W8.1 bricking itself

I've just reinstalled from scratch on this PC with Windows 8.0 then
updated and upgraded to Windows 8.1 via the App Store.

I had to do this because the original build which followed the same route
wouldn't boot all the way and was unable to repair itself.

The fault was probably after a Windows patch but I have no way of knowing
for sure.

Now my second system, a laptop this time, is stuck in a reboot problem.
I may have to rebuild this if it can't dig itself out.

Has anyone else had problems with recent updates?

Both systems are fairly old and originally came with Vista but they
install and run fine for a while.

Cheers

Dave R

--
Windows 8.1 on PCSpecialist box

On Sun, 15 Jun 2014 17:21:18 -0400, Wolf K wrote:

On 2014-06-15 2:53 PM, David wrote:
I've just reinstalled from scratch on this PC with Windows 8.0 then
updated and upgraded to Windows 8.1 via the App Store.

I had to do this because the original build which followed the same
route wouldn't boot all the way and was unable to repair itself.

That was a warning sign, I think.

The fault was probably after a Windows patch but I have no way of
knowing for sure.

Now my second system, a laptop this time, is stuck in a reboot problem.
I may have to rebuild this if it can't dig itself out.

Has anyone else had problems with recent updates?

None whatsoever. HP Pavilion desktop, and Surface Pro 2 tablet, both
came with 8.0, both set to auto-update.

Both systems are fairly old and originally came with Vista but they
install and run fine for a while.

I suspect "fairly old" is the issue. Could be anything: BIOS, drivers,
video-chipset, etc. My bet is BIOS. Try an update. The motherboard
manufacturer should have BIOS updates available on their website. It's a
relatively painless process these days.

Good luck.

Any particular reason why the BIOS should randomly corrupt Windows 8.1?

The desktop ran Windows 8.0 for quite some time without borking itself.



--
Windows 8.1 on PCSpecialist box

David wrote:
On Sun, 15 Jun 2014 17:21:18 -0400, Wolf K wrote:

On 2014-06-15 2:53 PM, David wrote:
I've just reinstalled from scratch on this PC with Windows 8.0 then
updated and upgraded to Windows 8.1 via the App Store.

I had to do this because the original build which followed the same
route wouldn't boot all the way and was unable to repair itself.
That was a warning sign, I think.

The fault was probably after a Windows patch but I have no way of
knowing for sure.

Now my second system, a laptop this time, is stuck in a reboot problem.
I may have to rebuild this if it can't dig itself out.

Has anyone else had problems with recent updates?
None whatsoever. HP Pavilion desktop, and Surface Pro 2 tablet, both
came with 8.0, both set to auto-update.

Both systems are fairly old and originally came with Vista but they
install and run fine for a while.
I suspect "fairly old" is the issue. Could be anything: BIOS, drivers,
video-chipset, etc. My bet is BIOS. Try an update. The motherboard
manufacturer should have BIOS updates available on their website. It's a
relatively painless process these days.

Good luck.

Any particular reason why the BIOS should randomly corrupt Windows 8.1?

The desktop ran Windows 8.0 for quite some time without borking itself.

The BIOS generally reads stuff. I'm not aware of the BIOS
writing to drives. If a file system is getting borked, that
would be an unclean shutdown (such as a crash after Windows
starts running), which might need an immediate CHKDSK to fix.
You can run the recovery console from an installer DVD, if you
want to try CHKDSK from there.

Another possibility might be malware. You could use an offline
scanner disc such as Kaspersky for that. The ISO file is 375MB
or more (depending on the size of the current AV definitions).

http://support.kaspersky.com/8092

For example, a rootkit works at a low level - TDSS patches
atapi.sys in order to hijack the OS and do whatever it feels
like. Damage to file systems are a possible consequence of
such low level operations.

Paul

On 6/15/2014 6:06 PM, Paul wrote:
[...]
The BIOS generally reads stuff. I'm not aware of the BIOS
writing to drives. If a file system is getting borked, that
would be an unclean shutdown (such as a crash after Windows
starts running), which might need an immediate CHKDSK to fix.
You can run the recovery console from an installer DVD, if you
want to try CHKDSK from there.

I have two Dell Latitude ST tablets and they both came with Windows 7
SP1. They run Windows 7 without any hiccups at all. Windows 8 is quite
different. Both cameras are nonfunctional and half of the time the WiFi
driver won't load. And half of the time it hangs on shutdown. Luckily
nothing has gotten corrupted yet. Thank goodness my eight year old
Gateway M465 and Motion Computing LE1700 runs Windows 8 just fine.

--
Bill
Gateway M465e ('06 era) - Kingston 120GB SSD - Thunderbird v24.3.0
Centrino Core Duo T2300 1.66GHz - 4GB - ATI X1400 - Windows XP SP2

On 16/06/2014 01:05, BillW50 wrote:
On 6/15/2014 6:06 PM, Paul wrote:
[...]
The BIOS generally reads stuff. I'm not aware of the BIOS
writing to drives. If a file system is getting borked, that
would be an unclean shutdown (such as a crash after Windows
starts running), which might need an immediate CHKDSK to fix.
You can run the recovery console from an installer DVD, if you
want to try CHKDSK from there.

I have two Dell Latitude ST tablets and they both came with Windows 7
SP1. They run Windows 7 without any hiccups at all. Windows 8 is quite
different. Both cameras are nonfunctional and half of the time the WiFi
driver won't load. And half of the time it hangs on shutdown. Luckily
nothing has gotten corrupted yet. Thank goodness my eight year old
Gateway M465 and Motion Computing LE1700 runs Windows 8 just fine.


I have a fairly old Acer Aspire laptop, and when I installed windows 8.1
on it, and then went to install updates, it also bricked itself.

After the updates were installed, a restart was required, but it
wouldn't boot up after the first BIOS screen. I does now as I have
reinstalled windows 7 on it and it runs fine

On Mon, 16 Jun 2014 09:41:19 +0100, Bob H wrote:

On 16/06/2014 01:05, BillW50 wrote:
On 6/15/2014 6:06 PM, Paul wrote:
[...]
The BIOS generally reads stuff. I'm not aware of the BIOS writing to
drives. If a file system is getting borked, that would be an unclean
shutdown (such as a crash after Windows starts running), which might
need an immediate CHKDSK to fix. You can run the recovery console from
an installer DVD, if you want to try CHKDSK from there.

I have two Dell Latitude ST tablets and they both came with Windows 7
SP1. They run Windows 7 without any hiccups at all. Windows 8 is quite
different. Both cameras are nonfunctional and half of the time the WiFi
driver won't load. And half of the time it hangs on shutdown. Luckily
nothing has gotten corrupted yet. Thank goodness my eight year old
Gateway M465 and Motion Computing LE1700 runs Windows 8 just fine.


I have a fairly old Acer Aspire laptop, and when I installed windows 8.1
on it, and then went to install updates, it also bricked itself.

After the updates were installed, a restart was required, but it
wouldn't boot up after the first BIOS screen. I does now as I have
reinstalled windows 7 on it and it runs fine

There seems to be no particular logic behind the bricking, but it may be
tied to allowing automatic updates.

For the moment I have Windows Update on 'download then ask'.

It doesn't seem to be a specific patch (unless the damage is undone by a
subsequent patch) because I am working on the desktop after the rebuild
and all patches are up to date.

Anyway, I am going to sort out a proper backup strategy before committing
to major use of W8.1 on either system.

Problems seem to centre around permissions on the hard drive.
Couldn't find any restore points.
On the desktop it kept failing saying the drive was locked (although there
were no obvious signs when I looked at the drive from Vista).

Laptop showed two restore points but could not restore from either of them
because of a file permissions problem.

In both cases I am using a Microsoft account for Administrator instead of
a local account.
I was using a local account on W8.0.

Rebuilding the laptop now.

Cheers

Dave R



--
Windows 8.1 on PCSpecialist box

On Mon, 16 Jun 2014 08:49:35 -0400, Wolf Kirchmeir wrote:

On 2014-06-16 7:09 AM, David wrote:
On Mon, 16 Jun 2014 09:41:19 +0100, Bob H wrote:

On 16/06/2014 01:05, BillW50 wrote:
On 6/15/2014 6:06 PM, Paul wrote:
[...]
The BIOS generally reads stuff. I'm not aware of the BIOS writing
to drives. If a file system is getting borked, that would be an
unclean shutdown (such as a crash after Windows starts running),
which might need an immediate CHKDSK to fix. You can run the
recovery console from an installer DVD, if you want to try CHKDSK
from there.

I have two Dell Latitude ST tablets and they both came with Windows
7 SP1. They run Windows 7 without any hiccups at all. Windows 8 is
quite different. Both cameras are nonfunctional and half of the
time the WiFi driver won't load. And half of the time it hangs on
shutdown. Luckily nothing has gotten corrupted yet. Thank goodness
my eight year old Gateway M465 and Motion Computing LE1700 runs
Windows 8 just fine.


I have a fairly old Acer Aspire laptop, and when I installed windows
8.1 on it, and then went to install updates, it also bricked itself.

After the updates were installed, a restart was required, but it
wouldn't boot up after the first BIOS screen. I does now as I have
reinstalled windows 7 on it and it runs fine
There seems to be no particular logic behind the bricking, but it may
be tied to allowing automatic updates. [...]

I se3e a common thread: Old hardware with old BIOS. A BIOS update might
work, but I wouldn't count on it.

Try explaining why.
This is the second time you have posted the same unsupported suggestion.
Explain especially why this only affects Windows 8.1




--
Windows 8.1 on PCSpecialist box

On Mon, 16 Jun 2014 09:58:13 -0400, Wolf K wrote:

On 2014-06-16 9:06 AM, David wrote:
On Mon, 16 Jun 2014 08:49:35 -0400, Wolf Kirchmeir wrote:

On 2014-06-16 7:09 AM, David wrote:
On Mon, 16 Jun 2014 09:41:19 +0100, Bob H wrote:

On 16/06/2014 01:05, BillW50 wrote:
On 6/15/2014 6:06 PM, Paul wrote:
[...]
The BIOS generally reads stuff. I'm not aware of the BIOS
writing to drives. If a file system is getting borked, that
would be an unclean shutdown (such as a crash after Windows
starts running), which might need an immediate CHKDSK to fix.
You can run the recovery console from an installer DVD, if you
want to try CHKDSK
from there.

I have two Dell Latitude ST tablets and they both came with
Windows 7 SP1. They run Windows 7 without any hiccups at all.
Windows 8 is quite different. Both cameras are nonfunctional and
half of the time the WiFi driver won't load. And half of the time
it hangs on shutdown. Luckily nothing has gotten corrupted yet.
Thank goodness my eight year old Gateway M465 and Motion
Computing LE1700 runs Windows 8 just fine.


I have a fairly old Acer Aspire laptop, and when I installed
windows 8.1 on it, and then went to install updates, it also
bricked itself.

After the updates were installed, a restart was required, but it
wouldn't boot up after the first BIOS screen. I does now as I have
reinstalled windows 7 on it and it runs fine
There seems to be no particular logic behind the bricking, but it may
be tied to allowing automatic updates. [...]

I se3e a common thread: Old hardware with old BIOS. A BIOS update
might work, but I wouldn't count on it.

Try explaining why.
This is the second time you have posted the same unsupported
suggestion.
Explain especially why this only affects Windows 8.1

Well, I could be a twit and remind you that there are BIOS updates out
there. That tells you BIOS is not problem free.

Two main reasons Win8 may hiccup on an old machine, as I understand it:

a) UEFI, which is the Win8 default. On a non-UEFI BIOS, Win8 may hiccup.

FWIW, I've turned UEFI off on this desktop, but left it on the Surface.
IOW, Win8 can run without UEFI, but that's not the same as running on a
BIOS that lacks UEFI entirely.

b) Older BIOS is tweaked for older OS/hardware.

There is a misconception out there that BIOS is somehow never a problem.
This is not so. BIOS has changed enormously since DOS days. That's why
there are BIOS updates. When I built my own machines, I eventually
learned to look for the latest BIOS updates. These were offered by the
mobo makers, not by the BIOS maker.

HTH

Thanks for the explanation.

I've checked a number of times for BIOS updates but (as with most systems
I've seen in the past) MoBo makers don't seem to offer BIOS updates once
the boards are out of production.

The Dell is on version-1 because the most up to date version introduced a
'feature' in the power management which prevented the battery charging
under certain circumstances. I had to revert to get the battery to charge.
In fact I had to buy a new battery to get the BIOS updater to allow me to
replace the BIOS as it demanded a certain level of charge in the battery.

The thing that intrigues me is that two systems with quite different
hardware seemed to suffer a similar fault within a few days of each other.

So, it could be a patch which fights with an older BIOS.

There must be other people out there who have PCs which were high spec.
when they were bought and are quite capable of running Windows 8 now.

My reason for starting this thread was to ask if anyone else had
encountered the same problem.

Cheers

Dave R



--
Windows 8.1 on PCSpecialist box

Wolf K wrote:
On 2014-06-16 9:06 AM, David wrote:
On Mon, 16 Jun 2014 08:49:35 -0400, Wolf Kirchmeir wrote:

On 2014-06-16 7:09 AM, David wrote:
On Mon, 16 Jun 2014 09:41:19 +0100, Bob H wrote:

On 16/06/2014 01:05, BillW50 wrote:
On 6/15/2014 6:06 PM, Paul wrote:
[...]
The BIOS generally reads stuff. I'm not aware of the BIOS writing
to drives. If a file system is getting borked, that would be an
unclean shutdown (such as a crash after Windows starts running),
which might need an immediate CHKDSK to fix. You can run the
recovery console from an installer DVD, if you want to try CHKDSK
from there.

I have two Dell Latitude ST tablets and they both came with Windows
7 SP1. They run Windows 7 without any hiccups at all. Windows 8 is
quite different. Both cameras are nonfunctional and half of the
time the WiFi driver won't load. And half of the time it hangs on
shutdown. Luckily nothing has gotten corrupted yet. Thank goodness
my eight year old Gateway M465 and Motion Computing LE1700 runs
Windows 8 just fine.


I have a fairly old Acer Aspire laptop, and when I installed windows
8.1 on it, and then went to install updates, it also bricked itself.

After the updates were installed, a restart was required, but it
wouldn't boot up after the first BIOS screen. I does now as I have
reinstalled windows 7 on it and it runs fine
There seems to be no particular logic behind the bricking, but it may
be tied to allowing automatic updates. [...]

I se3e a common thread: Old hardware with old BIOS. A BIOS update might
work, but I wouldn't count on it.

Try explaining why.
This is the second time you have posted the same unsupported suggestion.
Explain especially why this only affects Windows 8.1

Well, I could be a twit and remind you that there are BIOS updates out
there. That tells you BIOS is not problem free.

Two main reasons Win8 may hiccup on an old machine, as I understand it:

a) UEFI, which is the Win8 default. On a non-UEFI BIOS, Win8 may hiccup.

FWIW, I've turned UEFI off on this desktop, but left it on the Surface.
IOW, Win8 can run without UEFI, but that's not the same as running on a
BIOS that lacks UEFI entirely.

b) Older BIOS is tweaked for older OS/hardware.

There is a misconception out there that BIOS is somehow never a problem.
This is not so. BIOS has changed enormously since DOS days. That's why
there are BIOS updates. When I built my own machines, I eventually
learned to look for the latest BIOS updates. These were offered by the
mobo makers, not by the BIOS maker.

HTH


There are specific areas of the BIOS that are of interest.
The BIOS is not generally a "bug-fest", because lots of
stuff would get caught in lab tests. And when Windows 8 is
written, it's installed on room-fuls of crufty computers,
just to be sure a representative sample of buggy machines
are tried.

http://linux.koolsolutions.com/2010/...issues-part-2/

Installing Linux would be a good test of "brittleness" in
a BIOS. And the kinds of things the Linux people complain
about, no, the computer company doesn't typically bend
over backwards to fix those. Only a "Windows" issue would
trigger comprehensive support. If a Linux guy is ticked
off, it's not such a big deal for them.

These computers are tested on Windows, whereas for Linux,
chances are good the manufacture never bothered to try.

Paul

In ,
Paul typed:
There are specific areas of the BIOS that are of interest.
The BIOS is not generally a "bug-fest", because lots of
stuff would get caught in lab tests. And when Windows 8 is
written, it's installed on room-fuls of crufty computers,
just to be sure a representative sample of buggy machines
are tried.

http://linux.koolsolutions.com/2010/...issues-part-2/

Installing Linux would be a good test of "brittleness" in
a BIOS. And the kinds of things the Linux people complain
about, no, the computer company doesn't typically bend
over backwards to fix those. Only a "Windows" issue would
trigger comprehensive support. If a Linux guy is ticked
off, it's not such a big deal for them.

These computers are tested on Windows, whereas for Linux,
chances are good the manufacture never bothered to try.

Ah... but there has been attempts to sell just Linux machines. Even Asus
got in the act with the first Linux (running Xandros) netbook. And just
like others who also tried to sell Linux machines, these didn't sell
very well. And the few that did sell, most of them the users removed
Linux and installed their own Windows. Then when Asus started to sell
them with Windows, they started selling like hotcakes. And other
manufactures jumped on the bandwagon to sell their own Windows netbooks.

So the truth is there just isn't a big enough demand for Linux machines
to keep anybody in business. It has nothing to do with Microsoft, it
just is Linux just isn't all that useful. I use Linux as a glorified PDA
OS, because that is about all it is good for to me.

--
Bill
Motion Computing LE1700 Tablet ('09 era) - OE-QuoteFix v1.19.2
Centrino Core2 Duo L7400 1.5GHz - 2GB RAM
Windows XP Tablet PC Edition 2005 SP2

On 6/17/2014 11:32 AM, Wolf K wrote:
On 2014-06-17 10:08 AM, BillW50 wrote:
[...]
So the truth is there just isn't a big enough demand for Linux machines
to keep anybody in business. It has nothing to do with Microsoft, it
just is Linux just isn't all that useful. [...]

Better: Linux doesn't offer anything to the PC user that Windows and
OS-X don't also offer.

Well some Linux distros are free (I like the commercial distros more
myself, the free ones are pretty junky IMHO), but that doesn't seem to
make much of a difference. Although since there are 300+ different Linux
distros out there, that is totally useless. You are never going far with
300+ distros competing against one another. There must be just one
distro before Linux gets any serious third party support and ever goes
anywhere.

--
Bill
Gateway M465e ('06 era) - Kingston 120GB SSD - Thunderbird v24.4.0
Centrino Core2 Duo T7400 2.16 GHz - 4GB - Windows 8.1 Pro w/Media Center

On Tue, 17 Jun 2014 12:32:05 -0400, Wolf K
wrote:

So the truth is there just isn't a big enough demand for Linux machines
to keep anybody in business. It has nothing to do with Microsoft, it
just is Linux just isn't all that useful. [...]

Better: Linux doesn't offer anything to the PC user that Windows and
OS-X don't also offer.

Except an installation time measured in minutes rather than hours, and
a price tag of £0.00.

Rod.

On 6/17/2014 12:15 PM, Roderick Stewart wrote:
On Tue, 17 Jun 2014 12:32:05 -0400, Wolf K
wrote:

So the truth is there just isn't a big enough demand for Linux machines
to keep anybody in business. It has nothing to do with Microsoft, it
just is Linux just isn't all that useful. [...]

Better: Linux doesn't offer anything to the PC user that Windows and
OS-X don't also offer.

Except an installation time measured in minutes rather than hours, and
a price tag of £0.00.

Sounds wonderful and all, but what can it do? Sure browse a little,
check email, do newsgroups, runs a few games, play a handful of
multimedia files, and... what? An Android or a good PDA can do that too.
So what is the big deal? Virtually everything can do what Linux can do
and much more. Linux is your bare bones OS and not much good for
anything else. Anybody who tries to sell just Linux machines can't even
stay in business because almost nobody wants it. At least you could stay
in business selling iPods or Androids or something. But not Linux machines.

--
Bill
Gateway M465e ('06 era) - Kingston 120GB SSD - Thunderbird v24.4.0
Centrino Core2 Duo T7400 2.16 GHz - 4GB - Windows 8.1 Pro w/Media Center

On Tue, 17 Jun 2014 12:28:47 -0500, BillW50 wrote:

So the truth is there just isn't a big enough demand for Linux machines
to keep anybody in business. It has nothing to do with Microsoft, it
just is Linux just isn't all that useful. [...]

Better: Linux doesn't offer anything to the PC user that Windows and
OS-X don't also offer.

Except an installation time measured in minutes rather than hours, and
a price tag of £0.00.

Sounds wonderful and all, but what can it do? Sure browse a little,
check email, do newsgroups, runs a few games, play a handful of
multimedia files, and... what? An Android or a good PDA can do that too.
So what is the big deal? Virtually everything can do what Linux can do
and much more. Linux is your bare bones OS and not much good for
anything else. Anybody who tries to sell just Linux machines can't even
stay in business because almost nobody wants it. At least you could stay
in business selling iPods or Androids or something. But not Linux machines.

The reason you can't run a business selling them isn't necessarily
anything to do with what the system is capable of. It's actually
capable of all the things the others can do, not always by running the
same software packages, but it can perform all the same tasks, such as
writing and printing documents, browsing web pages, playing audio and
video files, etc, etc, all the things you can do with Windows or Mac.

I've only once seen a Linux machine in a computer shop, and the next
time I went there a week later it had gone, so ordinary punters aren't
going to think about buying one if they don't know it exists. I
suspect this is the real reason. I also suspect that if you put
machines running, say, Mint, next to others running Windows 8 and the
sales people learnt about it and sold it enthusiastically, Mint would
probably get quite a lot of interest. It looks like Windows XP and is
very easy to get the hang of without any instruction. I've seen people
walk away from Windows 8 machines in a shop and straight over to the
Mac section, so ergonomics could be a very strong selling point.

Rod.