System is a Dell i5 3000 series, Win-7 Enterprise, 64-bit, 8gb ram, 1TB hard drive. Windows update is off. Last week it started acting up, taking longer to shut down, not being able to find the printer, and erratic mouse movements. I tried to diagnose the problem but couldn't pinpoint the cause. When I first set up this or any system, I create a base image on a separate hard drive (Western Digital) , and then create an image using Acronis and restore the image to another hard drive (Seagate), and that becomes my daily driver. Once a month I take out the base image (Western Digital) and make any changes that need to be done and create an image and restore the image to the Seagate hard drive. So when the problems cropped up, I just restored the August image to the daily driver (Seagate) and everything worked fine. But whenever I logged onto Twitter, or a Credit Card site they said that the computer was unrecognized and I had to go through the security drill or confirm it was really me. Oddly enough my Bank didn't complain, neither did Gmail. What puzzles me is that I used the same image to first create the August Daily Driver on the Seagate, and then when problems cropped up, restored the exact same image back to the Seagate, after formatting the C:\ drive. I've done the procedure for years, and never had any problems with any of the web sites complaining that the computer is different. The only thing I can think of is that every time I restore an image I have to re-run KMS Pico to validate Win-7 and Office. But I do that every month and never have been challenged before. Twitter is still complaining after a week, but that's the only one. Credit Card companies, and the banks are all OK with everything now. It's not a big deal, but I'd be curious to find out why the same Acronis image on the same computer showed up as a different computer on some sites. .
No I wasn't using a VPM, and didn't change any FireFox add-ons either. I thought it might be PeerBlock related, so I turned it off and logged on to Twitter, and still got the notification that I was a different computer. Odd thing is that it's been over a week using this image, and Twitter is still telling me it's different. But never says different than what (??) And doesn't say exactly what is different. I sent a note to Twitter tech support asking for clarification but no response so far. I checked IP address and it's the same as it's always been. FWIW I've configured my setup to use IPv4 not IPv6 if that matters.
Could be possible of a different cookie on twitter? Delete any twitter cookies and cache then log back into twitter to see if that might work
Since you're using Firefox are you using a master password ? Beside you anyone else using your computer ?
I've configured FireFox never to accept Third Party Cookies and to delete all cookies when it exits. I also delete all the files in %temp% or C:\Users\UserName\AppData\Local\Temp\*.* /s at the end of each FireFox session. Maybe FireFox is storing cookies somewhere else. I'll poke around a bit to see if FireFox dropped cookies somewhere new or maybe Twitter is the culprit.
If you don't store cookies, you'll have to log into every web site that you have an account with....It's what cookies do. Twitter wouldn't be a third party cookie. Open Firefox and in your toolbar in the upper left corner, go to Tools/Options/Privacy, about 1/2 way down under History, Click on Remove Individual Cookies, you can manually select or remove all cookies at once. All new cookies might not be a bad idea. When my pc gets a bad cookie I can't get it out of the restroom for hours!.....lol If you do not see the File, Edit, View, History...ect. in your toolbar Right click in the space at the top Firefox and in the drop down box make sure that Menu Bar is selected.
I never store cookies, or passwords and always login in to each site manually. Here's what my current FireFox Tools/Options/Show Cookies look like:
Did you restore full disk along with the disk signature using Acronis? Was the disk signature from the WD drive different than the Seagate so it's recognized as a new system, or where the 2 drives cloned? Sounds like that is what happened.
I have never restored the disk signature when creating an image. I figured that restoring the WD signature to the Seagate drive would cause nothing but problems so I never did it. As an update, I just imaged the WD at month end to the Seagate and the same thing happened whenever I logged on to Twitter. I sent Twitter tech support and the dweebs sent be back a procedure on how to change my password. OK, maybe I need to do that, so I did. Nothing changed, I still get the message. I got a new laptop and set it up with Win-10 Enterprise and logged on to Twittter. Same message, but you would expect that being a totally different computer. But my main desktop gives me the same message on a daily basis every time I log on. It's just an annoyance, and I can live with it, but it just seems so weird it just started happening the last two months.
Did you always format first before the restore or was this the first time? Formatting may have changed the HDD sig.