Professional cleaning: what's involved?

That flash drive has worked perfectly for months and now it won't even format. I think I destroyed it with diskpart.... I've tried it in several computers and it can't be read in any of them. I'll try again in a few days and see if it magically starts working but I'm not holding my breath.

On the positive side, I've reinstalled Windows on my brother's computer and it's updated it to version 1709. I don't see any obvious problems and the install went *much* faster than I've ever seen a Windows install go before; it was so fast that I thought something was wrong. But it looks okay. There's only one odd thing which suggests the erase did not clear *everything* away. His background picture for his desktop, which is a photograph he took himself, is back. Shouldn't he have lost that during the erasure of the hard drive? Or does Microsoft magically save it to the cloud somewhere, filed under his MAC address or something of that kind? I don't know whether to be concerned....

essenbe said:

If he uses a Microsoft account and Sync Settings is turned on, that's what it does.

Does that also account for his Edge bookmarks still being there? I was quite surprised when he told me that the bookmarks hadn't been lost. It's a good surprise, as long as doesn't undermine our belief that the hard drive was erased.

For what it's worth, I used File Explorer to look at the top level folders in Windows and all of them are dated September 29, 2017 or today. That implies that there are no files lingering from previously; I'm guessing that Sept 29 was when the Creators Update was finalized....

Bree said:

It just needs a partition created on it, then you can format it. You can do that with Diskpart or (probably safer, with your track record :)) Disk Management.

Run Disk Management and you'll see the USB drive listed as 'unallocated'. Right-click on the unallocated space and select 'New Simple Volume' to create and format a new partition.

Thank you! That worked perfectly! My flash drive is functional again

I was looking forward to marking my problem solved and almost did it last night. It turns out that would have been premature.

Although my flash drive is working fine again, my brother's desktop is not. It seemed fine yesterday and he was reinstalling the apps he uses and they were running just fine. But today, things are not working nearly as well. When you power up the computer, the progress indicator whirs and whirs and whirs and whirs for a VERY long time - at least 20 minutes - and then the boot seems to fail because it takes you into the blue screens for Repair/Upgrade/Update etc. He tried each and every one of those options but none of them worked. But he doesn't have strong computer skills and he could easily have goofed something up so I decided to try it myself.

So, I just tried recovering from a restore point - assuming a restore point got set after the re-install completed yesterday - and it went nowhere fast. I had a cursor and a mouse on an empty blue screen but absolutely nothing happened after a good 5 minutes so I assume that option is a non-starter. I'm guessing Windows *doesn't* set a recover point after the install. I had no way to back out of that screen so I simply powered off the computer again, then powered up. I have to start work in a few minutes so I'll get back to this in the early evening.

Can anyone suggest why I might be having this problem and what I can do about it? I noticed there were some options for dealing with the case where Windows doesn't load so I was going to try those next but if there is a better way forward, I'd love to hear it.

I hope you made notes and bookmarked this thread cause it sounds like you’ll be helping your brother a lot.

Before you grow to hate life, begin reading up on disk imaging on this forum and download the program:

Macrium Software | Macrium Reflect Free

vram said:

I hope you made notes and bookmarked this thread cause it sounds like you’ll be helping your brother a lot.

Before you grow to hate life, begin reading up on disk imaging on this forum and download the program:

Macrium Software | Macrium Reflect Free

Actually, he almost never has computer issues. Your point is well-taken though. I should show him how to use Macrium to take backups and restores, then make him do both once I've got Windows working again (which may involve another installation of Windows from the sounds of it.)

Layback Bear said:

From post #76


What programs and where did your brother get the programs?

Jack

[I was sure I'd replied to this but since I don't see the reply, I guess it never made it to the forum.]

He's added just two programs to the computer since I re-installed Windows. World of Warships and Asphalt 8, both of which he got from the Windows store.