Hi Nasdaq,
Thanks for responding...
Trouble doesn't even begin to describe it, LOL. But to detail all the problems I've had would be like writing an encyclopedia of computer problems. I've ended up refreshing or resetting this particular computer every 2 weeks (nearly like clockwork) for months now (and that's just my 2014 woes with this machine. If this had been a car, it would have been returned via lemon laws. And the owner is suffering from battle fatigue. ) )
On Monday, I reset the machine, last night I refreshed the machine...but things just haven't seemed to work righf (I'll just go into the issues with my protection, atm -- I don't even remember all the other issues. I have, however, run chkdsk, which runs clean, as does sfc, and pc diagnostics which come with my machine have no complaints. (One issue, however, was updates were difficult and incomplete...so I only have less than half installed...)
The reason I refreshed was primarily because, even though I've run updated scans with MalWareBytes and Avast every day with no problems of note, I went to look at my restore points ... and they were gone. When I clicked on "System restore", in the "systems properties" dialog of restore, I think nothing happened. It was only later, after I refreshed (and, after booting, discovered went thru the same thing, that I went to configure and discovered that there was 0 memory allocated to restore points. Once I allocated memory to it, restore worked. So everything I ran, ran "clean", but still somehow my restore points vanished, until now, after allocating memory to them.)
At the moment, I have pretty much no anti-virus protection (I thought I had the "offline" installer for Avast, on the external hard drive; I uninstalled the Norton crap...did install MWB 2.0+ which was on the external...can see MWB running, can bring up options on "Windows Firewall" in control panel...
...but action center complains about
"Spyware and unwanted software protection" (Important)
Turn on virus protection (Important)
...but clicking on these links in the Action Center, or on the same links in Action Center in the Control Panel just pop up an explorer window showing the Windows\system32 directory...
At this point, the simplest, least painful way of resolving my problems would be a reset (resets are faster than refreshes, I've noticed...)...with as many of these recoveries I've done, I don't keep much of value on my internal hard drive any more.
(Oh yeah, I can't even run a MWB scan now, because it wants me to update it...but I feel rather uncertain as to the level of protection I have and don't really want to go online. Updated...actually, I did try going online, got "cannot reach update server" :( )
I have no problem with doing a reset at this point. That would be fine and truly the simplest route thru my particular jungle of problems atm.
I would just like to have the peace of mind of how I can install those 105 updates safely and securely.
Thanks very much,
Ann
P.S. I also have a complete set of SysInternal tools available.
P.S.S. You a trader? :)
Edited by AwesomeLife, 11 April 2014 - 12:28 PM.