Recent content by GreenAnt

Thank you. The hope is the “new” harddisk did the trick, even though I suspect it may be a power regulation issue. The laptop was on its last legs but it served as a refresher because i'd hadn't touched Windows for many years. Must admit I was a bit stunned at the number of times Microsoft made...

I've returned the laptop now. In case it's useful for anyone else I'll mention what happened. Thanks for your help guys. I saved the driver list to a text file and compared a fresh install of Windows 10 to a Windows 10 upgraded from Windows 8. A file diff showed no sign that Windows 10 had...

I'm fixing this for someone and don't want to leave it without a license. I don't have a Win 8 key. It only has a Win 7 key (no idea what that is, sticker is very faded) and a Win 10 digital license. Up to this point (with clean installs of Windows 10, partitions wiped) the digital license...

There seems to be a problem activating Windows 10 this time. I've installed Windows 10 a number of times on this computer (on a wiped hard-disk with partitions deleted, and with an offline user account, no sign in to microsoft) and the digital license was always automatically found. But after...

Tried to activate Windows 8 using several keys posted in online guides but none worked. It's literally just to initiate an upgrade to Windows 10 which already has a digital license for this computer. I'm out of ideas. Looks like it's a clean install of Windows 10 again and hope the driver...

OK well that did not work out. I Installed Windows 8. Opened setup.exe from the Windows 10 installer, and I got this dreaded message and there is no way to bypass it. "Product Key. Windows isn't activated on this PC. This means you'll need to enter the Windows 10 product key below or exit...

Thanks. Looks like that tool as an option to export as a csv file. Though I'm currently using a Windows command for this and not sure I can see a difference, other than that tool displaying the info in a Windows app instead of DOS Prompt. driverquery /v /fo csv > driverquery_verbose.txt...

Is there a way to get a nice overview of drivers currently installed? Maybe an exported list in Command Prompt or saved as a PDF? That way I could save that info now, do the Windows 8/10 install dance and compare the two to see if it did make a difference with drivers. Would be useful thing to...

I ran: DISM /Online /Cleanup-Image /RestoreHealth It said "The operation completed successfully". Then ran: sfc /scan now It said "Windows Resource Protection did not find any integrity violations". At this point I might have called it a day, but the first sfc picking up corrupted system...

Yeah well my initial thoughts were a hard-disk failure or power supply issue. But then I installed Windows 8 and it behaved so I reverted back to thinking a driver issue under Windows 10. Think I've ruled out the hard-disk anyway, unless this replacement is playing up too. With the BIOS, I...

Hi Colif, re PSU. The battery was preventing laptop from booting up, so I've been using laptop without battery inserted. Specs are here: https://www.sony.co.uk/electronics/support/laptop-pc-vpc-series/vpcyb3v1e/specifications AMD A50M FCH, AMD Dual-Core E-450 APU, PC3-10600 DDR3 SDRAM, AMD...

I ran a mem check initially when i received the laptop and it showed no errors. I just ran mem check again (MemTest86) and left it for 2 hours. No errors. How do I check "reliability history"? A few entries from Event Viewer... [Windows] 1) Error: CAPI2, The cryptographic Services service...

Ok so I did as suggested. Installed another SATA drive inside laptop. Used Windows media creation tool to put Windows 10 installer on USB drive. Reinstalled Windows 10 Home 64-bit. (deleted all partitions during installation). Booted up into Windows. Ran "sfc /scannow". It gave "Windows Resource...

OK I'm still stuck. Installed another harddisk into the laptop. Installed Windows 10 Home 64-bit. First time I boot up I run "sfc /scannow" and it reported that it had fixed some system files. Windows behaving fine, for now, but this is how it started out the first time I reinstalled Windows 10...

Thanks. Just installed an old harddisk that I took out of a Macbook Pro about 15 years ago, so I'll see how that goes. If it was mine I'd be putting a SSD drive in but it's not my laptop, and just want to get this fixed for now. 32-bit windows was a desperation move in case it was a driver...