Sorry if I'm suppose to read other topics, I've been kind of busy lately and just want get my computer back to normal ASAP.
Long, long story short- I had malware problems for past 2 weeks that messed with my wireless connection, disabled anti-virus, can't system restore to earlier date, and made my computer slow. Went over to the Spybot forums and now it seems to be gone. I'm still getting lag/slowness when using programs (not responding), Firefox, Chrome, iTunes not even loading, and I was recommended to post here and do a repair install of Windows. I have my Windows 7 CD and would like to know what my next steps should be. Also want to know if I would lose data.
It "should" not mess with your data, but it would still be a good idea to back it up if it's important to you.
"Should" is the keyword here. Stuff happens and it's always better to have your data backed up just in case.
This would be a good time to invest in an external hard drive and start doing image backups to it, that way you'll always have access to your data and can easily restore the image if something goes wrong.
Is there a built-in tool that backs everything up or will I have to drag and drop on to an external. Not familiar with externals, but anything I should look for?
I'm not sure if you are running a Laptop or a Desktop PC, but for a desktop I prefer an extra internal HDD to backup to and then regularly back that up to and external HDD.
The inbuilt W7 backup utility is fairly lousy in comparison to some excellent paid for and even freeware utilities available. Here is one of several freeware backup utilities you might like to try that works well with W7 (I have no affiliations to Paragon). The cons are that it's a bit slow for drive images, but it does have some very advanced features such as being able to create a bootable USB stick. It is also USB 3 compatible.
Backup & Recovery 2011 (Advanced) Free
For personal use only
NEW 2011 Advanced Edition - Total PC Protection for Serious Users!
Apparently, Macrium Reflect is no good for making a rescue disk that works with W7. That's the reason I advised the alternate Paragon freeware. No problem with a Linux based rescue disk that works with W7 without purchasing the $$$ pro. version.
How long should a backup take? Ive only used about 60gb on my laptops hard drive. I'm using paragon and I'm getting time remaining of like 5 hrs. I'm gettin read speed of 320 Kbps and write speed of 35 Mbps.
I've never used Paragon.
With Acronis on m older Compaq P4 and less data than what you indicate, it takes about 18-25 minutes.
The count-down always shows a hugely inflated time-remaining, but then leaps downward until the estimate catches up with actual time remaining.
That really is a hopeless speed. I know (and previously mentioned) Paragon is slower than other programs, but it's not that slow. There is probably another cause.
You did mention that one of your PC issues was a very slow PC, so I'm suspecting a bloated start-up menu with far too many programs or a corrupted program(s), using up too much RAM space and CPU output, which leaves Paragon struggling for resources. The corruption caused by the Virus your PC had, might also have something to do with a very slow backup speed.
What exactly are you trying to backup? As you have a W7 disk for your fresh system install you wish to do, you should only be backing up your personal data, not your whole C: drive and defiantly not a whole hard drive image as your C: drive is corrupted, so you don't want an image of that.
If you are backing up to an external drive through a USB2 (or worse USB1), transfer rate is a lot slower than to an internal 2nd hard drive.
How is your progress now? If it is still too slow for you, you can always abandon the process and just backup your My Documents folder, email, passwords and serial numbers etc. manually, rather than creating an ISO image.
Cheers,
Lee
I was going through the repair install and got to about step 10. It was doing it's thing for a while and restarted like it did several times already. This time when it loaded up I got an error popup that reads: the computer restarted unexpectedly or encountered an unexpected error. Windows installation cannot proceed. To install Windows l, click "OK" to restart the computer, and restart the installation. I hit ok and it restarts and I get this message again. What to do?
