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Where’s Sys Minion’s ‘Let’s Start It’ button?

QIdownloaded Sys Minion 1.1, as recommended back in Issue 510 (see Best Free Software). All seemed fine until I reached the ‘Run as administrator’ part of your instructions. At this point I didn’t see any option to click ‘Let’s Start It!”, as you suggested. I was invited to link with Wise Auto Shutdown 1.65, which I had already installed. Any ideas?

Mike Wooldridge

Awe’re

not convinced you successfully downloaded and extracted the Sys Minion ZIP file. In fact, you may have double-clicked a completely different file, and one that lacks a file extension. This would prompt Windows to ask if you want to associate the unknown file type with an installed program. As a recently installed app, Wise Auto Shutdown (WAS) would have appeared in this list of programs. However, WAS is completely unrelated to Sys Minion.

So, let’s work through the process in more detail. First, visit www.snipca. com/26712. Next, under the ‘- this site:’ heading (at the bottom), click the link labelled ‘sys_minon binaries package’. This prompts your browser to download a compressed file, called ‘sys_minion_0102. zip’ (or similar). Now open your Downloads folder, right-click the ‘sys_ minion_0102.zip’ file, choose Extract All, then click Extract.

The contents of the compressed file will be expanded into a folder called ‘sys_ minion_0102’. Open this folder and, depending on whether you have a 64bit or 32bit version of Windows, right-click either ‘sys_minion64.exe’ or ‘sys_ minion32.exe’. If you’re not sure, right-click ‘sys_minion32.exe’. Now click ‘Run as administrator’ and Sys Minion should launch immediately – with no installation required.

Finally, in the left-hand pane, select a tool of interest and then, above the description pane in the right-hand pane, you’ll see the ‘Let’s Start It!!!’ button (see screenshot below left). because the PDF Candy servers are offline. Return at a later time and try again.

Why did my system image take so long? Qissue

516’s ‘Don’t Get Hacked in 2018’ Cover Feature suggests running a system image backup. I followed your instructions, starting at midday. After four hours the progress was about 10 per cent. I set the PC to stay awake and it eventually completed the next morning. It was only 71GB. Did I do something wrong? I put it down to using a USB 2.0 connection. I love the magazine by the way, and often use the hints, tips and readers’ letters to improve my PCS.

Brian Platt

Athanks

Brian. USB 2.0 is slower than the modern USB 3.0/3.1 standard, but it’s not that slow. We’d expect a 71GB image to transfer in no more than a couple of hours – so something seems amiss.

Are you sure the drive is plugged into a USB 2.0 socket, and not an older USB 1.1 version? Some older PCS have a mix of both USB 1.1 and USB 2.0, just as newer computers often have both USB 2.0 and USB 3.0/3.1. So, try attaching your backup drive to different sockets.

If that doesn’t help, check the health of your drive – it could be failing. Press Windows key to open File/windows Explorer, right-click the relevant drive and choose Properties. Next, select the Tools tab, then, in the ‘Error checking’ section, click Check (see screenshot above). Follow the prompts, then wait for the report to be generated.