Microsoft Security Essentials on Win7

[ExedExes]

That's news to me about RAM passing POST, in all my years it's never happened to me. I do have Memtest x86 already burned to a CD in case it's needed, it's part of my CD toolbox, alongside other stuff like the Hirens CD which is a good live CD as long as we're mentioning those.

This thread is way past the original purpose but I appreciate a place to talk about what I do on a daily basis.

[Xeogred]

I feel my secondary PC and discussion here is probably a lost cause. I'll see if I can get the HDD checked out somehow, but otherwise it's back in the closet... or the garbage. lol, luckily I don't really care how it turns out.

Anyways, to get back to the main discussion I brought up here, I noticed that Malwarebytes' Anti-exploit only has a limited 14 day trial? Is there not a lite/free version or anything?

I guess at this point I'm not really against paying for premium AV's and addons, but yeah. I do think I plan to build another PC in a year or two and I'll bump up to Windows 10 with it, so I wonder if I should just ride this one out. I don't want to knock on wood or anything... but yeah. It's been a good run with this rig and MAMB finding only 20 some small items after years of only using MSE and CCleaner is hopefully a sign of good health with this PC.

[ExedExes]

As far as I know, once the MBAE trial expires, it goes back to the free version, you just lose the extra protection the full version has, but you still have the browser, plugin, and Java protection you get with the free MBAE.

[Ziggy]

That's news to me about RAM passing POST, in all my years it's never happened to me. I do have Memtest x86 already burned to a CD in case it's needed, it's part of my CD toolbox, alongside other stuff like the Hirens CD which is a good live CD as long as we're mentioning those.

This thread is way past the original purpose but I appreciate a place to talk about what I do on a daily basis.

I was "lucky" enough to have the strangest PC problems in the past. They taught me more about diagnosing hardware issues than classes I attended at a trade school.

But yeah, I mean, that's why MemTest exists. If POSTing meant 100% good RAM, then why run a test?

Think of it like bit rot. How much of the 4+ gigs of RAM is needed to post and load the OS? Some area of RAM might be bad but you wont know until something is loaded into that area. For an analogy, lets say a CD/DVD has a small but deep scratch. The seller on eBay tested the game, got through the menus (let's compare that to POST) and loaded the first level (let's compare that to getting to the desktop). You buy the game, but when you get to level 5 the game hangs because that scratch contained data that wasn't needed until then.

That's why it's a good idea to run MemTest for as long as possible. And, I would assume, the more RAM you have the longer you should let it run. Luckily in that example I gave, MemTest returned multiple errors straight away. But could you imagine having 24GB of RAM and only a small area of one stick is bad? And maybe that one small area of RAM works 9 out of 10 times. By random chance you might never know, or by random chance you would only get an error or BSOD once in a blue moon that you would just chalk it up to "shit happens" and forget about it. As I understand it, MemTest writes patterns to RAM and then reads them back and checks if they match. How large can a pattern possibly be? How long would it take to do just ONE pass through 24GB of RAM? (I have no idea).

RAM can also be very tricky. When using MemTest, apparently some patterns can pass but one particular pattern will fail. Think of the random chance it can be of that happening while the OS is loaded and the PC is being used normally.

Says Wikipedia (I haven't used MemTest in a long time), there's another test that doesn't run by default. It writes all 0's to RAM, sleeps for 90 minutes, then checks the RAM to make sure none of the bits have changed. Then it repeats with all 1's. I remember in the 90's (people probably did this in the 80's too, but I was only born in 87) if your computer was doing wacky shit you would shut it off and count 30 seconds before turning it back on. The thought was that maybe something got screwed up in RAM (written wrong, or corrupted) and cutting power for 30 seconds should clear the RAM.

What I'm getting at is...

Memtest also passed with flying colors after only about an hour of scanning.

You can run MemTest for an hour (or more) without any failures, but that doesn't mean your RAM isn't bad.

I have no reason to believe that RAM is definitely your problem, I'm just yapping here.

[ExedExes]

I agree that you learn and encounter a lot more in the field than you did in the trade classes, at least from my experience. Memtest is a solid tool, but I fortunately have not had to use it much. It's nice to know it's there.

[Xeogred]

PC #2: Failed the extended test for WD's diagnostics. Too many bad sectors detected. Took about a full day to check.

So is that finally the answer? The HDD is indeed failing. I guess maybe I can try to salvage the rest.

[samsonlonghair]

I'd call that a win, Xero. Hard drives are cheap and readily available. Get yourself a new hard drive, or pull one out of another PC, and reinstall Windows. Then you're ready to roll.

[Xeogred]

I'd call that a win, Xero. Hard drives are cheap and readily available. Get yourself a new hard drive, or pull one out of another PC, and reinstall Windows. Then you're ready to roll.

I still don't have a Win7 disc for that PC either, but I was googling around and sounds like I can probably get the OS copied over to a different drive?

I think it'll be funny taking a few steps, but I do have a 500GB WD laying around (can't remember if it had issues though), and an enclosure I can put it in. I guess I'll need to do that, then swap it out with the drive in the slim PC case. I finally took apart the case a little more last night because I was having no idea how to get to half the stuff underneath the disc drive, but I figured out how to break it down further. So it should be easy to swap stuff.

I have no idea what I'll do with it, but it could be fun to have on the side and if it really is just the HDD, may as well swap it out.

I can't find an old wireless adapter I had either, I know they're cheap but it's been humorous messing around with this old PC with limited random spare parts I have laying around.

[Ziggy]

Did you purchase this PC new/retail? If so, contact Gateway and see if they can provide you with an install or restore disc.

[Xeogred]

Looks like I bought it new off Newegg in 2010... will that cover anything?

Might be some more discs or something buried in my closet. Maybe there's some repair disc, but I just know I didn't get an actual Win7 OS disc with either of my latest PC's. Pretty annoying. lol