Spontaneous Windows Refresh

[mrapoc]

Using avg antivirus by any chance?

You have checked profile list in registry? Sounds like a corrupt profile and its loading a temporary one.

Win 7 used to tell you it couldn't load the profile. Win 8 just loads you in none the wiser

 

[citizensmith]

Sounds like a corrupt profile and its loading a temporary one.

Win 7 used to tell you it couldn't load the profile. Win 8 just loads you in none the wiser

Duh! I didn't know that about win 8 thanks for sharing

 

[NJW]

so I told the customer not to hit F9 when he boots, or let his kids play with his laptop.

I'm not intimately familiar with the Asus BIOS, but is it possible to disable the boot time hotkeys?

Win 8 just loads you in none the wiser

Are you sure? I've seen Win8 failing to log in, with an 'unable to load profile' message (that's 8, not 8.1).

 

[mrapoc]

Possibly 8.1. I've had it before now. No desktop items no documents etc.

Turned out it was just a temp profile.

Fixed the registry path and removed avg. Job done

 

[glennd]

It's baaaacckkk....

Customer was beside herself when i got there so it's hard to get any kind of rational description. She said some prompt popped up saying important updates need to be installed or bad things will happen (I can't remember the exact words she used). Now windows updates is set to the default automatic so i i'm not expecting prompts from that plus they don't make vague threats anyway. Last time i had it I installed Kaspersky so it's possible that could be the prompt. She got a new mobile broadband with 4GB a month which was totally used up. I'm not sure if you can consume 4GB using facebook. The Event viewer is slightly different to last time. Previously the earliest events were the apparent refresh a few days prior. This time there's a group of events dated 7 July 2014 (the manufacture date) and then yesterday, so only two dates and nothing in between. All of the factory crapware is back and all of our installed software is gone. Photos and documents appear to be intact.

I haven't been over it properly yet, that will happen Monday.

 

[gadgetfixup]

Buy her a good used laptop using hers as trade. See if the problem follows the customer or the laptop.

That's always my solution when I run into something like this. Typically after the 3rd return I'm looking for a quick and permanent solution.

 

[nlinecomputers]

I'll still think you're being lied to about it. It is getting infected and she is trying to fix it herself or someone is helping her.

 

[Porthos]

When you finish this time GET AN IMAGE of the drive and save it.

 

[nlinecomputers]

Is it possible that something is trashing the boot sector? So that the system can't boot the windows boot sector and somehow loads the built in recovery partition? I think I would be tempted to start the recovery partition in front of the client and see if they think it is familiar looking.

 

[NJW]

When you finish this time GET AN IMAGE of the drive and save it.

... and wipe the Restore partition.

 

[Porthos]

... and wipe the Restore partition.

I would nuke it -set it up- make my own restore partition with aoemi one key.

 

[Larry Sabo]

I can imaging malware working something like BootSafe, and after a reboot it automatically does a refresh. Not sure it's possible, but I can imaging it anyway.

 

[lan101]

All I'm getting from this is another reason to hate windows 8 lol