Just so I can throw that BLEEPING computer out an air-lock!
This story starts a while ago.
Windows update locked up during the "do not shut down your computer" portion of the update and did a spontaneous restart which has caused that update and all subsequent ones to also fail.
Today the anti-virus wanted updated and when I did the restart, my login told me that my user profile was missing.
I tried several means of gaining access to the computer and somehow ended up in "Startup Repair" which included a restore to last known good config. I got there by trying to remember which function key actually prompted Safe-Mode and in the several reboots the machine just went to the repair function.
MUTTER MUTTER MUTTER
The repair seems to have worked and an uninstall/reinstall of the anti-virus went without a hitch.
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Yep, Windows does that if the machine repeatedly fails to boot completely - as in, if the user aborts the boot multiple times in a row to try another key to get into safe mode.
ReplyDeleteNot sure of your experience level with Windows, so don't be offended if the following is something you are already aware of - it is offered in the best of intentions.
A missing user profile COULD be a consequence of a failed update, but I would treat it as a presage of an impending disk failure. At least do a "chkdsk /f" (which will require a reboot to check the system disk), and a "sfc /scannow" (needs to run as admin, and can take AGES).
Oh, and make sure you have backups. My guess is you will need them soon.
It's not giving other symptoms of hard drive failure (yet). Thankfully.
DeleteI interrupted the boot with the power button, I didn't know that would trigger the startup repair, but that's exactly what I needed to recover my profile.
The anti-virus I'm running, AVG, is apparently known for doing this from time to time too. Hurray.
There's nothing on the machine that's not on another. I learned that lesson the hard way.
I had Skype (preloaded on my comp) recently do roughly the same thing. System was locking up, rebooting failed over and over to resolve, did the whole Control-Alt-Delete and selected Task Manager to see what was bolloxing my system. Skype (5 different aspects) was taking up 80% of available resources.
ReplyDeleteI don't use Skype, so I uninstalled it. Poof! System is back to being rock-stable, well, as rock-stable as any Windows system can be.
Also found Windows Defender to be hogging like 60% of my disk space, on a very large storage disk. Haven't touched that yet, but am considering blowing that away also.
Hey Angus;
ReplyDeleteI have had meh with windows, it still irritated me that they pulled the support on XP, my XP was rock solid, the entire time I used it, it never crashed or gave me any trouble. The newer versions did give me trouble...