From Newsgroup: alt.comp.os.windows-11

That's the issue

I have a windows 7 box which I've used "forever" I have an external
SSD drive "J", which gets a copy of all my data files.

Which is then plugged into the Laptop (running Win 11 Home (S)*) so I
can do those things which can no longer be done on the obsolete box.
Banking, reading email, shopping.

Logoff laptop,
shut down laptop.
wait a few extra minutes.
Unplug Drive J.
Plug drive J into Win7 box.
"Do you want to scan drive J for errors?" resulting from an improper
device removal.

Every single time.

Excuse me, I follow Microsoft's alleged 'best practices', and it
'fails'.
So the question I have is: is this yet another instance of Microsoft
not knowing what it's other hand is doing?

tschus
pyotr

*It was an Amazon deal, $20 to my door. Then I found out it was
"Gated Community" restricted to only Microsoft programs.
I did find a work around, but ... one more reason to switch to Linux.

Or just Microsoft making it necessary to buy a new computer with the
latest and greatest gaming interface?
--
pyotr filipivich
"Have the Anarchists ever stopped to consider that if they bring
down the American Government, there will be no one to protect
them from the rednecks?"
--- Synchronet 3.22a-Linux NewsLink 1.2

From Newsgroup: alt.comp.os.windows-11

On 2026-09-18 23:29, pyotr13315@yahoo.com wrote:

I have a windows 7 box which I've used "forever" I have an external
SSD drive "J", which gets a copy of all my data files.

Which is then plugged into the Laptop (running Win 11 Home (S)*) so I
can do those things which can no longer be done on the obsolete box.
Banking, reading email, shopping.

Eh???!!! I can do all but one of those things with FF 115.41.0esr
running on W7Pro.

The things I can't do with this version are:

- Log in to web-based email on my own domain macfh.co.uk, however I
can retrieve it onto this PC using Thunderbird, so the only time it's a problem not being able to log in to web-based email is when I need to
update spam block lists. I use my tablet for that. I complained to my webhosts about this some years back, but they refuse to acknowledge the problem. I have other problems with them also, so I could well be
moving my site in the not too distant future.

- Some sites like CPC (a UK supplier chain) won't let me follow an external link direct to any product page, a security ban message is
shown instead. I have to go in via their home page and navigate from
there. This seems to be an increasing problem, but I'm not sure that W7
has anything to do with it as I haven't done any test that would decide
this.
--

Fake news kills!

I may be contacted via the contact address given on my website: www.macfh.co.uk

--- Synchronet 3.22a-Linux NewsLink 1.2

From Newsgroup: alt.comp.os.windows-11

pyotr13315@yahoo.com wrote:

That's the issue
I have a windows 7 box which I've used "forever" I have an external
SSD drive "J", which gets a copy of all my data files.
Which is then plugged into the Laptop (running Win 11 Home (S)*) so I
can do those things which can no longer be done on the obsolete box.
Banking, reading email, shopping.
Logoff laptop,
shut down laptop.
wait a few extra minutes.
Unplug Drive J.
Plug drive J into Win7 box.
"Do you want to scan drive J for errors?" resulting from an improper
device removal.
Every single time.

Simply logging off or shutting down doesn't always guarantee immediate
cache flushing for external USB storage devices.
Possible solutions / workarounds:
1. Before shutting down or unplugging the drive from the Windows 11
laptop, look at the system tray, click the Safely Remove Hardware and
eject drive J. Always wait for "Safe to Remove Hardware" notification
before physically unplugging it.
2. Disable Fast Startup on Windows 11 in this case. Fast Startup
prevents Windows 11 from fully shutting down, which can keep external
drives locked in a semi-mounted state.
3. Change the removal policy of external storage devices in Windows 11
to "Quick removal" if it is somehow set to "Better performance".
I hope something helps.
--
Regards
Arkadiusz 'Black Fox' Artyszuk
--- Synchronet 3.22a-Linux NewsLink 1.2

From Newsgroup: alt.comp.os.windows-11

On Fri, 9/18/2026 6:29 PM, pyotr13315@yahoo.com wrote:

That's the issue

I have a windows 7 box which I've used "forever" I have an external
SSD drive "J", which gets a copy of all my data files.

Which is then plugged into the Laptop (running Win 11 Home (S)*) so I
can do those things which can no longer be done on the obsolete box.
Banking, reading email, shopping.

Logoff laptop,
shut down laptop.
wait a few extra minutes.
Unplug Drive J.
Plug drive J into Win7 box.
"Do you want to scan drive J for errors?" resulting from an improper
device removal.

Every single time.

Excuse me, I follow Microsoft's alleged 'best practices', and it
'fails'.
So the question I have is: is this yet another instance of Microsoft
not knowing what it's other hand is doing?

tschus
pyotr

*It was an Amazon deal, $20 to my door. Then I found out it was
"Gated Community" restricted to only Microsoft programs.
I did find a work around, but ... one more reason to switch to Linux.

Or just Microsoft making it necessary to buy a new computer with the
latest and greatest gaming interface?
--
pyotr filipivich
"Have the Anarchists ever stopped to consider that if they bring
down the American Government, there will be no one to protect
them from the rednecks?"

You would do a Safely Remove from the tray, while the session
is still running, as that should flush the filesystem to the SSD.

A logout isn't needed. Merely selecting Shutdown from the menu,
is also supposed to flush the filesystem out to the storage device
so it is consistent. If you're having any sort of troubles, a
Safely Remove while the session is still running, would be about
the best you could do. If the device has a LED for example, W11
should shut off the LED as part of the ceremony. It may not have
always done that properly, but it should be working now.

One thing you should know about, is the NTFS 3.1 "standard". Microsoft
pretends that the filesystem is exactly the same (as far as the
API is concerned),between W7 and W11. This is not actually the case.
One plain and blatant incompatibility, is the maximum cluster size
is allowed to be up to 1MB per cluster on W11, and W7 cannot mount
such a filesystem. The other problem though, is $BITMAP is not
maintained properly while the filesystem runs. Windows 7 is going
to be upset, when it checks $BITMAP and finds it is askew. This
could be why it is doing a scan. So even if you flush the filesystem
to disk first, by doing a Safely Remove, it might *still* require
a check on the W7 machine, when the W7 machine discovers the
"data at rest" is not consistent. This is some sort of design
optimization for wear life on SSDs.

My guesses:

1) Safely remove the external drive, before selecting Shutdown.
That should take care of any other issues you might dream up.
Safely Remove is supposed to deliver good consistency.

2) Passing the W11 flushed disk to W7, may result in a scan.
This could be the sloppy treatment of $BITMAP. If you deny the
first scan request, go to the command prompt and run CHKDSK from
there, the log of the CHKDSK session may state which "structure"
W7 did not like. chkdsk /f D: . Note that W7 will mess up
the Extended Attributes, but Microsoft knows about this and
approves.

3) Passing the W7 flushed disk to W11, this should "just work".
W7 won't leave a mess in $BITMAP.

Fast Startup kernel hibernation, shuts down all filesystems
before it is carried out. It's putting a "kernel blob" in the
hiberfil.sys . It is regular Hibernation, which leaves
the possibility for an external drive to be in a "needy state"
and the external drive has to be ready-to-go again when the
box comes out of Hibernation. That would be one reason for
Safely Removing an external drive, before hibernating.

Since the NTFS filesystem is journaled,
sloppy handling should not materially hurt it.

Part of your "protection" can be affected, by trips back and forth
between Windows and Linux with the external drive, as I don't
think Linux operates the USN Journal properly during a session,
and any Safely Remove sort of damage issue, might be harder
to clean up without the Journal being in "good shape". This means,
if you *do* pass an NTFS filesystem back and forth between
Windows and Linux, the storage device should be in excellent
health so you're not relying on secondary protection for
integrity.

Since there are now three ways to mount NTFS filesystems
on Linux at the moment, the details of this may vary from
one flavoring to another. The latest rewrite is now offered
in kernel 7.1.x or so, but the procedure for enabling the
newest version is a bit arcane for "average" usage. They didn't
exactly put a rotary knob on the stupid thing, so you could
select a flavor easily. You might have to blacklist one of
the drivers, to make the other one work or something. Some
early feedback was that the default driver kept attaching
itself, instead of the whizzy one.

Paul

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From Newsgroup: alt.comp.os.windows-11

Arkadiusz 'Black Fox' Artyszuk <asdfadsasdfa@atomicmail.io> on Sat, 19
Sep 2026 09:53:29 +0200 typed in alt.comp.os.windows-11 the
following:

pyotr13315@yahoo.com wrote:

That's the issue
I have a windows 7 box which I've used "forever" I have an external
SSD drive "J", which gets a copy of all my data files.
Which is then plugged into the Laptop (running Win 11 Home (S)*) so I
can do those things which can no longer be done on the obsolete box.
Banking, reading email, shopping.
Logoff laptop,
shut down laptop.
wait a few extra minutes.
Unplug Drive J.
Plug drive J into Win7 box.
"Do you want to scan drive J for errors?" resulting from an improper
device removal.
Every single time.

Simply logging off or shutting down doesn't always guarantee immediate
cache flushing for external USB storage devices.
Possible solutions / workarounds:
1. Before shutting down or unplugging the drive from the Windows 11
laptop, look at the system tray, click the Safely Remove Hardware and
eject drive J. Always wait for "Safe to Remove Hardware" notification
before physically unplugging it.

This was where I seriously hit a problem.
Microsoft cannot eject the disk as {some unnamed} process is
accessing it.

2. Disable Fast Startup on Windows 11 in this case. Fast Startup
prevents Windows 11 from fully shutting down, which can keep external
drives locked in a semi-mounted state.

Will check this next time. Explains a lot.

3. Change the removal policy of external storage devices in Windows 11
to "Quick removal" if it is somehow set to "Better performance".
I hope something helps.

Will try that too.
--
pyotr filipivich
This Week's Panel: Us & Them - Eliminating Them.
Next Month's Panel: Having eliminated the old Them(tm)
Selecting who insufficiently Woke(tm) as to serve as the new Them(tm)
--- Synchronet 3.22a-Linux NewsLink 1.2

From Newsgroup: alt.comp.os.windows-11

On 24/09/2026 02:06, pyotr filipivich wrote:

This was where I seriously hit a problem.
Microsoft cannot eject the disk as {some unnamed} process is
accessing it.

The easiest way to resolve this issue is to log out of your account and
log back in. You should then be able to eject the disk without any problems.

When you log out of the account, any processes initiated by the user are automatically stopped, including those accessing the disk.

HTH





--- Synchronet 3.22a-Linux NewsLink 1.2

From Newsgroup: alt.comp.os.windows-11

Ramanujan's Summation <rs@invalid.invalid> wrote:

On 24/09/2026 02:06, pyotr filipivich wrote:

This was where I seriously hit a problem.
Microsoft cannot eject the disk as {some unnamed} process is accessing it.

The easiest way to resolve this issue is to log out of your account and
log back in. You should then be able to eject the disk without any problems.

When you log out of the account, any processes initiated by the user are automatically stopped, including those accessing the disk.

Maybe yes, maybe no. For example Windows' indexing process is all too
happy to touch a disk, even if it has been told not to index it.

Bottom line: 'Eject' works or it doesn't.
--- Synchronet 3.22a-Linux NewsLink 1.2

From Newsgroup: alt.comp.os.windows-11

Ramanujan's Summation<rs@invalid.invalid> on Thu, 24 Sep 2026 17:59:11
+0100 typed in alt.comp.os.windows-11 the following:

On 24/09/2026 02:06, pyotr filipivich wrote:

This was where I seriously hit a problem.
Microsoft cannot eject the disk as {some unnamed} process is
accessing it.

The easiest way to resolve this issue is to log out of your account and
log back in. You should then be able to eject the disk without any problems.

When you log out of the account, any processes initiated by the user are >automatically stopped, including those accessing the disk.

HTH

thanks, that makes some sort of sense, I'm sure.


--
pyotr filipivich
This Week's Panel: Us & Them - Eliminating Them.
Next Month's Panel: Having eliminated the old Them(tm)
Selecting who insufficiently Woke(tm) as to serve as the new Them(tm)
--- Synchronet 3.22a-Linux NewsLink 1.2