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Windows has lobotomised itself

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  • #1

    Windows has lobotomised itself

    I must have recently made some rash claim like 'Windows Media Centre has been running absolutely fine for me for ages' because I am being punished for it with a vengeance. Sory for the long tale of woe, but it's got me really confused.

    Wednesday night seemed normal - I installed some windows Updates, did a defrag, and installed a tool that failed to remove adverts from my recorded TV programs.

    On rebooting, however, it was obvious that we had a problem. Windows took much longer than normal to boot, made no noises, and the start menu wouldn't pop up. Running applications didn't appear on the program bar at the bottom of the screen and minimising them caused them to minimise to a title bar in the bottom left of screen.

    Internet Explorer would not do anything, Clicking on the Windows Update link didn't even try and start IE and Media Centre would just crash if you started it. Consistent error to do with missing dll calls.

    Firefox still had internet access, bittorrents would still download and divx files would play (albeit it without sound) but anything that relied on built in Windows libraries failed either quietly or with a 'Send this error to Microsoft' error report.

    'Aha!' thought I, 'I shall use windows restore to fix whatever horror Windows has inflicted on itself'. Useful error message 'Windows restore is unable to help protect your computer right now. Please reboot and try again'.

    A couple of reboots, and some fruitless Safe Mode ramblings later I decided to see if some dodgy sdervices had started that were blocking every attempt from windows to be useful. the 'advanced' page of Services manager was broken but the simple page showed me the problem. About 25% of the vital Windows services were running. The big one missing (after a little googling) was the RPC service, on which pretty much all the other ones relied. Starting it by hand got me 'Access denied' and every suggestion I can find in the MS 'help' websites has no effect.

    I've found a couple of other people with this exact problem on message boards. They all scrubbed and rebuilt. Before I do that does anyone have any suggestions of things I can try this evening? I suppose a repair install first might fix it without wiping out everything else that I have installed.

    Ta all.

    Uberlad
    -------------------------
    8 out of 10 women say they would feel no qualms about hitting a man.
    5 out of 10 referred to me by name.
    Tags: None
  • #2
    Are the files all Read-Only?

    I have seen a couple of reports in the past two weeks of a Virus/Worm/Malware whose payload sets the Windows directory to Read-only.

    If not, use Filemon (available at http://www.sysinternals.com) and figure out which files are giving you problems then check the permissions on those files.

    Regmon (also available at the above URL) may need to be used as well to check permissions within the Registry.

    Scrubbing is an absolute last resort for MCE.
    Hey, Donny! We got us a German who wants to die for his country... Oblige him. - Lt. Aldo Raine

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    • #3
      I did do a chkdsk that did mention that some file permissions had been damaged.

      I hope it's just that - that would be great. I'll try that when I get home.

      Back to sysinternals again, then.

      Uberlad
      -------------------------
      8 out of 10 women say they would feel no qualms about hitting a man.
      5 out of 10 referred to me by name.

      Comment

      • #4
        No joy. Windows directory not all read only.

        The Sysinternals process monitor suggests that all of the broken services are running happily in an svchost instance (two, in fact). Of course there's no way of telling it to restart the services without triggering a reboot.

        It looks, horribly, as if the only resort is to stick in the IDE drive that I was going to add as a storage medium, rebuild onto that and then use the current disc as media storage only. At least I don't need to worry about finding a usb floppy drive for those sata drivers on a repair build.



        Uberlad
        -------------------------
        8 out of 10 women say they would feel no qualms about hitting a man.
        5 out of 10 referred to me by name.

        Comment

        • #5
          I had a similar problem with a Windows 2003 server, turned out that the rights to the root of C: were screwed, changed them back to how they should be and it was fine again
          When you own your own business you only have to work half a day. You can do anything you want with the other twelve hours.

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          • #6
            Aha. Rights. I'll check them now.

            Can anyone tell me what they should be?

            Uberlad
            -------------------------
            8 out of 10 women say they would feel no qualms about hitting a man.
            5 out of 10 referred to me by name.

            Comment

            • #7
              On my XP64 box it's :-

              Administrators - Full Control
              Creator Owner - No rights
              Everyone - No Rights
              System - Full Control
              Users - Read & Execute, List Folder Contents and Read
              When you own your own business you only have to work half a day. You can do anything you want with the other twelve hours.

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              • #8
                Hmmm. The security tab is worryingly missing from explorer.

                I was, at least, able to check the registry. It was fine for permissions

                I think I'll have to resign myself to a reinstall.

                Uberlad
                -------------------------
                8 out of 10 women say they would feel no qualms about hitting a man.
                5 out of 10 referred to me by name.

                Comment

                • #9
                  When you manually try and start the RPC service what happens?
                  When you own your own business you only have to work half a day. You can do anything you want with the other twelve hours.

                  Comment

                  • #10
                    Error 5: Access Denied
                    -------------------------
                    8 out of 10 women say they would feel no qualms about hitting a man.
                    5 out of 10 referred to me by name.

                    Comment

                    • #11
                      Do you get a security tab when you start up in safe mode?
                      When you own your own business you only have to work half a day. You can do anything you want with the other twelve hours.

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                      • #12
                        I do get a security tab in Safe Mode (long pause whilst I reboot) and nothing had access to the windows directory. Changing it appears to have made little difference. Possibly the entire drive.......?

                        I'll try now.

                        Uberlad
                        -------------------------
                        8 out of 10 women say they would feel no qualms about hitting a man.
                        5 out of 10 referred to me by name.

                        Comment

                        • #13
                          Nope. No improvement. No doubt it's one of those things that will be easily fixable with just one small change but one that I'll never stumble upon.

                          Uberlad
                          -------------------------
                          8 out of 10 women say they would feel no qualms about hitting a man.
                          5 out of 10 referred to me by name.

                          Comment

                          • #14
                            And you went into Advanced and ticked the Replace permissions on all child objects with entries shown here that apply to child objects box?
                            When you own your own business you only have to work half a day. You can do anything you want with the other twelve hours.

                            Comment

                            • #15
                              I think so. Damn, another reboot to check....

                              uberlad
                              -------------------------
                              8 out of 10 women say they would feel no qualms about hitting a man.
                              5 out of 10 referred to me by name.

                              Comment

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