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Finding, downloading and installing drivers in Windows

24th December 2010 PCRepairMan

Motherboard, sound, video, usb drivers missing? There are a few tips and tricks I can give you for finding and installing Windows device drivers. First off, let’s open up the Control Panel and get to the Hardware section. You will find a yellow exclamation mark in the device manager indicating a device has not been identified. This can be audio, video, modem, tv card, usb cards etc.

A little-known quirk of Windows XP is that if you install Service Pack 3 you get more chance of automatically downloading drivers from the Microsoft website. Strange and undocumented but in my experience this is true. I have had several occasions where I needed to get drivers and, for example, this morning I required an audio driver for an ECS motherboard. The drivers were not listed on the manufacturer’s website and a search for updated drivers brought nothing. By installing SP3 I restarted, the auto-hardware detect kicked in and the hi-def audio bus was recognised then relevant hi-def audio software drivers were auto-installed. Even the more common Realtek drivers have been invoked this way when they just refuse to install.

If you are really struggling to get drivers then you can download software that can help. There are a few programs that stand out from the crowd as they have excellent driver databases and are kept up-to-date. Driver Detective has a slick ‘Backup and migrate’ feature too, useful for copying from one PC to another or before wiping and reloading. Click the links below to visit their websites for more info.

Driver detective

PC updater

KillWind.exe killit.exe and Avira antivirus – false positive?

14th December 2010 PCRepairMan

avira-false-positive Common fault on many computers, notably HP Pavilions and Compaq PCs and laptops. Avira can falsely detect the APPL/KillApplicat.A and APPL/KillApp.A virus. The problem stems from HP’s recovery partition (generally located on d:\) where those files are an integral part of the recovery procedure.

Do not allow Avira to Quarantine or delete these files. If you have already quarantined them then restore them back to their original location, rescan them and mark as ‘Ignore’.

If you have not already done so, it is good practice to create a set of recovery discs for your computer in case the recovery partition is damaged.

Livedrive review and free trial – secure online file storage

4th December 2010 PCRepairMan

Livedrive review and free trial. livedrive-review-secure-online-file-storage Livedrive offers a very good secure online file storage service that ranks highly here at PCRMB Towers. So good that we actually use it ourselves. Livedrive automatically backs up your files safely online, monitoring your computer(s) for new files and detail changes. You can restore files (even deleted ones) quickly and easily. It’s totally secure, easy to use and quick to setup. Users get unlimited online storage space as standard which means you can choose this service and never have to upgrade. You can sync files, stream music and access your files from anywhere.

PCRepairMan’s Verdict
Offering a 30 day free trial, you can choose if it’s right for you or not. Current pricing is very keen – you pay nothing during the trial and then get a 10% discount for life. Highly recommended.

Secure online file storage with Livedrive

Here are some of the advantages of this service:

Many online file storage services will cap the amount of storage to a measly few Gigabytes. With Livedrive there is literally no limit.
Version history is included. Say you mistakenly save changes on a ducument, you can ‘roll back’ to an older version as Livedrive will store up to 30 versions of your file
Deleted files can be restored (up to 30 days later)
Iphone and iPad access is included by default
Windows and Mac compatibility
Livedrive will monitor all of your files while you are working. If you modify then save something then it will be backed up immediately. This way there is no need to back it up manually!
External hard drives can be backed up too
You can download your files at any time and from any computer
Backed up files are encrypted with incredibly strong algorithms
A high quality streaming facility allows iPhones and iPads to view photos and listen to music

All in all, an excellent service that costs very little and gives peace of mind. Highly recommended.

Try Livedrive unlimited online storage free for 30 days or Visit the Livedrive Website to learn more

If you liked this Livedrive review, please leave a comment below.

Outlook – “Unable to open your default email folders” error

15th September 2010 PCRepairMan

This article describes how to fix this error using the Inbox Repair Tool (scanpst.exe). This works on Microsoft Outlook 2000, 2002 or 2003. If you are using Microsoft Outlook 2007 or 2010 you will need to use the Office Diagnostics tools to perform a similar operation.

Symptoms: You open Outlook and get the error “Unable to open your default e-mail folders. Errors have been detected in the file ….Outlook.pst”

This is because your Outlook data file – the one ending .pst – is corrupt. Repairing it is fairly straightforward but will take time. To do this, close all open programs and search for the file “scanpst.exe” on your PC. This may not be found unless your computer is set to show hidden and system files. I have found the location of this file varies drastically, it can typically be found in:

C:Program FilesMicrosoft OfficeOffice12 (or Office 13 etc)
C:Program FilesCommon FilesSystemMSMAPI1033

MAKE A BACKUP OF THE PST FILE BEFORE RUNNING THE REPAIR

Even a corrupt backup could be better than none at all, never work on a file without a copy. I would call this Outlook.pcrmb or similar and place it in a new folder that describes what stage the repair is at, eg “corrupt_pre_scanpst_repair”

Open the scanpst.exe program and it will ask for the location of the corrupt .pst file. Navigate to it and allow the program to make a second backup copy. Allow time for it to repair. It may say “not responding” but look for the activity on your PC, the hard drive light may be permanently flashing showing it is working hard on the repair.

When finished it will tell you and you simply need to restart Outlook. I suggest deleting unwanted emails, emptying deleted items then compacting the database.

Finally save a new backup of the .pst file and archive.pst where necessary.

Windows cannot load the locally stored profile

10th June 2010 PCRepairMan

This can be a tricky one. You get this error message on startup:

Windows cannot load the locally stored profile: Insufficient security rights or a corrupted local file. Windows has logged you in with a temporary profile any setting you make will not be saved.

Basically, Windows has corrupted the profile for a particular user. This could be down to a registry fault or a problem with the hard disk drive where that registry entry or files are located. It can also be caused by a user moving or deleting the user folder (the one with the user’s name) from the Documents and Settings folder.

My method would be to boot the computer from UBCD4Win. This allows you to view and manipulate the contents of the corrupt Windows identity. If you allow the error message to stay on the screen, Windows creates a new profile and does not give you any options to import your data, it is effectively invisible. If you have gone into Windows already and seen that there is nothing there, don’t worry. It should be visible through the boot disk method.

Very strange behaviour!

Anyway, once in UBCD4Win, the first thing I do is to run a disk check, this is very important as it is a common cause of failure by corruption. Bad sectors on a disk do bad things to the registry. Start, Programs, Disk Tools, Diagnostic, Check Disk. Tell it your local disk (usually “c:”) and select option 3 where it checks with chkdsk /r which recovers data on the bad sector before repairing it. A 5-stage scan will follow, allow from 10 minutes to a few hours depending on the size of the disk and data stored on it.

More than likely, the results will show a corrupt registry file such as this:

**PLACEHOLDER FOR IMAGE**

If not, still proceed as follows. Once the drive scan is finished you can look at your data via a file manager such as MS Explorer or A43. I recommend copying the complete user profile to an external drive or if this is not available onto the root of the local disk. Do this by dragging the folder from documents and settings onto the C:\ and holding down CTRL so that you are copying, not moving.

Now you are ready to reboot. Try a reboot and if you get the same issue, shutdown, load UBCD4Win again and roll back the registry to a point where all was working well before the corrupt user profile. Do this from Start, Programs, Registry Tools, Registry Restore Wizard.

If the reboot allows you to login to your old user profile then it’s job done. Check you have all your documents, pics etc and you can now delete the ‘backup’ copy we made on the root of the local disk.