Cobra36

🙂 Good compared to some, not so good compared to others. A lot better than I was 8 months ago. I'm happy to share whatever I've learned so far, using Adobe Premiere Elements and Studio One Pro. Happy to try to return the favor.

OK I will leave it open then. Again thanks so much for all the time you've spent on this. I really do appreciate it. As frustrating as this has all been (there are other things like audio & video recording I was supposed to be working on) I have learned quite a bit.

I set up Acronis yesterday and did a full backup of several User folders / sub-folders. Then Acronis did a scheduled incremental backup early this morning. While I need to do a spot check of the files that were backed up and probably should also try restoring at least a few it looks good so far. I think I will also look into some of the other tools provided (especially antimalware functions) although that will take a bit of time. Thanks also for the encryption software link. I will be looking into that next. I think you can consider this topic closed unless you want to hear back from me when I decide to either buy Acronis or go with something simpler. Thanks so much for your help. While I don't plan on creating scripts to fix system errors, I do have tools to see what errors there are as well as make sure I am up to date with my software.

Thanks for your comments on backup software. I've downloaded the free trial of Acronis True Image 2021. If I like it in 30 days I'll buy the non-subscription version. If not I'll try something else (you've got an article in this forum and PC World has an article (you both came to the same conclusions on best paid & free backup software). One more question if I may. Do you have a recommendation for encryption software? Ideally it would work seamlessly with Open Office and Quicken and I could also use the same package to completely wipe files / folders and clean out unused disk space. One last thing - Cobian software and the backup program is still around here: https://www.cobiansoft.com/. He says on the site that he retained the right to sell any version up to 11 (Gravity). If Sweeney has a new version it's not easy to find using Google.

Well I can't get File History to work correctly. It's not the problem I was having when I originally posted to this forum, but in doing a spot-check I noticed in one folder not all files were backed up. I then checked a number of other folders and found all the files there, but it one folder isn't backed up (and there's one file missing that is very important to me) then I can't trust File History. I did a quick Google search and this just appears to be a File History problem that's been true forever. For some people at least. Also I didn't restore any files to see if the files are backed up properly - but seeing as not all files are backed up I wonder whether this may also be an issue. So may I ask what you use? I would have tried AOMEI Backupper next, but (thanks for the head's up) I don't trust the Chinese government to stay away from software from Chinese companies. (You really have to dig to figure out that they're in Hong Kong.) I'm also debating, now that you've helped me get rid of all of the errors on my computer, to try WD Backup again. Although that may not be worth the hassle.

I updated Zoom, Open Office and MS One Drive (even though OneDrive is disabled on my computer - I figured it couldn't hurt to update). Then I downloaded and ran Patch My PC Home Updater. It found 3 more to update (Firefox, Audacity & WinMerge) so I updated them as well. Then I rebooted the computer. Next I'll look into those articles you've shown on setting up backups and see what I can figure out about getting File History to work properly or using something else. This may take a couple of days to sort out - I'd like to schedule incremental backups daily so (for example) I won't know if the incremental backups are being done until tomorrow or the next day. In my current configuration I don't see incremental backups being done for File History and I have looked in Task Scheduler and don't see anything going on there. So I still have some research to do. Thanks very much for your help so far. I'll be back as soon as I have something to report.

I did run SecurityCheck from the Desktop. Here's the txt file. Does this always need to be run from the desktop? I'd like to move it over to where the other scan app is. SecurityCheck.txt

I followed your directions, shut the computer down for 5 minutes, rebooted and ran the scan. Here are the logs. I think they errors are still there but I'll rely on your judgement to confirm. FRST.txt Addition.txt

OK here are the two files. This scan was very fast, especially compared to the initial scan yesterday. FRST.txt Addition.txt

Strange about the Recycle Bin. I'm looking at it now and it definitely has 15 items in it (combination of files & folders). OK will start the Scan shortly.

I have done the scan / fix with FRST64. The system was rebooted but I couldn't tell if FRST64 did anything after the restart. Part of the restart did include messages that something or other was being fixed (I didn't write them down). Enclosed is the Fixlog.txt file. I don't know if this matters but I noticed after reboot: When I restarted Firefox all the tabs had been preserved. I had to login to a couple of places and on one tab I did not have to login. C:\TEMP is empty C|WINDOWS\TEMP is empty except for 2 log files (I didn't look at the contents of these files). Recycle Bin was not emptied I'm not sure where to find Users TEMP folders so I don't know if they were emptied or not. Let me know what to do next. Thanks. Fixlog.txt

AdvancedSetup I am happy to try and get to the bottom of my backup issues. But I hope you understand when I say I'm a little nervous about running this script. Partially due to your warning about running it on another machine: Also this warning: Also I'm putting myself in your hands and it feels like a leap of faith. How sure are you that this fixlist.txt script won't accidentally cause damage to my OS? Running both FRST64.exe and letting that program do some sort of fix also to me is another leap of faith. Any guidance for how I should know to do this? And that I won't spend the next 3 days trying to rebuild my computer from the System Image I created yesterday? Thanks. I really do want to believe but past history makes me a little skeptical, or at least wanting to do my due diligence.

Yes please I'd be happy to do some cleanup to get rid of errors. Let me know what I should do. This is out of my depth. Then I can figure out what to do for a sustained backup solution. Macrium Reflect Free sounds like it's not exactly what I want if it just does complete images. Perhaps AOMEI Backupper or Acronis True Image will be more in line with what I need. Assuming I can't get Win10 File History or perhaps even WD Backup to work.

Thus for myself, I personally exit out of Malwarebytes and turn off real-time protection of Windows Defender and run the backup. If you exit out of Malwarebytes and turn off real-time protection of Windows Defender doesn't that make your computer vulnerable? Or is there something else you do to stay secure?

I did download the 64-bit version of Farbar Recovery Scan Tool (just to confirm the executable is called FRST64.exe). As for my backups right now it's kind of a mess. The behavior of File History has not been consistent. I won't get into details until that will help. But I may just delete everything I've done for backup and start over. (I did create a system image yesterday, along with a repair disk and I have enough backed up files so I wouldn't be in too much trouble if things crashed.) FRST.txt Addition.txt