Laptop SW problems

[mubs]

Sorry for the long post.

Daughters Lenovo IdeaPad, 2 years old, running W8.1, has been chugging along merrily. A couple of days ago it froze on her; I don't know what she did, but she got it running again and used it that evening and the next day. She did complain that she couldn't print anymore. I took a look at it yesterday. First checked the C partition from within Windows, everything was fine. Checked the Event log, there were a couple of kernel events and many application related events, but no events in the last 24 hours. I guess the kernel events caused the hang. I didn't have time to do anything more yesterday.

Today, all hell broke loose. Yesterday I had seen that 145 Important updates (1.3 GB) were pending; there obviously was a problem. Today I asked it to download and install them. They were all .NET related or Windows Security updates. It came back in a flash and said all the updates failed and there was a problem. I worked my way through the troubleshooting, and it said problems with Windows Update were fixed, so I went to Win Update again. This time only two updates showed. I said to update, which it did (took a really long time, though). It rebooted, then the wireless wouldn't connect.

The laptop is about 10 feet away from the AP, line of sight, and has full signal strength. It sees the AP, and keeps saying "trying to authenticate", then gives up. I checked the settings; it had lost the manually assigned IP, Gateway and DNS server addresses. I put the IP addresses back in the adapter config, but no dice, still won't connect.

I went to reboot manually, thinking it might fix things, and saw there were updates pending. So I said to install them, and it said some 116 updates were being installed. Took a really long time. I went away to do some other stuff. When I came back, the screen said there were problems with the updates and they were being rolled back. After another long wait, Windows update shows a solitary update for Windows Defender, but a ton of failed updates in Update History.

I'd like to first get connectivity established. Device Mangler says the wireless adapter is fine. I've checked the access passkey, that is fine too. I've turned off the AP several times but that hasn't helped. Other devices connect wirelessly just fine.

Obviously once connectivity is established, I could still have a hosed system. The last image I made is about 9-12 months old, and I can go back to it if I have to. I'd rather fix things and move on, though.

In the Network and Sharing Center, for the wireless adapter when I click on "View Status of this connection", it says:

IPV4 Connectivity: Not connected
IPV6 Connectivity: Not connected
Media State: Attempting to Authenticate

There is a "Details" button on this screen, and when I click on this, I see two IP address for IPV4: one that I manually assigned (internal) and one external IP address that is not my public IP address. The external one shows first.

What gives?

What am I missing in trying to get the wireless connected? Worst case, I could hunt for an Ethernet cable and connect wireline (the AP has Ethernet ports in the back).

Obviously I don't know why the updates failed and how to get them to install.

Thanks for helping.

 

[ddrueding]

Try these:

1. Tell the OS to forget your AP and then add it again
2. Uninstall the WiFi adapter and re-install
3. Rebuild the TCP/IP stack

 

[mubs]

Thanks DD. How do I do #3?

 

[mubs]

Thanks DD.

Tried #1 & #2; didn't help.

How do I do #3?

 

[mubs]

Sorry, ignore, I just Googled it.

 

[mubs]

Downloaded a tool from MS to reset the stack; didn't help.

 

[Mercutio]

It's Windows 8. Unless it has licenses for weird software or ridiculous amounts of user customization, just back up her stuff and reset the PC. Make sure it has Ad-blocking and decent security software before handing it back.

 

[ddrueding]

I'm with Merc on this, you're quickly entering a particularly messy rabbit hole. There is little that can be easily fixed beyond what we've already discussed.

 

[Mercutio]

The only worrisome aspect is that some of the symptoms mubs is suggesting don't align with what I'd ordinarily write off as a case of internet herpes. Is it possible that the WLAN hardware is marginal, the database of installed updates got hosed AND there was a lot of miscellaneous wrongness with the kernel? Or is it more likely that there's some bad RAM or a disk drive that's acting up?

Resetting the machine is a hassle, but it puts the machine in a known-good state. I kind of feel like it's cheating, but it's not like anyone is paying mubs for his time on this.

 

[mubs]

Thanks guys. I checked the disk and it was ok. I did suspect RAM, and it'd be a nightmare if it is. I plan to work most of the day on it to get it working. Will update when I have something meaningful to report.

 

[mubs]

4 hours of Memtest, 4 passes of 14 tests each (the defaults) found 0 errors.

Running chkdsk /b now (command prompt after rebooting). Fairly quickly jumped to 27%, and has stayed there for the last hour. Not a good sign, I guess. It doesn't show any details of what chkdsk is doing, unlike the previous versions of Windows.

Perhaps the drive went bad, corrupted Windows, and led to the multitude of problems. But when I asked it to to check C: from within Windows yesterday, it completed quickly and reported no problems. Puzzled.

 

[mubs]

chkdsk finally finished - after a total of 2 hours on a partition 443 GB in size, 64 GB used. Unfortunately when I went to take a peek it had booted into Windows. I ran Crystal DiskInfo and the SMART info said the disk was good, except temperature was 51C. Write error rate was 23,114 decimal. No re-allocations or bad sectors or pending re-allocations.

Tight now Windows is doing a repair I asked it to do. No optimistic; probably have to go back to the image.

 

[mubs]

Are Windows Updates shown in chronological order with the most recent first?

 

[Mercutio]

They should be, but if you've had updates fail they might be listed more than once.

 

[mubs]

No dice putting the image I had made some months ago back. The imaging sw kept telling me it was corrupt. Maybe the corruption happened when I was having drive problems on my desktop; I had moved the image file from the laptop to my desktop. I always verify the image to make sure I have a good one. But that didn;t help in this case.

Taking the long road now; restored the original factory-set Windows 8; now downloading 8.1. Then I have to get up to date with the patches; Then install all the other sw like Office, etc. A few days of fun

 

[timwhit]

No dice putting the image I had made some months ago back. The imaging sw kept telling me it was corrupt. Maybe the corruption happened when I was having drive problems on my desktop; I had moved the image file from the laptop to my desktop. I always verify the image to make sure I have a good one. But that didn;t help in this case.

Taking the long road now; restored the original factory-set Windows 8; now downloading 8.1. Then I have to get up to date with the patches; Then install all the other sw like Office, etc. A few days of fun

Sounds like a ridiculous amount of work, this is one reason I run Linux. I'll leave now.

 

[mubs]

It is an enormous PITA. Images save most of this hassle, but mine was crappy. Now I've made an image at every step, asked for it to be chaecked as soon as it's made, then separately validated the image. This is another PITA, but hopefully will save an even bigger PITA down the road.