@LittlePro- No need to apologize at all. I'm sorry your time was wasted. I know the tech guy last year looked at things more than me on the first day and didn't think it was a virus although he did find some things odd in CMD. I didn't want to do a full reinstall as the ones that looked after my PC years before liked doing them every 3 to 6 months regardless. And I knew there was nothing different in my online activities. Anyways, thanks for all your help, sorry I couldn't work out the last part with the screen shots. It wouldn't open in PAINT, but at least the SNIPPING TOOL worked with Notepad. Thanks.
1. You probably have that on your internal hard disk. You can see it in the Disk Management window. There will be a Recovery Image Partition on the disk. It will make your OS brand new. 2. You have at least 300 to 400 GB data on the hard disk. Just connect an external hard disk & manually copy your files to it. Those will include your personal interest files like Documents, photos, videos. Which you are well aware about what they are. You need not copy system files. 3. Its taking too much time. Probably, its taking you to the latest win 10 release. 4. You need not making reinstalls every 3-4 months. Make a System Image & just restore it when you want to reinstall. It will hardly take half an hour.
I just booted from a boot disc ...... formated the C partition ...... put last months C partition backup in from a USB HDD thats never seen the internet ...... put 5 programs in...... then made a back up copy of the firefox profile ...... then replaced 7 dlls with newer versions ...... then put simplix in ...... then made a C partition copy ...... and then copyed that to the USB HDD ...... and now i'm surfing ...... that took 2 hours .
@LittlePro - Awesome. Appreciated! Seems Microsoft has admitted or acknowledged that the 4310 update was buggy and will do one more update to rectify it. Well, if it takes that long to do a full reinstall at least the Windows 10 PC is set up now and all done with the latest updates. I also put on it a firewall, antivirus, MBAM and CCleaner. However, will still only limit it to music via WMP or VLC, YouTube and Netflix. Any Google or Internet Server searches will be done using a protected browser.
@case_sensitive - Just bought a new portable HDD drive a month or so ago. So... I think I need what you wrote put down in steps to do - so will look later in the threads. Cool. Thanks. And 2 hours sounds better than 13 - it took 13 hours to complete plus some when it rebooted. (Win 10) With Windows 10 - the internet was only used for updates and installing programs I knew. Wonder if I should do what you wrote below for that as well. What I have noticed is - with all the new updates and lowering one option in it. It now starts faster and doesn't take long like 2 years ago. Some things do tend to still take time to load like Chrome, but once in - fine. Like 5-10 seconds instead of immediately. However, I haven't used it other than updates. It's almost 2 years old and only been brought out 3 times - now 4. Will look at doing what you suggested for both Windows 7 and 10 on the same HD or USB HD. How many GBs do I need approx?
One more thing - Im still attached to Windows 7. If I was to eventually buy another laptop with Windows 10 - especially when my Windows 7 lap top dies a natural death. 1) Is it easy to get rid of Windows 10 and replace with Windows 7. 2) Is it possible to buy Windows 7 software still - legit software that is. 3) Would it be pointless or not.
(i) If you buy a laptop, preinstalled with win 10 Pro, you can use the license to downgrade to Win 7 Pro. It is not applicable to other Win 10 versions. (ii) If you buy a laptop, intending to use Win 7 on it, take care that you buy a laptop that comes with 6th generation Intel processors. The latest generation is 10th! Or still better check whether the model supports Win 7. (iii) Better you start living with win 10. Thanks. ...
Or better, macOS or Linux. I'm pretty sure that one can get a Win10 laptop and have it replaced with any Linux distro of your choice, or maybe get yourself Win10 LTSC. Anyway, can't believe such a simple problem had spanned to like six pages already.
Mini ---- > My HDD is 200 G ...... the C partition is 40 G ....... of wich 14.5 Gs are free ...... The C parttion backup is 9.5 G .The backup was made with a boot CD and stored on the D partition of the same HDD ...... and another copy on the removeable USB HDD .