RasmusP----- Update on my PC

As I promised, I thought I'd give you an update on this PC. Got it back from the shop, he had called me while it was there, one of the techs working on it. Said he ran a virus scan, found 55 malware, but the W7 is corrupt.. Even after the virus scan, he couldn't get the old games to load or get rid of the No Permission to access files. He couldn't change my account to Administrator instead of Standard either. He suggested to reload W7 again cause it was corrupt. So, he reloaded W7, then he changed my account to Administrator. No more errors when I try to load the games. Checked most of the older DX 9 games. They all load & run fine. Except, NR-2003, it now loads, but after it goes to the main screen, I. Get an in-game error, says game isn't installed correctly, suggests to reinstall the game. Never seen that error. He thinks, W7 doesn't like games loaded from the CD's. Just his opinion, said he could be wrong, but the NR-2003 is the only game that I loaded years ago from the CD .Could be something to that. Anyway, GTR2 is working again& im a happy camper. IllI screw around with NR 2003 sometime when i'm bored. Wish I could find a digital download for NR-2003. Might make a difference. FPS for all the games, DX 9, depending on the tracks and eye candy, are from around 85 at the low to high around 297's. Settings mostly on High, AA? 8 & 16. All are crystal clear. Field of 20 cars. 2 years ago, W7 got corrupted, maybe it's from the games. He doesnt think it was virus related. Never had a problem from 2010 when I bought it till 2017. So, it was time consuming reloading all the antivirus and other stuff, but worth it. If anyone knows of a digital download for NR-2003, I'd love to buy one, if it's not crazy expensive. Loved it for oval racing. If this happens again, as long as the PC is working, it'll stay that way. No more dragging it to the pc shop, then reloading all the programs. I'll play the games that work . As of now, except for nr2003 , I'm satisfied. Cant imagine adding tracks and cars to any game would screw up W7 .
 
Glad you back with the living ;)

I would recommend one thing
Set up all games, icons , browser, tools ..everything how you like
Then do a full image of C:\Drive ....before it has time to get malware or any other bug

As far as I remember if you use identical name in windows 7 setup when asked both times you automatically admin
If you use 2 different names you just a user
 
Glad you back with the living ;)

I would recommend one thing
Set up all games, icons , browser, tools ..everything how you like
Then do a full image of C:\Drive ....before it has time to get malware or any other bug

As far as I remember if you use identical name in windows 7 setup when asked both times you automatically admin
If you use 2 different names you just a user
Thanks for the tip, Durge Driven. How do you do a full image of C:drive?? Didn't think you could copy W7 ? I'm actually afraid to reinstall NR-2003 off the CD. Just in case the tech is right about W7 not liking games off of CD's. I googled a digital download for NR-2003 & found nothing. Can't believe it's not available somewhere out there. Might just forget about trying to fix it, I really liked it for oval racing. The rest of the games suck for oval racing.
 
As the tools boot from bios they can copy all file, folders, small partitions windows makes and the
the Boot Table for both MBR and GTP partitions, then they compress it into a image /single file

I can't recommend any apart from Acronis TrueImage, that is all I ever used but it costs
I actually have not upgraded it for years as a Boot image from 2016 still works
I don't use the software or have it installed in my OS
all I use is a Bootable thumb drive you can create with the software

There are free apps .....best to get confirmation from someone else

First thing you want is the smallest C:\ drive / partition possible
Smaller it is faster it backups and restores
My C:\ drive in W10 is only 60 GB of a 500GB M2 drive
26-30GB used ...to image / restore that from a SSD takes 3 minutes

Obviously if you have 10 times the data on C:\ the image will be 8-10 times larger
and take 8-10 times longer to do which becomes a waste of time

That is why you want no sims on C:\drive because every little change to sim folders
would mean you need to do a new image every day or lose garage setups,skins, mods, etc

I don't recommend doing part or incremental backups ...the best idea is keep as much off C:\ as humanly
possible

NEVER rely on Microsoft Tools or System Restore EVER ..only my opinion
 
I use Paragon 2016 as it was free for a short period of time when the new version came out.
All these tools are overly complicated and simple at the same time.
I just installed it on my win7, click through "one time backup", select your full c drive, tell the program where to put the backup and let it run.
It will take a while but it'll actually only grab the data that's actually there, not the empty overall size of the C drive!
Then it will compress it so my 164GB / 240 GB SSD C drive will result 90GB on my other disk :)

There are two pretty sweet possibilities:
either create a thumb drive and restore the full drive or even run it from within the running windows and it'll reboot at some point and continue afaik.

Acronis can do the same ofc. I wouldn't touch freeware for this as they mostly save their costs on the user interface!

I do this once a month but still have my "clean" win 7 from 2016 too.
So I have a clean one and a recent one. Whenever something goes nuts I just slam a backup on it :)

Great to hear that you're back in the game man! :inlove::inlove::inlove:
 
As the tools boot from bios they can copy all file, folders, small partitions windows makes and the
the Boot Table for both MBR and GTP partitions, then they compress it into a image /single file

I can't recommend any apart from Acronis TrueImage, that is all I ever used but it costs
I actually have not upgraded it for years as a Boot image from 2016 still works
I don't use the software or have it installed in my OS
all I use is a Bootable thumb drive you can create with the software

There are free apps .....best to get confirmation from someone else

First thing you want is the smallest C:\ drive / partition possible
Smaller it is faster it backups and restores
My C:\ drive in W10 is only 60 GB of a 500GB M2 drive
26-30GB used ...to image / restore that from a SSD takes 3 minutes

Obviously if you have 10 times the data on C:\ the image will be 8-10 times larger
and take 8-10 times longer to do which becomes a waste of time

That is why you want no sims on C:\drive because every little change to sim folders
would mean you need to do a new image every day or lose garage setups,skins, mods, etc

I don't recommend doing part or incremental backups ...the best idea is keep as much off C:\ as humanly
possible

NEVER rely on Microsoft Tools or System Restore EVER ..only my opinion
Thanks Durge Driven, most of this is to technical for me. But, yes, I have NO games on C Drive. All Steam games on E Drive, which I put in & other older games on A drive. Thanks Again for all advice !!! Much appreciated !!!!!!!
 
Windows 7 has absolutley no problems with games from CD's or DVD's, back when Windows 7 was released most of the game content people bought were on disc, its obviously been taken over by digital content for the last few years but again Windows 7 will have no problems with CD games.
 
Windows 7 has absolutley no problems with games from CD's or DVD's, back when Windows 7 was released most of the game content people bought were on disc, its obviously been taken over by digital content for the last few years but again Windows 7 will have no problems with CD games.
Thanks David Turnbull, tomorrow when I get time, I'm going to try using the CD for NR-2003. See if it loads & plays, if not guess I'll take a chance & reload the game again. See what happens. Thanks again for the info. !!!!!
 
I bought software from Easeus about a year or so ago when I upgraded an SSD, it was really easy, quick and painless. Sometimes buying something is worth it.

There are open software options available out there, used them in the past. But they take time and can go wrong... good luck with it.
 
This is another reason images are good
You can make one for all old titles and mount when you need
Again, Thanks Durge Driven & ALL of you, taking the time to help this old PC Dummy. I never took the time to learn the techs on PC's. So, this stuff is all new to me. So I should get a Flash Drive/ USB, don't have any, then load All of the C Drive or just the Windows folder? That would be my Back Up in case it gets corrupted again? I'll get one, if I ever need to use it, I'll ask again, how to do it, so I don't forget till then, LOL. When I picked up the PC, the tech that worked on it was off, we had about 6 inches of snow the night before, so maybe he was still shovelling snow. Anyway, I was checking the space left on all 4 drives, & noticed that C drive was Fuller than it used to be. Looking at all the folders on C drive, I noticed the last 2 folders were Windows (2 ND last folder), the last folder says Windows- Old. I'm guessing, he saved the last corrupt version of Windows. Why I don't know. Should I try to delete that Windows- Old folder?? Not going to reload it, if I have the present W7 on a Flash Drive. What's meant by mount an image? To back up all my old games, I'd need a couple of Flash Drives. Sorry I'm dumb about this stuff.
 
I really wouldn't go to all the trouble to do a clean install of Windows 7 instead of Windows 10 in 2019. Why even bother installing an outdated, 10 year old OS that's on life support, barely receiving any updates (and soon to stop receiving them completely in less than a year).

But I guess it makes sense for you somehow, so good luck I guess.
 
Again, Thanks Durge Driven & ALL of you, taking the time to help this old PC Dummy. I never took the time to learn the techs on PC's. So, this stuff is all new to me. So I should get a Flash Drive/ USB, don't have any, then load All of the C Drive or just the Windows folder?

You can't just backup windows as it has many folders are system folders that won't copy from a running OS. If not using image tool just backup what you can

You can however backup a huge amount of stuff will save time doing a fresh OS
For instance 90% of programs will run standalone meaning that they don't need re-installed just copied to a new OS

However to find all this is trial and error and takes many OS installs to get spot on
Everyone does backup differently

Here is a little of my USB backup









: ...
 
How did you get all that malware?

Running online with no restrictions most likely

Use https://www.startpage.com/en/? for " bored and browsing syndrome" :p
Limit sites you use, basically the bare essentials
If browsing unprotected RIGHT CLICK on all links and select " open in a new tab"
Set outbound and inbound rules and export for USB backup
Test recommended software from users
If you rely on free versions they will be limited in same way or another but are better then nothing

I only use AVG TuneUp and VPN and things above
 
Just to point out downloaded latest Malwarebytes Trial and why I don't use it or others
( downloaded, installed, tested and uninstalled in 3 minutes lol )

But hey if I never took the precautions I have and browsed any site willy-nilly I would have heaps of malware too ;)

malwaerbytes.jpg
 
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Oh forgot agree with Martin you should try Windows 10 101%

Buy a small separate SSD ( 60GB is more then enough and cheap ) and unhook all your drives. I only use a 60GB partition, myself

You don't need to buy W10 yet with the media tool you can load it onto a USB and test ( in setup select " no product key " )

https://www.microsoft.com/en-au/software-download/windows10

For RTX card, upgrading monitor etc
W7 does not support DX12, DX11.3, RTX, freesync or extended gsync
W10 all sims from GPL up I have tried work ( 20+ on Steam )

edit:
You will have enough time to do few installs and all testing so you can decide to buy
OR scrap W10 and use the 60GB for W7 OS or extra partition for some fav. sim installs ;)
 
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Yeah, if you want to avoid malware, the best solution IMO is running an up-to-date OS that will be updated in future as well. Windows 10 also has in-built antivirus (albeit a basic one), but for most purposes it works well enough.

Regarding backup, maybe I just got lazy, but cloud services these days offer gigabytes of free space and all it takes to backup to cloud is drag-and-drop files there. Cloud backup is more reliable in the sense that it's not subject to factors like your house burning down or the mechanical drive you did the backup on failing.
 
but the NR-2003 is the only game that I loaded years ago from the CD ... Wish I could find a digital download for NR-2003. Might make a difference. .
I think it should be possible for you to find a Nascar 2003.rar somewhere out there.
I have it somewhere on my PC but dont need it because I allready have 2 original NR2003 CDs.
If you find the Nascar 2003.rar you dont need a cd because a NO-CD launcher is included.

To get more info about installing NR2003 on your Win7 check srmz.net and the FSBracing.com out.
Both places have experts that probably can help you.
CatsAreTheWorstDogs NR2003 runs pretty brilliant on Win7 both with and without CD.:thumbsup:
 

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