My mother, who lives in another city and who I support via TeamViewer, had at least one app, and maybe more, disappear mysteriously. Unfortunately, she is far from computer savvy so it's definitely possible that she has somehow done this to herself unintentionally. Then again, she is so UN-savvy that I doubt she could have done it to herself by accident, which makes me think there might be something else going on.
Let me explain. She had a game she liked called Hidden Words 365 which we had installed from the selection of free games at the Windows Store. She liked it enough to pay the money to unlock everything beyond the first few levels and enjoyed the game for a couple of weeks. Then she Skyped me to say the game was gone. I fired up TeamViewer and sure enough it was gone; not just missing from the Start menu but not even in the list of apps when you click the down arrow at the bottom of the Start menu. (She's running Windows 8.1.) I went to the Windows Store, found it and tried to install it again but didn't have an option to install, suggesting it was already installed. I poked around and eventually tried looking under My Apps in the Windows Store and it showed the game there but in a funny status. I don't remember what that status was but I right-clicked and found an option to install and did that; after that, the game was back and playable again. However, her scores on the various levels were completely gone as if she'd never played it before. Well, she didn't care about that and started playing again; all the levels were unlocked so it had clearly remembered that she paid for license to unlock the remaining level; it just hadn't remembered her scores for the levels she played.
After another few days, she called to say the game was gone again. She's been having some intermittent wireless connectivity issues since then so I haven't been able to troubleshoot this further. However, when I talked to her today, she told me TeamViewer had also gone missing. Reinstalling THAT was a real pain since she has almost no computer skills at all.
Is there any way she could be uninstalling these apps on herself WITHOUT right-clicking on the start menu icon and clicking on Uninstall? I just can't picture her doing that consciously. Is there another technique that she could have used to uninstall it, perhaps one that she could do inadvertently without realizing what she is doing?
Failing that, is there any OTHER explanation for why the apps would disappear?
Let me explain. She had a game she liked called Hidden Words 365 which we had installed from the selection of free games at the Windows Store. She liked it enough to pay the money to unlock everything beyond the first few levels and enjoyed the game for a couple of weeks. Then she Skyped me to say the game was gone. I fired up TeamViewer and sure enough it was gone; not just missing from the Start menu but not even in the list of apps when you click the down arrow at the bottom of the Start menu. (She's running Windows 8.1.) I went to the Windows Store, found it and tried to install it again but didn't have an option to install, suggesting it was already installed. I poked around and eventually tried looking under My Apps in the Windows Store and it showed the game there but in a funny status. I don't remember what that status was but I right-clicked and found an option to install and did that; after that, the game was back and playable again. However, her scores on the various levels were completely gone as if she'd never played it before. Well, she didn't care about that and started playing again; all the levels were unlocked so it had clearly remembered that she paid for license to unlock the remaining level; it just hadn't remembered her scores for the levels she played.
After another few days, she called to say the game was gone again. She's been having some intermittent wireless connectivity issues since then so I haven't been able to troubleshoot this further. However, when I talked to her today, she told me TeamViewer had also gone missing. Reinstalling THAT was a real pain since she has almost no computer skills at all.
Is there any way she could be uninstalling these apps on herself WITHOUT right-clicking on the start menu icon and clicking on Uninstall? I just can't picture her doing that consciously. Is there another technique that she could have used to uninstall it, perhaps one that she could do inadvertently without realizing what she is doing?
Failing that, is there any OTHER explanation for why the apps would disappear?
My Computer
System One
-
- OS
- Windows 8.1
- Computer type
- Laptop
- System Manufacturer/Model
- ASUS K55N
- CPU
- AMD A8-4500 APU with Radeon HD Graphics 1.90 GHz
- Motherboard
- not sure
- Memory
- 8.00 GB installed, 7.46 GB usuable
- Graphics Card(s)
- Radeon
- Sound Card
- not sure
- Monitor(s) Displays
- Built-in laptop screen
- Screen Resolution
- 1366x768
- Hard Drives
- one 750 GB
- PSU
- Not sure
- Case
- Not sure
- Cooling
- Not sure
- Keyboard
- Built in to laptop
- Mouse
- None; I use the touchpad
- Internet Speed
- 6 Mbps down, 0.25 Mbps up
- Browser
- current versions of Firefox, Chrome and IE
- Antivirus
- Avast Free
- Other Info
- I *think* many of the questions to which I've answered "not sure" are irrelevant because it is a laptop but if you need to know specifically what model of cooling fans or keyboard or whatever where built in to the laptop, I can try to find that out if you tell me where to look. I don't see this information in the Windows/System display but maybe it is elsewhere. I'm not sure what a "PSU" is: Powe