Windows 8.1 failure to launch

Charlie McDonald · Post by **Charlie McDonald** » 21 Jun 2016 6:42 am

The usual procedure is logging on at the lock screen; this morning, the little wheel kept on turning, and finally the
old desktop theme came back (after a couple of restarts and a message about the client not being able to ... something).
Gone was the more personalized lock screen, items on the taskbar, and seemingly documents and music. Documents found in the recycling bucket, but no photo library. The start screen lacks all my individual icons. Very strange.

To further promote the back in time theory, the version of Chrome I use now has an old classic look (which should have nothing to do with whatever happened in the PC).

A little while later I'm on the web wondering what happened.
Does anyone have a clue why the 'puter would want to reset itself?
Or similar experience?

Mitch Drumm · Post by **Mitch Drumm** » 21 Jun 2016 7:06 am

Charlie:

I don't know what may have happened, but:

Have you done a thorough malware and anti-virus scan?

If you'd like to go back to the way it was, do you have any recent System Restore points?

Charlie McDonald · Post by **Charlie McDonald** » 21 Jun 2016 7:21 am

Yes, I'd done scans recently. Malwarebytes didn't show back up on the taskbar. Anti-exploit is still active.
No system restore on this version. Something deep going on here.

Thanks; still looking around.
I hope that this isn't because I didn't want Windows 10.
Just kidding. Seems related to Chrome, but I don't see anything causal yet.

Dave Potter · Post by **Dave Potter** » 21 Jun 2016 7:37 am

I've never used Win8, but it sounds like an incomplete boot and something's corrupt - Windows started, but your user profile didn't load, since your desktop is wonky.

One thing you might consider is to create a new user, log off and reboot into that account, then try logging off and back on as your usual self - see if your profile loads then.

Can you boot into Safe Mode? Do you have images backed up you can use if nothing else works?

Mitch Drumm · Post by **Mitch Drumm** » 21 Jun 2016 7:57 am

Charlie McDonald wrote:Malwarebytes didn't show back up on the taskbar. Anti-exploit is still active.
No system restore on this version. Something deep going on here.

Thanks; still looking around.
I hope that this isn't because I didn't want Windows 10.
Just kidding. Seems related to Chrome, but I don't see anything causal yet.

Do you mean you cannot run Malwarebytes right now?

As far as I know, Windows 8.1 does have a System Restore function. Do you mean that you deliberately turned it off?

Here's a good free scanner you could run:

https://www.emsisoft.com/en/software/eek/

You should also run sfc /scannow from a command prompt.