Solved No Win Update and User Accounts panels, among other things

pj0

New Member
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3
Hi!

I'm having some problems with my Windows, it happened second time now. I can't tell why, but in one moment I lose access to Windows Update and User Accounts panels in Change PC Settings, all administrator accounts seem to work with reduced rights, localization gets mixed with English program names or with no localization at all (see screenshot http://i.imgur.com/YE0qba5.png) and other weird problems happen, like inability to install fonts or uninstall some programs. All of this seems to be caused by one thing, but I'm unable to point what causes it. Anyone else encountered a similiar situation? Only thing that helped me last time was a System Refresh, and I don't want to reinstall everything from scratch.
 

My Computer

System One

  • OS
    Windows 8
    Computer type
    PC/Desktop
    CPU
    i7-3770
    Motherboard
    MSI Z77 MPower
    Memory
    8GB DDR3
    Graphics Card(s)
    Gigabyte Radeon HD 7950
    Browser
    Firefox
    Antivirus
    NOD32
You are probably in a Temporary Profile, is your Start Screen also missing all of your downloaded Windows 8 Tile apps?

If you are not in a Temporary Profile, you can do an In-Place Install, there is a tutorial in the tutorials section. Cant get the link cos I have to leave. But open your computer to "c:\Users\" and see if there is a "User" folder named "Temp", if there is, then you are indeed loaded into a Temporary Profile.
 

My Computer

System One

  • OS
    Windows 8 Pro with Media Center/Windows 7
    Computer type
    PC/Desktop
    System Manufacturer/Model
    Asus M2N-MX SE Plus § DualCore AMD Athlon 64 X2, 2300 MHz (11.5 x 200) 4400+ § Corsair Value Select
    CPU
    AMD 4400+/4200+
    Motherboard
    Asus M2N-MX SE Plus/Asus A8M2N-LA (NodusM)
    Memory
    2 GB/3GB
    Graphics Card(s)
    GeForce 8400 GS/GeForce 210
    Sound Card
    nVIDIA GT218 - High Definition Audio Controller
    Monitor(s) Displays
    Hitachi 40" LCD HDTV
    Screen Resolution
    "1842 x 1036"
    Hard Drives
    WDC WD50 00AAKS-007AA SCSI Disk Device
    ST1000DL 002-9TT153 SCSI Disk Device
    WDC WD3200AAJB-00J3A0 ATA Device
    WDC WD32 WD-WCAPZ2942630 USB Device
    WD My Book 1140 USB Device
    PSU
    Works 550w
    Case
    MSI "M-Box"
    Cooling
    Water Cooled
    Keyboard
    Dell Keyboard
    Mouse
    Microsoft Intellimouse
    Internet Speed
    Cable Medium Speed
    Browser
    Chrome/IE 10
    Antivirus
    Eset NOD32 6.x/Win Defend
    Other Info
    Recently lost my Windows 8 on my main PC, had to go back to Windows 7.
I simply deleted all Metro apps to reclaim disk space, since they don't have any use for me on a desktop, so I don't think this is the case. I checked the Users folder just in case and there is no Temp folder.

I'll try an antivirus scan on all disk, maybe I catched something ugly. But that could be weird, since it happened once already, as I said.

EDIT: I can't even do a repair install, after Installer copies its files to disk and restarts the computer, it seems to boot up to installer OS, then something happens and computer restarts itself. After that, OS selection screen shows up and I have two installations of Windows 8 to boot, and a "Windows Installer" option (if I translated it correctly), when I boot it, installer shows up with an error that it couldn't install Windows 8, reboots, and I'm left with an unbootable machine since BCD registry is missing. I can restore it to previous state after creating a new BCD store, but Installer doesn't want to do anything with my system at all.
 
Last edited:

My Computer

System One

  • OS
    Windows 8
    Computer type
    PC/Desktop
    CPU
    i7-3770
    Motherboard
    MSI Z77 MPower
    Memory
    8GB DDR3
    Graphics Card(s)
    Gigabyte Radeon HD 7950
    Browser
    Firefox
    Antivirus
    NOD32
One of them is your recovery partition. that's what it is booting to. When this happens, I usually delete the recovery partition.

Sometimes there is a second "Winload.exe" in the system partition that is calling up the recovery partition, you can download Hiren's Boot CD, burn it and boot to it - Choose Mini XP, and use it to search for Winload.exe, what you want is the oldest version of that file. stick it into the default folder, it'll be the folder that contains a later version of the file.
 

My Computer

System One

  • OS
    Windows 8 Pro with Media Center/Windows 7
    Computer type
    PC/Desktop
    System Manufacturer/Model
    Asus M2N-MX SE Plus § DualCore AMD Athlon 64 X2, 2300 MHz (11.5 x 200) 4400+ § Corsair Value Select
    CPU
    AMD 4400+/4200+
    Motherboard
    Asus M2N-MX SE Plus/Asus A8M2N-LA (NodusM)
    Memory
    2 GB/3GB
    Graphics Card(s)
    GeForce 8400 GS/GeForce 210
    Sound Card
    nVIDIA GT218 - High Definition Audio Controller
    Monitor(s) Displays
    Hitachi 40" LCD HDTV
    Screen Resolution
    "1842 x 1036"
    Hard Drives
    WDC WD50 00AAKS-007AA SCSI Disk Device
    ST1000DL 002-9TT153 SCSI Disk Device
    WDC WD3200AAJB-00J3A0 ATA Device
    WDC WD32 WD-WCAPZ2942630 USB Device
    WD My Book 1140 USB Device
    PSU
    Works 550w
    Case
    MSI "M-Box"
    Cooling
    Water Cooled
    Keyboard
    Dell Keyboard
    Mouse
    Microsoft Intellimouse
    Internet Speed
    Cable Medium Speed
    Browser
    Chrome/IE 10
    Antivirus
    Eset NOD32 6.x/Win Defend
    Other Info
    Recently lost my Windows 8 on my main PC, had to go back to Windows 7.
Turns out that installer failures were caused by my quite "funky" partitioning schemes on all disks. I have a dedicated SSD for operating system and two other hard drives for general data storage, with large number of various partitions (ESP, other OSes, plenty of NTFS volumes). After disconnecting all drives except the system one, In-Place install successfully repaired my Windows installation, but unfortunately I still didn't tracked down the culprit of problems mentioned earlier.

Despite not finding a more elegant solution, I'll mark this thread as solved.
 

My Computer

System One

  • OS
    Windows 8
    Computer type
    PC/Desktop
    CPU
    i7-3770
    Motherboard
    MSI Z77 MPower
    Memory
    8GB DDR3
    Graphics Card(s)
    Gigabyte Radeon HD 7950
    Browser
    Firefox
    Antivirus
    NOD32
Great, sometimes that's what ya gotta do. If you reconnect the drive, it should run OK now. I should have asked if you had any extra drives attached. Sometimes, windows does this stuff and a reason can't be found, the OS just got corrupted. I would check the disk anyway just to make sure.
 

My Computer

System One

  • OS
    Windows 8 Pro with Media Center/Windows 7
    Computer type
    PC/Desktop
    System Manufacturer/Model
    Asus M2N-MX SE Plus § DualCore AMD Athlon 64 X2, 2300 MHz (11.5 x 200) 4400+ § Corsair Value Select
    CPU
    AMD 4400+/4200+
    Motherboard
    Asus M2N-MX SE Plus/Asus A8M2N-LA (NodusM)
    Memory
    2 GB/3GB
    Graphics Card(s)
    GeForce 8400 GS/GeForce 210
    Sound Card
    nVIDIA GT218 - High Definition Audio Controller
    Monitor(s) Displays
    Hitachi 40" LCD HDTV
    Screen Resolution
    "1842 x 1036"
    Hard Drives
    WDC WD50 00AAKS-007AA SCSI Disk Device
    ST1000DL 002-9TT153 SCSI Disk Device
    WDC WD3200AAJB-00J3A0 ATA Device
    WDC WD32 WD-WCAPZ2942630 USB Device
    WD My Book 1140 USB Device
    PSU
    Works 550w
    Case
    MSI "M-Box"
    Cooling
    Water Cooled
    Keyboard
    Dell Keyboard
    Mouse
    Microsoft Intellimouse
    Internet Speed
    Cable Medium Speed
    Browser
    Chrome/IE 10
    Antivirus
    Eset NOD32 6.x/Win Defend
    Other Info
    Recently lost my Windows 8 on my main PC, had to go back to Windows 7.
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