Very slow USB 2.0 transfer

[Peter]

Good morning

I have a newToshiba Satellite laptop with Vista Ultimate installed.
It was working fine until I took it to work and had the work IT people
network it into our system, in the course of which they reinstalled
Vista, following which various functions don't work properly or at
all. The main one bothering me at the moment is the USB interface.
When I try to copy files onto a USB 2.0 flash memory stick (which was
working fine before) I get a message saying the transfer rate is 35
bytes / sec and that a transfer of a 36MB folder is going to take 2
hours. This should only take a few seconds. I tried a different USB
memory stick - same thing.

I could ask our IT people to sort it out, but (1) they were the ones
who f****d it up in the first place and (2) it's not really their job,
as the networking into the system part works fine, but using USB
memory sticks is my personal problem. So I'd rather try to sort it
out myself.

Any suggestions would be gratefully appreciated - thanks.

Peter

 

[R. C. White]

Hi, Peter.

Caveat: I've never had any laptop or any Toshiba (except a hard drive) or
any computer with Windows/Vista preinstalled. And I know nothing of
networks, either.

But, given all those warnings, my guess is that you should - or have your
work IT people - reinstall the factory-original version of Vista. Then
install your company's copy of Vista in a dual-boot configuration. Or,
probably better, install the company's Vista as an "in-place upgrade" over
the original Toshiba installation, thus preserving the drivers that were
originally installed by Toshiba to support their proprietary hardware.

I probably should have asked first: Is this YOUR laptop? Or does it belong
to your employer?

RC
--
R. C. White, CPA
San Marcos, TX
(e-mail address removed)
Microsoft Windows MVP
(Running Windows Live Mail 2008 in Vista Ultimate x64)

 

[Peter]

Thanks for that. It's my laptop, I paid good money for it and with
hindsight it was a mistake to let our IT people get their hands on it
in the first place.

Peter

 

[Mark]

Beats me why the IT guys would need to reinstall Vista just to get the
laptop to connect to the company network. I can see that they may demand
you have some level of security set, and virus protection to protect
themselves, but I wouldn't think that would require a full Vista reinstall.

 

[Peter]

I suspect it was just laziness: they couldn't get it to do exactly
what they wanted so rather than work out how to do it properly they
just started again from scratch. Maybe I should let them go as we
outsource them raher than employ them in house. Anyway....

I have an update for my problem. I found a Microsoft Hotfix for slow
USB problems in Vista and installed it. Whether it was due to this or
not, I do not know, but now my USB transfer speeds are back to normal
*except* for the one thing I really wanted to transfer which was my
Windows Mail messages, as I lost them all when aforementioned geeks
did aforementioned reinstallation. I have found the folder they are
in, and I can open the messages one by one using Windows Explorer, but
what I want to do is reinstate them in my Windows Mail program (or any
other mail program, Windows Mail is cheap, cheerful and adequate but
if anyone thinks something else would work better I'm open to
suggestions). There are several hundred messages so I'm reluctant to
transfer them one by one.

When I try to "import messages" Windows Mail tells me there are no
messages in the folder to import, even though I know there are. This
might be something to do with the fact that the folder properties are
set to "read only" which I know Windows Mail / Outlook Express
sometimes has a problem with. I can't unset the "read only" option
because the folder won't let me uncheck the relevant box - apparently
this is a known issue with Windows and there are workarounds to it.

Anyway, to get the point of this story, I thought I would copy the
Windows Mail folder to a USB flash drive and fiddle with it on another
computer to try to unset the read-only option, but then I had problems
with the very slow transfer speeds I have described, and I still have
this problem. Yet when I transfer a video file which is 10 times the
size to the same USB flash drive, it works perfectly in seconds.

Any suggestions appreciated - thanks.

Peter

 

[R. C. White]

Hi, Peter.

I have a couple of suggestions.

When I try to "import messages" Windows Mail tells me there are no
messages in the folder to import, even though I know there are.

That's typical. It probably just means that you haven't given yourself
permission to see the messages in that folder. I had that problem several
times during and after the Vista beta. I'm not much good at permissions
(I'm just one guy with one computer and no network), but I was able to
fumble my way through the Security tab until I got it to work.

My second suggestion is that you visit http://www.oehelp.com/, run by MVP
Steve Cochran. Yeah, the name still says OE, but Steve knows as much about
WM as the WM Team, it seems to me.

Then (OK, a third suggestion) visit the two newsgroups that deal with WM/WLM
and their problems:
news://msnews.microsoft.com/microsoft.public.windows.live.mail.desktop
news://msnews.microsoft.com/microsoft.public.windows.vista.mail

I can't unset the "read only" option
because the folder won't let me uncheck the relevant box - apparently
this is a known issue with Windows and there are workarounds to it.

As to the read-only folder issue, you might want to read this KB article:
You Cannot View or Change the Read-Only or System Attribute of Folders
http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;EN-US;326549

Good luck! ;<) And let us know if you learn something that we can use to
help others with similar problems.

RC
--
R. C. White, CPA
San Marcos, TX
(e-mail address removed)
Microsoft Windows MVP
(Running Windows Live Mail 2008 in Vista Ultimate x64)

 

[Peter]

Thanks for those suggestions RC. Here is another update, not much
luck so far unfortunately.

I tried fiddling with the permissions and set them all to "full" but
this didn't help.

I tried following the instructions in the KB article about unsetting
read-only attributes but this didn't seem to help either (folder
attribute obstinately refuses to be unset despite fiddling with the
cmd.exe program).

I visited the oehelp.com website and found the instructions rather
complicated as it involved saving and restoring Registry keys etc, but
the guy has written a program (DBXpress) which is supposed to
automatically find and restore lost OE messages, so on the principle
"if you can't fix it, throw some money at it" I have paid for the
program and I am waiting for the link to download it.

I am tired of f*****g around with this, because it seems to me that
what should be a very simple process - restoring email messages from a
folder - is horrendously complicated largely due to badly written
Microsoft software. So as soon as I have restored my emails I am
going to switch to another email program - Mozilla Thunderbird seems
to be popular and is free open source - because I don't want to have
to go through this all over again next time I want to archive or
restore my email messages.

I'll keep you posted.

Peter.

 

[R. C. White]

Hi, Peter.

Sorry things are not working for you yet.

I tried following the instructions in the KB article about unsetting
read-only attributes but this didn't seem to help either (folder
attribute obstinately refuses to be unset despite fiddling with the
cmd.exe program).

That's not the point that I wanted you to get from that article. :>( The
point is to don't worry about resetting the read-only attribute, because it
doesn't matter. Whatever problem you are having, resetting that attribute
won't fix it. Look for a different solution.

Steve Cochran has been very busy with "real life" recently, but he posted in
another newsgroup today that he hopes to get back into the newsgroups soon.
You might keep an eye out for him in the vista.mail NG.

I'll keep you posted.

Good. And good luck.

RC
--
R. C. White, CPA
San Marcos, TX
(e-mail address removed)
Microsoft Windows MVP
(Running Windows Live Mail 2008 in Vista Ultimate x64)

 

[Peter]

OK, the latest in the saga.

It seems I have 2 interrelated problems. First, the messing about
with my laptop by the computer geeks (see above and below), and
secondly my choice of email program. As before, any thoughts by
anyone else would be appreciated. I have a daytime job and I wish I
wasn't spending so much time on this.

After a lot more investigation, it seems that our geeks, for reasons
best known to themselves, had connected my laptop to our office system
in such a way that half the files generated by the programs on the
laptop, such as Word documents, incoming emails and program/system
files, are being stored not on the laptop itself but on our main
server on the other side of the building. So my laptop is at present
effectively split in half. The pointlessness of this is rather
astonishing, because if I wanted to disconnect my laptop from the
network and take it with me (as one does with laptops) half the files
and programs would not be on it. That probably explains why some
functions have not been working too well lately. So I have asked them
to put a stop to that pronto.

The other thing is, I probably need to be using a different mail
program from those supplied by Microsoft. I receive thousands of
emails per year, so to prevent my computer getting cluttered up, and
for security reasons, once a year I like to archive all my emails onto
a disc. This can be done with Windows Mail and Outlook Express but
it's fiddly because of the proprietory email format used, which in
effect encodes the emails into an unreadable form which can only be
read once they have been restored into the program which created
them. Apparently the Unix email format is more straightforward and
lends itself more to archiving, backup and restoring. So I am going
to start using the Mulberry email client which is Unix based, online
reviews say it's pretty good, and it's free.

Correct me if I'm missing something, but I understand that Outlook
Express was replaced by Windows Mail in Vista, but Windows Mail was
made obsolete by Microsoft almost as soon as it was launched and is
now being replaced by Windows Live Mail. I have downloaded and
installed the latter and it seems to be to be an inferior program with
less functionality than Windows Mail. In particular, there doesn't
seem to be any functionality built in to allow one to import or export
messages, so I don't know what you are supposed to do if you want to
backup your emails, or transfer them onto a new computer. So I am
giving up on the Microsoft suite of email clients and their weird
proprietory formats and migrating to Unix.

In the meantime, our geeks are likely to be taking a trip to Social
Assistance Land if I have any say in it.

Hope this helps someone, and any feedback appreciated

Peter.

 

[Peter]

Happy ending. Geeks restored files and folders to their rightful
place on laptop. Old mail messages reappeared. Everything now
working OK. Geeks now drinking in Last Chance Saloon.

 

[R. C. White]

Hi, Peter.

Congratulations! And thanks for the feedback. ;<)

RC
--
R. C. White, CPA
San Marcos, TX
(e-mail address removed)
Microsoft Windows MVP
(Running Windows Live Mail 2008 in Vista Ultimate x64)