Windows Backup and Updates Failures are 2 completely separate things. Neemo answered the Updates problem with a correct solution. I will address the Backup issue. The first question is what
PROGRAM are you using to Backup your laptop? If you are using the built-in Windows7 backup, that is not a reliable backup.
Microsoft backup has not proven reliable in the 20+ years since it came out and was incorporated into Windows machines. There are much more reliable programs such as
AOEMI Backupper, or
Paragon Software for manual backups. For Image backups which we recommend over using manual backups, we recommend 3 programs which are:
1.) Macrium Reflect (free)
2.) Acronis TrueImage (free)
3.) EASETodo (free)
Also, where are you storing your backups from W7? If it's to external flash drive or external hard drive or both, you have another problem. As of 2 years ago, there are now new Ransomware viruses out there that can lock up all the data on your laptop hard drive as well as
ALL OTHER EXTERNAL DRIVES PLUGGED INTO YOUR LAPTOP!! This can cost from
$237-$2,500 to pay the Ransom to the Hacker to get an unlock key to unlock all your files. I just went through this in August with a customer who had 20 years of business and personal stuff locked up by this very nasty Ransomware virus.
Fortunately for him, I was able to find a program to unlock all his files.
It took me 4 weeks to do so.
To combat this situation, we recommend that you
NEVER KEEP YOUR EXTERNAL DRIVES PLUGGED INTO YOUR LAPTOP UNLESS YOU ARE MAKING BACKUPS AT THE TIME! Additionally, you should consider making Manual backups to Cloud-based storage (free or paid) using such vendors as
Dropbox, Microsoft OneDrive, and Google Drive. These vendors have special commercial antivirus that scrubs all your data clean if you accidentally upload folders with files containing viruses. There are also automatic versions of software that backup to private Cloud accounts that backup every 15 min. so as to minimize data loss in the event your laptop crashes, is stolen from your home or car or hotel room, or in the event of a natural disaster. These 2 programs are called
Carbonite and
CrashPlan. They both run about
$5 a month;
$60 a year. Cheap insurance! Most of my Clients are not aware of these dangers, and therefore it's no surprise when they call me with a really badly infected computer and they hope they haven't lost all their data!
I personally use CrashPlan on my computers now in addition to making Image Backups with the Macrium software.
This is worth mentioning to you, and to any other forum users who happen on to this thread. We are trying to tell people about these precautions.
Be aware too, that making backups with Microsoft backups hasn't been done in decades by any of the Fortune500 companies as they know that software is not going to get your stuff back. Microsoft has never fixed this issue, and that's why backup software is a multi-billion dollar niche industry supplying programs that actually do the job properly. Get yourself going on at least 2 of the programs mentioned above (1 for local/maual backup) and 2 a different backup mechanism to the Cloud storage (manual/automatic).
Hope that proves useful to you.
<<<BIGBEARJEDI>>>
