has a new, built-in feature — Inbox Corruption Repair — that lets the operating system fix itself without pulling bits of files from other locations. The tool is designed to repair any corruption or servicing issues with the help of Windows Update. A recent post from The Windows Servicing Guy gives detailed instructions for running the new tool from a command line.

But first, you have to open a command window. In Win8, place the cursor on the right side of the Win8 home screen and right-click. Select the All Applications charm, then scroll through the list and find Command Prompt, as shown in Figure 1. Right-click its icon and select Run as administrator.

Figure 1. The Win8 command-line tool is in the All Applications charm.

Once you have a command prompt, type in DISM /Online /Cleanup-Image /RestoreHealth and press Enter. The process begins and displays its progress as a percentage, as shown in Figure 2. If the tool needs to repair any files, it will go to Windows Update and download what it needs.

Figure 2. Windows 8's Inbox Corruption Repair update repair tool runs from a command prompt.

Expect the process to take a good 15 to 20 minutes to complete. When it’s done, a cbs.log file (c:\windows\logs) will indicate whether there were any actual fixes. (You must copy the log file to your Documents folder to view it.) It will note any CBS Manifest Corruption, CBS Metadata Corruption, CSI Manifest Corruption, CSI Metadata Corruption, and CSI Payload Corruption fixes.

Inbox Corruption Repair would be better if it had a nice GUI wrapper or were integrated into Windows Update as an option. But it is a much-needed start. I have had to run a nondestructive Win7 reinstall to fix an update-based system corruption. I’d rather not have to go through that again.

Microsoft will keep checkSUR/System Update Readiness Tool for repairing Windows 7 — the new version in Win8 will not be backported. Microsoft plans to update checkSUR as long as it supports Windows 7.

Make this one more of those hidden features in Windows 8 that keep me interested in the new OS — or rather another reason to look beyond the new OS.