Almost no response from windows 7..angry wife

I'm just following instructions from another member.

masplin said:

got as far running registry cleaner and defragger. Having a complete mare with trying to create a system image using windows backup. Firstly tried onto a network drive and got various errors so to save time tried to putit on the other partition of this pc. Didn't throw an error, but has been spinning it's wheels for 2 hours whch is far too long. Couldn't do anything with pc so had to power off - ouch. On restarting the backup seems to show a system image of 10GB - is that the right sort of size as have not installed any programs except cleaners?

Also had an issue with having to do a startup repair after the 2nd lot of windows updates was installed. Started ok 2nd time. Just wondering if any of this is a sign that this pc can't handle Win7?

Sounds about right, as the the system restore image also tries to compress and generally it takes about 2 DVDs to do a system restore disks, so that is roughly about the right size. You can always make another one if you still don't feel comfortable about it, although I would aim for an external drive rather than another partition on your system for general 'oh crap' moments.

i dont mean to be rude, but if this thread is still about ur woman not being happy, i would choose the computer!

I didn't want to put it on the same drive, but was trying to eliminate if the errors I was getting were because it was a network drive or a problem with the pc. I started googling the error codes and my eyes glazed over so tried this first. I have set it running again about 20 mins ago and the green bar is about 60% across and not moving. Just says backup in progress just using default settings. I cannot get onto start meu or anything making me think the pc has locked up. if I put the cursor to the bottom i see the blue circle spinning. i suspect the only way out of this is to power off but I know that is a really bad thing to do.

This time got the "view details" window open as soon as it started backing up. Got as far as 58% "creating system image of C:". That was 15 minutes ago and hasn't moved since. I can still access the start menu etc so no idea if this is just very slow.

Just be patient with it... Now if it was taking ALL DAY... I would be more worried. But also look to see if there are any pop up windows by doing Alt-Tab. I know it didn't take me more than an hour to do a system image with my Laptop or with a minibook, but it did prompt me for disks and that was me making System Restore disks to DVD.

As for actual data backup to a disk, it took me around a few hours backing up close to 500 gigs worth of data using Norton Ghost, as an example, from scratch and an hour or so imaging my laptop to hard disk using the Windows backup utility (I may be a little off on my times as I didn't really bother timing it.)

Well dont know if this is normal but 30 mins later still at 58% and not cannot access start menu or task manger. Looks likes its dead again, but will leave it for a bit and see. Hopefulyl there is a restore point from just after the installation I can go back too. No pop ups

masplin said:

Well dont know if this is normal but 30 mins later still at 58% and not cannot access start menu or task manger. Looks likes its dead again, but will leave it for a bit and see. Hopefulyl there is a restore point from just after the installation I can go back too. No pop ups

Look and see if your system's drive light is at least flashing first. Like steady flashing or 'flash........ flash....... flash....' It should be going 'flash flash flash' or just a steady on if it was working.

If it is doing the long pause between flashing, I would then be wondering about looking at the drivers, but not until you re-do this one more time and this time paying attention to the drive light, seeing how it is going when it was going reasonably and when it seems to stall.

if you mean the blue disk cylinder icon that usually flashes on the box then there is nothing flashing or on. Deleted everything in backup partition and tried again. Blue icon flashes or on all the time until it threw a "backup did not complete successfulyl" error. Error code 0x8007001 which is one of theo nes i had earlier doing it to a network drive.

what now? Shoudl I try restoring to post installation or is this osmething different?. I have few automatically created restore points, but stupdily didnt manaully create one after the installation (too thrileld to have completed it!).

May be time to try your Dell chipset for that model.

Is your display driver sufficient? I wouldn't keep a Standard VGA driver, which is a installer placeholder driver. It should be fairly recent. Compare Dells with ATI's.