Computer Gurus ?

[dibblejr]

I am recovering from a huge problem and have had to reinstall everything on my computer Windows 10 and all apps/ software.

My backup failed and I have one large folder with almost 20K files in it to sort out.

Can any of you tell me why my download files are coming through with % symbols and other characters and how to fix that?

Example my SSEdit exe has changed its name to numbers and characters . ini  When I try to rename the extension to exe it def does not resemble what it is supposed to look like.

All help will be appreciated.

Thank you

JR

[PhilMassey]

Unfortunately that doesn't sound good.

It rather sounds like your backup media got corrupted and scrambled everything.

What was your backup media and how did it fail. Can you read anything on the backup drive or is it dead. How did you get the files off into the folder.

I don't know of any magic if the filenames are corrupted and the files themselves are scrambled.

There are utilities out there which can attempt to recover disk drives but it's pretty hit or miss at best. 

There are also services which can try to do the same thing but that's pricey, and still may not be successful.

It all depends on how it failed and what state it is in now. 

 

[TheDucks]

Is it %20

That is an encoded space.  What OS did you back up to?

[dibblejr]

2 hours ago, PhilMassey said:

Unfortunately that doesn't sound good.

It rather sounds like your backup media got corrupted and scrambled everything.

What was your backup media and how did it fail. Can you read anything on the backup drive or is it dead. How did you get the files off into the folder.

I don't know of any magic if the filenames are corrupted and the files themselves are scrambled.

There are utilities out there which can attempt to recover disk drives but it's pretty hit or miss at best. 

There are also services which can try to do the same thing but that's pricey, and still may not be successful.

It all depends on how it failed and what state it is in now. 

 

It was a huge thank you of Crucial Tech and Acronis that caused my issue. Crucial by not doing all of the research before selling a 2tb M.2 drive (the 1tb M.2 I put in 2019 worked flawlessly and the clone took 3 hours) This time the 2tb M.2 would not be seen by my computer nor be initialized. Contacted Crucial and they refered me to their partner Acronis who created the cloning software.

Acronis took over and the tech through Team Viewer mistakingly wrote over my clone and then 2 backup drives.

After 2 - 8 hour days I called Dell and they said the M.2 that I was sold this time was not keyed for my gaming laptop. I provided that info to Crucial who stated that it would work and the heying difference was only a design flaw, Contacted Dell again and they said "any mfg of computers and hardware knows that is not correct".

In the end I cut my loss with both and someone I know was able to break the code to unlock the acronis clone that was still hidden even after a format. He had some software that opened it.

However as stated only sipped folders were in tact. All other file folders were gone leaving me with almost 20K individual files. They are now on my backup drive.

With that out of the way, here is a recent example of what the file name is when I download.

Locomotive%20Breath .zip

It only appears to do that when I download something from the net.

All of the 20K files mentioned above work fine just a pitb to sort through, no logical order.

All of the drives involved are ssd's and all work it was just a data issue. The 2tb M.2 drive was keyed the same and works in my Alienware show computer so it became a backup. Acronis did get it initialized in that computer. That also has a crucial M.2 1tb drive with 1 (what I will call a notch but Dell calls it a key) The Dell gaming laptop it was sup to work in has 2 slots in the end (keys), I'm sure you guys understand that, I can only state what Dell said and research I did after Dell told me that.

Thanks 

JR

 

[dibblejr]

49 minutes ago, TheDucks said:

Is it %20

That is an encoded space.  What OS did you back up to?

Everything is Win 10 except the clone which was done with Acronis software which in the past always worked. This was an error by Acronis tech support more than anything else. Now just trying to figure out how tto fix the file name. If I download a zip file as I posted a copy of above, I can open the zip and the file name is good. However if I try to dl an individual file the name does not work, example. I emailed myself the Superstar ssedit file. It came through with the % stuff. When I changed the name to SSEdit. exe it took the change but it looked nothing like it was sup to look like and did not function as an exe.

Luckily I reached out to Brian and the 4.4.6 release is equal to the more recent 1.... version.

Thanks

JR

[dgrant]

Normally when I've run into data corruption issues, which doesn't happen very often, its "sometimes" a ram memory card that has failed. It rarely happens but it DOES happen. Just in case, run memtest and see if it finds anything otherwise you're wasting your time trying to restore. M.2 is just a storage drive but ram memory is used differently

Edited August 16, 2020 by dgrant

[PhilMassey]

Sounds like the perfect storm of lousy tech support. I haven't used Acronis in years but always found it a bit unreliable.. I'm glad I build my own machines at this point.

Windows zip support is pretty solid these days, but it might not hurt to try a third party utility like 7Zip from 7Zip.org. to extract a few files if you still have them.

Windows File Explorer shows you the contents of a zipped folder or file  but doesn't necessarily  extract it until you tell it to by double clicking or right clicking. Make sure you are operating on the actual file after it has been extracted.

There are bulk rename programs which could remove the %20 and extension on all the files at one go. You would need to practice on some copies first to get the settings right.

The latter part of this article talks about Bulk Rename Utility, which I have used before. 

https://www.howtogeek.com/111859/how-to-batch-rename-files-in-windows-4-ways-to-rename-multiple-files/

The free version should do what you want to do, a lot easier than by hand.

https://www.bulkrenameutility.co.uk/

Of course, it won't do anything to fix the contents of the files if they are damaged.

Again if you try any of these utilities, experiment on copies first, until you get the hang of it.

 

[TheDucks]

Use a file renamer.  (I have used Metamorphose, a bit of over kill, sorta like using LOR to turn on the bathroom night light)

to replace the %20 with a Space 

[dibblejr]

Absolutely nothing wrong all systems checked good. A test was performed by Acronis and Dell. When the problem occurred and I got Acronis involved and they could not get it worked out right away the first thing they had to determine was that the ssd and all drives and ram were working properly. Once that was ruled out they had to dig in to their recovery and clone files. That was when the tech made his mistakes.

The only files that have the % are files I am downloading as I try to recover some sequences from my emails. All files that are in that huge folder have their normal file names.

The computer just spent 2 hours running various updates so hopefully one of them were the fix. So at this point I don't think a file re namer is used I just have to figure out how to download them zipped but I don't think I can. 

I did realize one thing based off Phils reply, right now the computer is using the default zip tool. I was a ran or rar or whatever it was so I need to reinstall that. Perhaps if it hasn't been repaired during this update that will fix it.

Thank you to all that replied and if you think of anything regarding this please feel free to chime in. I will update when/ if the problem gets resolved.

JR

 

[jfuller8400]

What browser are you using?  Edge has had issues like you are describing (see this link:  https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/edge/forum/all/edge-converts-spaces-to-20-in-downloaded-file/e85532d4-1e41-44a1-bf3c-c19eaec39948).  If you are using a Microsoft browser, I would try either firefox or chrome and see if the issues persists.

 

[dibblejr]

14 minutes ago, jfuller8400 said:

What browser are you using?  Edge has had issues like you are describing (see this link:  https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/edge/forum/all/edge-converts-spaces-to-20-in-downloaded-file/e85532d4-1e41-44a1-bf3c-c19eaec39948).  If you are using a Microsoft browser, I would try either firefox or chrome and see if the issues persists.

 

I have not selected edge yet. I didn't like edge when I last used it due to the fact that when I donloaded files from emails or any place it never gave me the "save as" function I was used to. Instead everything downloaded to "downloads" and I had to double my work in order to move the files to where I use to save them in the first place.

I didn't know that above until this problem and at least now I get the "save as" so I will not use edge.

I am using IE now. I believe that is the round E looking thing.

I read that article above and a couple of the replies is why I don't like to follow instructions from widows anything forums. Two instances did as suggested and things got worse.

At least in this forum even though most of us only know each other via threads, posts and PM's it is a smaller community and I trust your replies more than any in a larger forum where "everyone" appears to work for MS.

Thank you for the reply.

Will try google chrome next if the update hasn't fixed it.

JR 

[dibblejr]

** Update

So it appears this latest round of updates between Windows and Dell has repaired the problem. The files that were sent via email and had the % in them now have normal file names when I attempt to re download them. Luckily I stopped at 10, so I now only have to delete and redownload those 10.

Hard to believe it took at least 3 days of updates to fix this. It may have been longer but I didn't start trying to download anything until another member asked for some vis assistance and he sent me his file.

I truly appreciate all of the replies and am happy I can finally put this problem to bed,

Thanks to all who contributed.

JR

[Mr. P]

I use Macrium Reflect for my cloning needs, used it for years with no issues so far.

[k6ccc]

3 hours ago, TheDucks said:

a bit of over kill, sorta like using LOR to turn on the bathroom night light

Now wait a second.  I use LOR to control the front porch light...

 

[k6ccc]

1 hour ago, dibblejr said:

I am using IE now. I believe that is the round E looking thing.

Both Edge and IE are a lower case E, but are different.  There are the most common four (sorry for any Opera fans, I don't have Opera on this computer, and this is a Windows PC - not a MAC, so no Safari). 

No, I don't normally keep those grouped together, but moved them around for the screen capture.  In fact, I had to add desktop shortcuts for both Edge and IE since I almost never use either one - other than I use IE on a BRAND NEW Windows installation and one of the first things I do is download FireFox.  After that I never use it unless absolutely required (BobO for MIIP install)..

 

[dibblejr]

20 minutes ago, Mr. P said:

I use Macrium Reflect for my cloning needs, used it for years with no issues so far.

Crucial is a partner with Acronis, its never been a problem before. This time both of them failed equally but had Crucial not sold a product that didn't work it would have never happened.

Needless to say Crucial will no longer receive future $ from me.

JR

[dibblejr]

4 minutes ago, k6ccc said:

Both Edge and IE are a lower case E, but are different.  There are the most common four (sorry for any Opera fans, I don't have Opera on this computer, and this is a Windows PC - not a MAC, so no Safari). 

No, I don't normally keep those grouped together, but moved them around for the screen capture.  In fact, I had to add desktop shortcuts for both Edge and IE since I almost never use either one - other than I use IE on a BRAND NEW Windows installation and one of the first things I do is download FireFox.  After that I never use it unless absolutely required (BobO for MIIP install)..

 

Well I guess the "e" in my system is edge. I just don't know why it keeps asking me to "try edge" then but Im not changing anything so I will continue to "x" it out. I thought IE used to actually have "IE" on the icon. Shows how much I pay attention.

JR

[Mr. P]

46 minutes ago, dibblejr said:

Well I guess the "e" in my system is edge. I just don't know why it keeps asking me to "try edge" then but Im not changing anything so I will continue to "x" it out. I thought IE used to actually have "IE" on the icon. Shows how much I pay attention.

JR

Turn it off in the Notifications and Actions settings.

[PhilMassey]

I never recommend cloning or even zipping for data files. For starters, it's an extra process with the possibility of error.

Cloning all your data into one big lump just means that if anything goes wrong, say a disc sector goes bad, the whole clone file could, and likely would be gone.

With individual data files, only a few files would be lost. and that's covered by your second backup.

Cloning the system partition with the OS is fine and can save hours of reinstall, but your data should not be in it. If the clone should fail you can reinstall the OS manually, Data files could be gone for good.

With the low cost of huge storage devices, I see no reason to zip files any more, again, it's just another potential failure point

[TheDucks]

1 hour ago, k6ccc said:

Both Edge and IE are a lower case E, but are different.  There are the most common four (sorry for any Opera fans, I don't have Opera on this computer, and this is a Windows PC - not a MAC, so no Safari). 

No, I don't normally keep those grouped together, but moved them around for the screen capture.  In fact, I had to add desktop shortcuts for both Edge and IE since I almost never use either one - other than I use IE on a BRAND NEW Windows installation and one of the first things I do is download FireFox.  After that I never use it unless absolutely required (BobO for MIIP install)..

 

Edge has a new logo in w10 rel 2004. More like a blue snake swirl