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Did anyone else's PC get creamed last night?

posted 3 years ago by BullSchmidt (3189)
16 replies | jump to latest

I guess Windows did an update last night, but it sure didn't help me out. This morning when I logged in -- nothing. No desktop icons, no start menu, just a black screen. Left or right clicking the mouse brought up nothing.

I rebooted into Linux, went web surfing, and found a few possible fixes. Now I'm back in Windows and have managed to get the start menu and icons back -- Ctrl-Alt-Del, brought up the task manager, selected "File," "Run new task" and entered "explorer." But now several of my programs don't work, for example, Firefox and Google Earth. And I'm getting the error message "The application has failed to start because its side-by-side configuration is incorrect."

A couple of web sites recommended running "sfc /scannow" -- I did that and it showed no errors.

Weird. The OS is Windows 7 Ultimate 64 bit. Anyone ever seen this problem? It's starting to look like I might have to just back up the C: drive, then blow it away and start over.

[–] jonathan_k80 (6436) 3 years ago

I didn't have problems. However, I'm bracing myself for the release of Windows 11 later this year. Every previous Windows update has given me problems.

[–] BullSchmidt (3189) 3 years ago

> I'm bracing myself for the release of Windows 11 later this year. Every previous Windows update has given me problems.

I'm still using 7. I go by the rule, "if it ain't broke, don't fix it."

[–] jonathan_k80 (6436) 3 years ago

If there's any way I can get by with the current program, I will keep everything as it is.

[–] DoctorThirteen (13920) 3 years ago

I'm still using 7. I go by the rule, "if it ain't broke, don't fix it."

Ditto!

[–] MovieManCin2 (26342) 3 years ago

Nope, just you. Maybe you need a new computer, or a new operating system.

https://media4.giphy.com/media/7OVCFhDCbJLHGwKaZ5/200w.webp?cid=ecf05e47ogxw1eawqh8km0wxojd8ncxrjjj7vkwvk62xhr18&rid=200w.webp&ct=g

😎

[–] BullSchmidt (3189) 3 years ago

The hardware is all find, as far as I can tell. The C: drive is SSD and it's six years old, so I suppose it's possible that's going bad. I suppose it wouldn't hurt to replace it, just in case.

[–] MovieManCin2 (26342) 3 years ago

There ya go! New computer! Yaaaaay!

https://media2.giphy.com/media/sg7Ss8CRyIMXYNBW05/200w.webp?cid=ecf05e47ecr4qpr5uj4dnk7j3ujs2dh7qthbe3glgsdvhhd0&rid=200w.webp&ct=g

😎

[–] BullSchmidt (3189) 3 years ago

> There ya go! New computer! Yaaaaay!

Not a new computer, but new hard drives. The last time I rebooted into Windows, it went into full-blown CHKDSK, repairing bad sectors. I'm not taking any chances. I ordered a new, 1 TB SSD to be the new C: drive; it should be here in the next day or two.

I also ordered a 6 TB HD for data. I guess COVID is messing with supply chains and such; it won't be shipped until next month. But I can do fine without that.

It's been a long time since I bought a PC off the shelf. I built a few for myself and for friends, keeping it as cheap as possible. The problem with doing it that way is that you end up with something that's going to be obsolete soon and has no room for improvement. I did this one six years ago and designed it to be a powerhouse with the capacity to be upgraded in several ways. MSI X99S SLI Plus motherboard; Intel i7-5820K CPU; Nvidia GeForce GTX 960 GPU; 500 GB SSD + 2 TB HD; 32 GB RAM. It cost me about $3000 at the time but is still going great. The new hard drives were about $350. Hopefully with that, I can get another six years out of it, or even more.

[–] MovieManCin2 (26342) 3 years ago

Okay then.

😎

[–] Solastine (1104) 3 years ago

It wouldn't surprise me in the slightest if Microsoft released a "destroy Windows 7" update (I don't trust microsoft, and have stopped accepting updates from them). Needing to use "explorer ." is rather concerning, since that should only happen if explorer.exe crashed and failed to restart. I assume you haven't used unofficial patches/tweaks for things (which is what I did before that created my problems.)

Honestly, I still say that people should get in the habit of moving %userprofile% and %ProgramData% to a different partition so you can create a base copy backup of the windows partition (16GB is more than enough for the OS) which allows you to near instantly revert any such issues without losing anything important. Also find it nice when I do pacman -syyu only to discover that something broke and rather than be bothered enough to hunt down what I need to downgrade just go "yep, all fixed"

[–] BullSchmidt (3189) 3 years ago

> Honestly, I still say that people should get in the habit of moving %userprofile% and %ProgramData% to a different partition

Yeah, that's a good idea. I already try to keep as much off the C: drive as I possibly can.

[–] McQualude (4231) 3 years ago

It's all that porn you downloaded, full of viruses.

[–] diezman (2097) 3 years ago

I had Windows 10 and had nothing but problems with updates.

BTW I am not a computer expert by any means! The last update I had about 6 months ago basically killed my PC.

I have a MacBook pro now. My son had it for a year and he gave it to me. No problems so far.

[–] BullSchmidt (3189) 3 years ago

> I have a MacBook pro now

I've got one of those too. I'm still learning the Apple way of doing things. I do like that MacOS is a form of Unix, but they've made it harder to do certain Unix things, e.g., ftp, than it was in a prior version. I also tried installing the software compiler but for some reason that didn't work.

[–] AnubisRaydeen (7897) 3 years ago

Planned obsolescence. They want you to buy new things.

I actually had a work computer that had few tasks to perform in the gears of the office that was running XP all the way up to just a few months ago. It was too old to update beyond that. I managed to keep it chugging along but it gave up the ghost finally. Forced expensive chain reaction of soft/hardware updates to do what was being done perfectly well before.

[–] BullSchmidt (3189) 3 years ago

I'm thinking now that it wasn't any kind of Windows update, but rather that the C: drive is going bad. It's a six year old SSD, and every time I boot into Windows I get some disk-related issue -- it tells me I need to run startup repair, or automatically runs CHKDSK, etc. I don't seem to be having any problems with the Linux boot partition, but the Windows C: drive gets much more of a workout than the Linux boot does, so it would make sense that the Windows sectors would start failing first.

I've got a new SSD ordered and it should be here in a couple of days. Until then, it's pretty frustrating -- there are some things I can do in Windows that I can't do in Linux and vice versa, so I have to frequently switch between the two.

> I actually had a work computer that had few tasks to perform in the gears of the office that was running XP all the way up to just a few months ago.

Wow! I used to have a home recording studio, and used XP for that far past its "sell by" date. Getting Windows to work with real time processing was (and probably still is) a pain, and the standard procedure was to install XP, tweak a long list of settings, then keep the PC off the Internet and never use it for anything else. I haven't done anything with that in a few years, though. That PC is still sitting on the floor of my den, in the unlikely event I ever get back into that again.