Solved w8.1 unstable

W8.1 was working OK but today none of the desktop items will open & when I click on one a dozen highlight. Same with IE in taskbar.

When I open them from the win. explorer all work.

Any solutions?

nichos said:

W8.1 was working OK but today none of the desktop items will open & when I click on one a dozen highlight. Same with IE in taskbar.

When I open them from the win. explorer all work.

Any solutions?

Click to expand...

I have had this happen with my desktop before although it has not occurred in a long time. Try this first. Action Center, select Maintenance, manually trigger maintenance and let it run till completion. When it is complete the message will revert back to Start Maintenance. This corrected the problem for me a couple of times and certainly won't hurt anything. Next, from Adm Command Prompt run Sfc /scannow the system file checker will look for corruptions in the OS and attempt to fix. This could take a long time so let it run till completion.

Thank you,

I tried Maintenance at 19:00 & state working till 00:00 7had to shut down to go to bed. This morning the problems are still here.

I am now trying"Sfc /scannow", the red light is flashing perhaps showing is at work.

Sfc /scannow could take a while, when it finishes is will probably say one of three things. 1. No integrity problems, 2. Found some issues and fixed them, 3. Found some problems and fixed some but could not fix all. If 2 or 3 run Dism /Online /Cleanup-Image /RestoreHealth same way. This might be able to fix some problems if present. This one will take a long time as well. If the Maintenance tool took that long these will likely take longer.

There was no responce at all when I woke up this morning.

I'll try maintainance again as the fault is still there.

IE also will not respond to "Tools > options > use default & I have to signe in for my email each time.

nichos said:

There was no responce at all when I woke up this morning.

I'll try maintainance again as the fault is still there.

IE also will not respond to "Tools > options > use default & I have to signe in for my email each time.

Click to expand...

What do you mean by "no response at all? Did SFC finish, what was on the screen, was PC locked up?

Sorry I did not explain fully.

After 5 hrs running the first time with Maintenance still in progress I had to shut down thw PC passed midnight.

I started maintenance again this morning 05:00hrs and is still running now at 16:00 & Maintenance is still in progress.

"Check for solutions" says when maintainance finishes solutions will appear in Action Center. There is nothing there as it is still in progress.

I intend to leave it through the night & tomorrow all day this time.

Is this what you meant it takes time? was it same with you?


Home build, Asus P5K Premium WiFiiFi Intel,
Intel Core 2 Quad Pro Q6600 95W, 2.4GHz, 2x2GB, DDR2 800 (400mhz) PC2-6400,
EVGA GeForce 9800 GTX, Seagate 500gb & 1tbite HDs, Corsair 600 Psu, Win8.1/w10

nichos said:

I intend to leave it through the night & tomorrow all day this time.

Is this what you meant it takes time? was it same with you?

Click to expand...

Yes! You need to let the operations run till completion.

OK, 24hrs now & will be left till hopefully completes.

Can the PC be used in the meanwhile?

I am now using my old Acer Notebook.

nichos said:

Can the PC be used in the meanwhile?

Click to expand...

I would not as you will only slow it down even more.

If it cannot finish in 12-24 hours you may have more significant issues with the OS.

Thank you for your paitence,

Lost count now, I think mainntenence is now running for 35hrs. I will leave it running on.

Using the Notebook , it seems so simple those days with XP!

I will post when it stops running maintenance.

The 3rd day now saying maint. in progress & the HD activity red light never flicked once.

2-3 months ago I made Macrium & MS History Images on USB sticks of that w8.1 HD, the Reflect Recovery one tested OK on my spare HD but, I could not make the recovery of the MS one work.

What does an "Image" hold in it or when it is recovered on an win8.1 HD what does it change in it, the Windows part in C:\ only & leaves the logical partitions untouched or are they deleted?

Do you happen to know how to make the MS Recovery to work, or is M.Reflect better? .....thanx

An image is another word for backup.
The image restores the files from when you've created it.
With a full backup you'll loose every data that has been created after the backup.
A differential backup saves the data that has been changed since the last full backup.
An incremental does pretty much the same.

A disadvantage of incremental for example: following a full backup on Friday, a Monday backup will contain only those files that changed since Friday. A Tuesday backup contains only those files that changed since Monday, and so on. A full restoration of data will naturally be slower, since all increments must be restored. Should any one of the copies created fail, including the first (full), restoration will be incomplete

An advantage of the differential backup: only the full backup and the last differential backup are necessary to restore all the data.

Thanx, will.

I understand those but, This Recovry does it only recover windows in C:\ ?

The recovery counts for every partition where you've made a backup for.

For example:
I have the partitions C, D, E, F.
I make weekly a full backup for C and D.
C is my windows partition and a day before I planned to do my backup I find out I accidentally deleted some files from the D partition.
So I use the backup I've made from last week and recover D, but because C is with this backup also C will be recovered to that time.
This would be a hugh disadvantage, but with macrium I have the option to only recover C or D or whatever partition is in the backup.

How about the USB stick created with "Media Creation Tool. What will that affect, only win. in C:"?, as the stick can only hold 8gb.

It will only affect the partition that you have chosen.

OK,

I Can't imaging choosing other than C:\ when I created the USB Rescue media weeks ago, so after another 2-3 days of Maintenance I will have to try that way to shake off the problems with 8.1 HD. It is my main HD but, can't be helped. With the spare HD I lost the IE favoures that I use a lot & a few other things like the desktop items e.t.c but can be saved before if I remember to do so. ......thanx ......nick

Since Fri.14th till now during maintenance there was no HD activity. Now I cannot find Command prompt to try sfc/scannow.

I think the only option is the USB rescue media I have.