What Happened After The Lights Went Out?

This one defies explanation.

This is a 3 month old machine, clean, up to date, in good health and runs well. I don't get too aggressive tweaking one if it runs right. Things work best if I just learn to use whatever's new as opposed to forcing it to be like what I had been used to.

Last night the power went off in the neighborhood for a couple of hours. PC was here just idling with no apps or programs running. I went to bed and brought up the machine early this morning. Seemed to boot a bit slower but not objectionable. Only difference is now a blue screen saying Please Wait (with the spinning dots) just before the Lock Screen loads. Everything seemed fine. Couldn't find any malfunctions.

Using Edge I checked in on my bank, this forum and several others. I ran my personal finance program downloading data and printed my report. Then I ran my batch file to copy only my data files with the Archive bit set onto my External Hard Drive. Normally only 8 to 12 files copy over. They completed and then all 1,145 pictures from the "Pictures" folder and sub folders copied over.

This is the heart of that Batch File:

Code:

ECHO Off
CD\
C:
CLS
:
  ECHO.
  ECHO Deleting Notepadd++ .bak Files ...
  IF EXIST C:\Utilities\*.*.bak Del C:\Utilities\*.*.bak
  GOTO DOIT
:
;DOIT
:
  ECHO.
  ECHO Copying First Section (Local):
  XCopy "C:\Users\Name\AppData\Roaming\Intuit\Quicken\*.*" "C:\Tempory\Users\Name\AppData\Roaming\Intuit\Quicken\*.*" /v/s/a/y
  XCopy "C:\Users\Name\Documents\*.*" "C:\Tempory\Users\Name\Documents\*.*" /v/s/a/y
  ECHO.
:
IF NOT EXIST "E:\Users" GOTO FDrive
:
  ECHO Checking "E:" Drive Availability ...
  ECHO.
  ECHO Copying Second Section To "E:" Drive:
  XCopy "C:\Users\Name\AppData\Roaming\Intuit\Quicken\*.*" "E:\Users\Name\AppData\Roaming\Intuit\Quicken\*.*" /v/s/m/y
  XCopy "C:\Users\Name\AppData\Local\Packages\Microsoft.MicrosoftEdge_8wekyb3d8bbwe\AC\MicrosoftEdge\User\Default\DataStore\*.*" "E:\Users\Name\AppData\Local\Packages\Microsoft.MicrosoftEdge_8wekyb3d8bbwe\AC\MicrosoftEdge\User\Default\DataStore\*.*" /v/s/m/y
  XCopy "C:\Users\Name\Documents\*.*" "E:\Users\Name\Documents\*.*" /v/s/m/y
  XCopy "C:\Users\Name\Downloads\*.*" "E:\Users\Name\Downloads\*.*" /v/s/m/y
  XCopy "C:\Users\Name\Favorites\*.*" "E:\Users\Name\Favorites\*.*" /v/s/m/y
  XCopy "C:\Users\Name\Links\*.*" "E:\Users\Name\Links\*.*" /v/s/m/y
  XCopy "C:\Users\Name\Pictures\*.*" "E:\Users\Name\Pictures\*.*" /v/s/m/y
  ECHO.
:
  ECHO Checking/Copying Utilities Files:
  ECHO.
  Xcopy "C:\Utilities\*.*" "E:\Utilities\*.*" /v/m/y
  ECHO.
:  Attrib -a "E:\*.*" /s
:
  ECHO Back Up Operation Is Complete.
:
  Timeout /t 30
  GOTO END

NOTHING has been done with or in that set of folders in at least a couple of weeks. How did the Archive attribute get set? Then this afternoon I took a look in Task Manager and there was Photos hogging a chunk of memory. I did not start the program or even view any pictures! Restarting the machine and Photos has not loaded again.

Can someone please tell me what's going on? Thanks for your time ...

I love batch files. Learned with DOS and there was little alternative then. The one I used and copied here, is basically an incremental back up. When I do a full, I run one more or less the same as what you show.

You may be on to something here Bree. Last update was Wednesday and the machine had not been restarted since the reboot for the update install. After initial start-up this morning it took several minutes for everything to come to life and function as quickly as normal. Namely browsing which is all I did for the first hour or so.

...disable "Photos" (and any other that you do not need running at startup)... Hmmm, not running when I went to bed but was back on this morning. Good advice, and done. There's not much in that list that I do have running.

Humph! In the last 2 hours "Photos" got loaded into Background Processes again. Maybe it has something to do with viewing avatars and/or icons?