While fixing some Windows 7 system issues (like running Internet Explore or Quicken would hang) , I ran a lot of “sfc /scannow” command. And each time, it would complain that there were corrupted files that could not be fixed. (“Windows Resource Protection found corrupt files but was unable to fix some of them.”)

After looking into the log file residing in c:\windows\Log\CBS\CBS.log , I noticed that the majority of the corrupted files were related to Internet Explorer 11. Then I discovered this little “Search Protect” icon showing up in the task bar. Upon further search, I concluded that this was a malware from “Conduit”. I suspected this was the one that caused the Internet Explorer 11 to be corrupted.

First, I need to get rid of this malware. Based on the recommendation form my Google Search, I downloaded JRT (Junkware Removal Tool) and proceeded to remove the “Search Protect” from my system. Well, JRT didn’t quite remove it from the auto-start programs so I had to manually remove it using Microsoft’s autoruns. This was the only way to get rid of the annoying warning message that it couldn’t find the “backgroundcontainer.dll” software (already removed by JRT) upon logging into Windows 7 every time.

Since Internet Explorer 11 was the most up-to-date Internet Explorer, there was no new update to override it. I even tried downloading directly from Microsoft but the official download site was still down level. So I decided uninstall it, which was not a trivial task since Internet Explorer is an integrated software for Windows 7. Based on this recommendation, I would need to deselect Internet Explorer 11 in the Windows Features (Start -> Control Panel -> Programs and Features -> Select “Turning Windows Features On/off” on the left panel -> Deselect “Internet Explorer 10” ). Then go into Windows Update and Uninstall Internet Explorer 11 (Start -> Control Panel -> Click on “Installed Updated” on the left panel on the bottom -> Enter “Internet Explorer” -> Right Click on Windows Internet Explorer 11 ). By doing the above steps, upon reboot, the previous Internet Explorer (in my case IE 9) became the Internet Explorer app.

After doing more “sfc /scannow” and a few more reboots, I was able to run Internet Explorer 9 without any problem and my Quickens App was finally able to run without crashing. Evidently, Quickens uses Microsoft Framework which is integrated tightly with Internet Explorer.

Lessons learned:
1. Watch out for any strange icons on your task bars. Research their purposes. When in doubt, get rid of them so they don’t cause conflicts with other software.

2. Every so often (2 weeks), run “sfc /scannow” to check for any corrupted system files.

Last few months I have been seeing strange behavior on my Windows 7 Ultrabook – like failing to boot on occasions and getting same Windows updates over and over, certain application wouldn’t install correctly, and etc. I figured the original 240GB SSD may be reaching its end of life, though I have been using my laptop for just 2 years. After downloading HD Tune Pro, my fear was confirmed. The SSD had more than 8% of damaged blocks. I quickly purchased another SSD from Amazon of the “same” size (at least I thought), then the real battle began…

First, the new Samsung SSD was advertised to have 250GB of storage when in fact has only 232.88GB of true storage (Lawyers’ ears should be perked up by now). My original Micron SSD was advertised to have 240GB by Acer when it has 238GB of true storage. So the new SSD is slightly smaller than the old one. This was bad news. It’s much easier to migrate from a small disk to large disk. Lesson #1: always buy a bigger disk than the original. When in doubt, go for the next bigger size. In order to overcome this issue, I had to shrink the original disk: 1) Right click on Computer and Select Manage, 2) Click on Storage->Disk Management, 3) Select the partition to be shrunk, 4) Right Click -> Shrunk Volume). So I managed to shrink just 8GB. This was good enough to scrape by and meet the new SSD size.

Next, I had to clone the disk to the new drive. The new Samsung SSD came with their migration tool. Unfortunately, their tool refused to work because my original disk had data corruption. It’s kind of silly to have a tool that wouldn’t work with the situation it’s called out to do. Then I tried CloneZilla, which was a nice tool I used to clone and backup disk image. It’s good at duplicating disk verbatim, as long as the destination disk is larger than the source disk. But it choked badly on this task because I needed to go from a slightly larger SSD to a smaller SSD. No Go. I tried manually copying the partition but the Windows partitions were a nightmare to copy correctly. I almost gave up and was ready to return the SSD back to Amazon for a next-size, 500GB SSD, which cost another $100. Then I remembered Acronis True Image (2009 version I used), whose “Clone Disk” function was smart enough to skip the empty partition when copying and eventually saved my butt and migrated correctly to the new disk. Another lesson learned, a good disk migration software goes a long way of solving a real challenging problem.

I’ll spare you the painful story I went through in replacing the SSD (12 screws on the cover, 5 screws on the SSD housing) on my Ultrabook. What a relief to see the new disk booted up nicely and performing well. A journey indeed. One last lesson: SSD may be a technology wonder in terms of its high performance but it’s still a way off to have the same reliability as a hard disk.