Help - weird problem

[Stephen]

I had a 2TB WD Black HD that was developing bad sectors, so I decided to replace it with a WD Velociraptor 1 TB HD. Everything seemed fine., though I didn't do a lot on the computer so I can't say for sure. Power outage the next night. Starting the next day, the computer boots up and shuts down fine, but is slow at opening up applications.

I tried to uninstall one software program, and couldn't. I get error message 1606, saying it can't access the Public Shared Pictures location on my external My Cloud device). First, the software was never installed on the external device. Then I discovered the IP address for the My Cloud device is now different from the address that appears when I try to uninstall.

I tried a system restore - it doesn't work and gives me the 0X800700b7 error message. I tried sfc/scannow as well a registry fix I found while googling for a solution. Didn't work.

I also tried unplugging the new HDD, which also did nothing.

Any ideas?

[bonestonne]

BSOD 7B is specifically related to hard disk access.

You may have 1) another bad drive 2) a bad SATA cable 3) a bad motherboard, or failing hard drive controller.

If you pull the drive and connect it to a different machine (using a new/different SATA cable, are you able to run a file system check and/or access the data normally?

I have seen 7B errors thrown by incorrect SATA configurations (IDE vs AHCI) as well as corrupt boot sectors caused by virus infections.

If your My Cloud device uses DHCP, a different IP address is normal.

I'd first find out if the drive itself is your problem by putting it into a completely different machine. If it works fine, the problem is either the SATA cable or the motherboard. If the different machine displays the same issues, you have another bad drive.

If it appears as though you have another bad drive, I would look carefully and make sure it's not being caused by bad RAM or a bad motherboard.

[Stephen]

More detail. It appears to be an issue with Adobe software. All other software I can uninstall and then reinstall without any issues. I found a fix that allowed me to uninstall Adobe Reader. However, when I tried to reinstall it, I got the same error message 1606, saying it can't access the Public Shared Pictures location on my external My Cloud device) (again, with the wrong IP address). For some reason, it wants to install Adobe software to the network rather than my C drive. Any ideas on how to fix this?

Is it possible when the computer is on that there is an Adobe service running in the background that is continually looking for the My Cloud network drive (a the wrong IP) and that is slowing everything down?

[bonestonne]

Unless you're running the Master Collection, I have no knowledge of Adobe services that would be running in the background for any reason. There are update services that can/will run, but it's just looking for newer versions of the software, nothing else.

I would specifically pull the drive and connect it to another computer. It's entirely possible a bad cable or bad RAM could cause incorrect data to be written to the disk.

Did you clone the data from the 2TB to the 1TB velociraptor? That can also introduce a layer of complication. I'd run a full checkdisk on it to make sure the drive is okay.

Unless you can rule out bad hardware, 7B is related to hard disk access on some level. Having seemingly corrupt software is just another symptom.

[Stephen]

I did not clone the data from the old drive to the new drive. I formatted it and I also ran chkdsk and it is fine. I pulled the drive out, and that did nothing to fix it. I also disconnected My Cloud and that did nothing.

[quest_for_silence]

What happens if you perform a clean boot? In that scenario, are you still unable to uninstall the aforementioned program?

[Stephen]

What happens if you perform a clean boot? In that scenario, are you still unable to uninstall the aforementioned program?

I tried safe mode. Haven't tried clean boot yet. I'll look into that tomorrow.

[Stephen]

I finally got it fixed - it's been just over 24 hours without any issues.

I got a number of suggestions on this and several other forums, none of which worked when I tried them, though one of them turned out to be where I needed to be looking.

The suggestion to go to the microsoft website (http://support.microsoft.com/kb/886549) was the most helpful in the end. Mr. Fix-it wouldn't work on Windows 8.1, so I then followed the directions to do it manually. It indicated this error issue may occur if there is an incorrect setting in one of the following registry subkeys:

•HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\User Shell Folders
•HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\User Shell Folders

I made the mistake of assuming it was just referring to software that has been installed, specifically Microsoft products. I went to those registry subkeys, and found several entries referring to older versions of Office. I deleted them. When that didn't resolve it, I went on looking for other solutions.

Given the installation/un-installation issues were only with Adobe software, I assumed that Adobe was a possible culprit. I tried a number of suggestions regarding Adobe. Nothing worked. As I noted earlier, I tried removing the new HDD to see if that was the issue. Nothing.

I was getting ready to do a reinstall when I started thinking again about the text of the error message, saying it can't access the Public Shared Pictures location on my external My Cloud device, and showing the wrong IP address. I went back to the registry subkeys noted above, and looked for registry entries NOT about Microsoft, and NOT about Adobe, but instead ones that might reference the My Pictures folder. And there I found the problem. In both registry subkeys, there was one entry that referenced my pictures, and the text of the subkey contained the wrong IP address. I changed the IP address to the correct one, re-booted, and just like that the issue was fixed!!!!!

A little more time thinking it through would have saved me a whole lot of time searching for solutions. Live and learn.

Thanks to everyone who offered suggestions!!! I hope this helps someone else!

[CA_Steve]

Glad you were able to solve the problem.