Almost no response from windows 7..angry wife

[masplin]

Hi Keeichi25

Heres the setup. We both have Outlook 2010 but we use my outlook to receive al lmessages from our domain asplins.co.uk. My pc has all the archive folders. We use a piece of software called syncing.net that sycronise all the email/contacts/calender etc of the non-archived items between the 2 machines. This means her live pst and mine are always virtually identical. We have identical info on our Blackberries. He's is a new install with no third party addins. She has not changed any of the defaults other than views...I don't think I have either. her setup does not check to receive any email it can only send.

So it seems odd that with no activity mine rests at 2-3k and hers at 80k? Seems to be the same story with any bit of common software. with Blackberry the phones are not connected and no activity in Outlook so it isn't doing anything and her memory is static at 124,588, mine is bobbing between 3-10k.

 

[Jacee]

I can disconnect the RAID drives without any issue as only just connected them for system image purposes. Sounds like even though they aren't "active" they could still affect performance?

Yes ... it happened to me.
Go into your computer and disconnect the second HDD (Raid setup). Physically take it out of the computer. Next go into the BIOS, click on the Advanced tab, then power management, disable quick resume.
Press <F10> to save the BIOS settings and exit the BIOS Setup program.

 

[Keiichi25]

Hi Keeichi25

Heres the setup. We both have Outlook 2010 but we use my outlook to receive al lmessages from our domain asplins.co.uk. My pc has all the archive folders. We use a piece of software called syncing.net that sycronise all the email/contacts/calender etc of the non-archived items between the 2 machines. This means her live pst and mine are always virtually identical. We have identical info on our Blackberries. He's is a new install with no third party addins. She has not changed any of the defaults other than views...I don't think I have either. her setup does not check to receive any email it can only send.

So it seems odd that with no activity mine rests at 2-3k and hers at 80k? Seems to be the same story with any bit of common software. with Blackberry the phones are not connected and no activity in Outlook so it isn't doing anything and her memory is static at 124,588, mine is bobbing between 3-10k.

Who's computer has the syncing.net? How is it set up?

I feel that this 3rd party program is treating yours as a the master, which means hers is the client constantly trying to make sure it is synced with yours. Which then creates activity on her outlook, which in turn creates activity for her blackberry. Again, while she may not be doing something, you have another program constantly banging away for her that is prompting her Outlook and Blackberry to go 'update time'.

 

[Barman58]

One other thing is if you use IMAP for email accounts and the outlook connector for your live accounts you can dispense with the third party application completely.

I do this over multiple accounts over multiple systems, My memory usage is high with outlook, (they are active accounts), but the usage is consistent, across systems.

I have my live account as the default data file, which keeps calendars, (in live ), in sync, (sync of Calendar to phone is via Gmail, due to historical reasons but should be possible to use live if required)

 

[masplin]

Been a bit tied up so only just got round to dismantling the RAID setup and wanted to check something.

As a reminder to anyone not following the saga the OS is now newly installed on a 3rd HD and working fine so want to break the old RAID and use the 2 discs for backup.

So went into Ctrl i, Intel Storage Manager and select both RAID discs and chose option 3 to reset the drives. This was fine and rebooted the pc and checked in computer mangement and now had 2 seperate unformatted drives in additon to the OS HD. I then rebooted and went into setup to turn off the RAID in the BIOS. On this PC all 3 drives (2 ex RAID and OS HD) all say controlled by RAID controller. For disc operation there are 2 choices "RAID Auto Detect" or "RAID ON" with the latter being currently selected. I therefore changed to RAID Autodetect and exited. The PC now fails to boot and when I go back into setup and look at boot sequence none of the drives are listed. If I turn RAID back to "RAID ON" it boots fine and says that none of the discs are members of a RAID configuration. I formatted the 2 old ex-RAID discs and everything appears fine.

I just wanted someone to confirm that this "RAID ON" setting in BIOS is not an issue as sounds odd. If I need to get it set to "RAID Auto Detect" what step do I need ot take so it sees the HD withe the live OS on it in the boot sequence?

Hopefully this is the last entry in this mammoth post!

 

[gregrocker]

Looks like you finally got around to removing the RAID array, which you were advised to do before reinstalling to separate HD.

Unplug all of the HD's except the OS HD, set it first to boot in BIOS setup, set the SATA controller in BIOS setup to AHCI, SATA or IDE - find the right setting until Win7 starts up.

 

[masplin]

Did as asked and disconnected RAID HDs and found that "RAID ON" was the only setting where the new OS would boot up. All fine and working fine. Reconnected old RAID HDs which are now formnatted and seperated. On boot up all 3 discs are listed as non-members of RAID.

This was fine for 3 days. However I have come to find the pc has tried to restart for some reason and cannot see any boot disc. In the set up I now see:

SATA 0: Device ID S1234 Size 320GB
SATA 1: Device ID S6789 Size 320GB
SATA 4: Device ID blank Size unknown This is the drive with the newly installed OS

I opened the pc and disconnected the drive on SATA 4 and put it on the SATA 0 conenctions to see if the problem is the drive or the conenctions. On reboot now SATA 0 has no device ID.

I hope this is ins't related to my inabilty to follow instructions the first time, but does this mean the drive with the new OS on SATA 4 has imploded? I don't have Windows update set to install automatically so not immediately obvious what caused it to shut down.

Really sorry this thread hasn't closed. Not sure if I shoudl put this problem in a seperate thread, but thought it might be related.

 

[Keiichi25]

The fact the disk is not identified or showing a size, even after moving it to a different sata channel suggests the drive did, indeed, failed. Whether it was from a static discharge or if it failed on its own. The disk itself should have communicated at least an ID and size for the controller to know how to access it.

Even if the drive were, for some weird reason, setup in various ways, the Disk Controller level should have, at least, have an ID for the drive and the size of the drive.

 

[masplin]

Ironic that after all that the drive blew up!!! Is there anything else to be done or is that the end of that drive? Should I take it somehwere to be tested or start over on one of the other discs?

If the later I took a system image after the original OS install which I have save elsewhere. I'm guessing that if the OS is going onto a new drive I need to start from scratch and can't use this system image?

Thanks Mike

 

[Keiichi25]

Ironic that after all that the drive blew up!!! Is there anything else to be done or is that the end of that drive? Should I take it somehwere to be tested or start over on one of the other discs?

If the later I took a system image after the original OS install which I have save elsewhere. I'm guessing that if the OS is going onto a new drive I need to start from scratch and can't use this system image?

Thanks Mike

Cheapest way to determine how fubared you are. Stick that disk into another system as a slave drive and see if you can 'see' it. Either through the BIOS and see if BIOS doesn't recognize the drive as anything, or if you aren't sure, boot up into Windows on that machine and see if windows even sees it as a valid drive.

If both those methods pretty much yield nothing, the drive is dead and you should probably look at probably using that last good system image onto another disk. You should be able to use your last good image, assuming it isn't on that dead disk, otherwise, yes, you will have to re-do the OS from scratch.

 

[gregrocker]

Use the HD diag/repair CD full scan to see if the drive can be salvaged: Hard Drive Diagnostics Tools and Utilities

Follow up with Disk Check run from booted Win7 DVD command line.

Try unplugging all other drives except OS drive, try it in different SATA ports. Check again for other controller settings. Make sure you have the latest SATA controller driver.

 

[Keiichi25]

Use the HD diag/repair CD full scan to see if the drive can be salvaged: Hard Drive Diagnostics Tools and Utilities

Follow up with Disk Check run from booted Win7 DVD command line.

Try unplugging all other drives except OS drive, try it in different SATA ports. Check again for other controller settings. Make sure you have the latest SATA controller driver.

Well, at this point, I think the latest sata controller driver is moot if it is his system drive that is not showing up on the BIOS level. Given that if it was working before, the drive would be detected and running Windows now which then he can install the driver.