I had a strange sequence of events occur over the last couple of days. My desktop computer running Windows 8 worked fine. I shut the computer down and I left for a week on a business trip. I returned, booted up my computer and it acted very strange. (I confirmed no one else used my computer while I was away.) Some applications would not load (printer, scanner, and some other apps), the computer took a very long time to boot, it froze up frequently then started working again, and I received error messages that Windows was no longer working and it gave me a choice of closing the application or waiting. It also did other unpredictable things. I tried using system restore but it told me there were no restore points available (I knew there were restore points before I left on my business trip). I also noted there was no history that I had ever installed any Windows updates, which is not true, I had previously installed all updates available. I even tried to use the repair feature on the Windows 8 OS install disc. That failed as well. I was able to get the computer working well enough to back up some key files (not that I was that worried about it because I use Carbonite) and ran a Norton full system scan, which found nothing. I shut down the computer Saturday night and restarted it Sunday afternoon. I planned to replace the hard drive with a clone drive I made about two months ago. However, Sunday afternoon the computer seems to operate just fine. It still said I had never installed any updates so I ran Windows update and found two updates for install. I installed them both and restarted. The computer still seems to run fine. I do not understand what this all could mean but now I do not trust my computer. It seemed to me it was acting erratically then straightened out with a few anomalies, such as the lack of historical Windows updates and restore points. I am very tempted to pull the hard drive and replace it with my two month old clone drive. This is very strange and wonder if others have encountered this kind of bizarre performance with Windows 8 and what this behavior might mean.
↧