Windows 8 After a while, no icons in Explorer, and right-click hangs the window

vilrockerdefer

New Member
Hello,

Well, the title is pretty much self-explanatory.

I use 8 Pro Build 9200. When I boot, everything is normal. Then, after a while, usually a dozen minutes, whenever I open a folder in Explorer, no file icons will be shown, whatever the file type : I only get a blank generic rectangle instead of the proprer icon.

When this happens, I can be totally sure that any right-clicking on a file or a folder will result in the windows hanging indefinately. The only way out of this is to end the task through Task Manager.

The layout and folder options become unavailable as well.

Any help would be greatly appeciated !

Thanks a lot.

Fred
 
Hello and welcome to the forum.
Have you had an opportunity to run the built in native System File Checker utility?
If not
Hold down the WinKey and hit the x key
select Command Prompt (Admin)
type
sfc /scannow
hit enter
wait for it to complete and see if it finds any integrity violations.
Keep us posted.
Regards
Randy
 
Hello,

Indeed, sfc /scannow found some errors and claimed they were corrected.

Nevertheless, the problem still occurs after reboot on what seems to me to be a completely random basis.

For one night I left my pc do some encoding and in the morning the problem still didn't occur.

Just a few minutes from now I started my pc and the problem happened straight after boot.

I tried to send the cbs.log from sfc /scannow via rapidshare but I am unable to upload the file because "you don't have permission to open this file". I changed the file permissions to full control using right-click\security tab, but it didn't change anything.

In the event viewer I noticed I had quite a lot of these errors :

Faulting application name: DllHost.exe, version: 6.2.9200.16384, time stamp: 0x5010888a
Faulting module name: ntdll.dll, version: 6.2.9200.16384, time stamp: 0x5010ae7a
Exception code: 0xc0000374
Fault offset: 0x000da947
Faulting process id: 0x814
Faulting application start time: 0x01cd967653eefbc8
Faulting application path: C:\Windows\SysWOW64\DllHost.exe
Faulting module path: C:\Windows\SYSTEM32\ntdll.dll
Report Id: 91afa9cf-0269-11e2-beaa-50e549cee030
Faulting package full name:
Faulting package-relative application ID:

Sometimes, or maybe all the time (I have to check) the latter happen exactly when I receive a "Com surrogate has stopped working" error.

Nevertheless, it apparently seems independant from the problem that bothers me most and that I described in the first post : I just had one of these "com surrogate" and I can still right-click and see icons.

One last thing I have to mention is that when my problem happen, strangely enough, I can't access the command prompt in elevated mode anymore, only the regular command prompt.

Thanks a lot.

Fred
 
Run the system file checker again.
If it keeps finding and fixing things then I suspect there is some data corruption taking place for some reason.
WinKey + x select Command Prompt (Admin)
type
chkdsk C: /R
hit enter
when prompted answer in the affirmative "Y" and reboot.
Let it finish all five stages and check the event viewer for the results.

EDIT: You may also want to hit it with a pass from Malwarebytes or something similar to confirm there isn't any funny business going on.
http://www.malwarebytes.org/products/malwarebytes_free/
 
Last edited by a moderator:
Using Security Task Manager, I see no Malware in the computer. It has always had MS Defender enabled anyways.

SFC /scannow is normal now.

Chkdsk gave me this :




Checking file system on C:
The type of the file system is NTFS.

A disk check has been scheduled.
Windows will now check the disk.

CHKDSK is verifying files (stage 1 of 5)...
194304 file records processed. File verification completed.
814 large file records processed. 0 bad file records processed.
CHKDSK is verifying indexes (stage 2 of 5)...
265652 index entries processed. Index verification completed.
0 unindexed files scanned. 0 unindexed files recovered.
CHKDSK is verifying security descriptors (stage 3 of 5)...
Cleaning up 456 unused index entries from index $SII of file 0x9.
Cleaning up 456 unused index entries from index $SDH of file 0x9.
Cleaning up 456 unused security descriptors.
Security descriptor verification completed.
35675 data files processed. CHKDSK is verifying Usn Journal...
33810328 USN bytes processed. Usn Journal verification completed.

CHKDSK is verifying file data (stage 4 of 5)...
194288 files processed. File data verification completed.

CHKDSK is verifying free space (stage 5 of 5)...
14773398 free clusters processed. Free space verification is complete.
CHKDSK discovered free space marked as allocated in the volume bitmap.

Windows has made corrections to the file system.
No further action is required.

124674047 KB total disk space.
65197496 KB in 156786 files.
85340 KB in 35676 indexes.
0 KB in bad sectors.
297615 KB in use by the system.
65536 KB occupied by the log file.
59093596 KB available on disk.

4096 bytes in each allocation unit.
31168511 total allocation units on disk.
14773399 allocation units available on disk.

Internal Info:
00 f7 02 00 d6 ef 02 00 21 30 05 00 00 00 00 00 ........!0......
4b 01 00 00 2b 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 K...+...........
00 00 4b 8c 8f 00 00 00 04 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 ..K.............

Windows has finished checking your disk.
Please wait while your computer restarts.


Thanks !
 
So given that the native check disk utility performed some house keeping
Cleaning up 456 unused index entries from index $SII of file 0x9.
Cleaning up 456 unused index entries from index $SDH of file 0x9.
Cleaning up 456 unused security descriptors.
CHKDSK discovered free space marked as allocated in the volume bitmap.Windows has made corrections to the file system.
Windows has made corrections to the file system.
Has that done anything to impact you actual problem? Or are you still back at square one with the same issue persisting?
 
Last edited by a moderator:
After installing Shellexview and discovering that while Winamp had modified shell shortcuts it did not appear in shellexview, I thought maybe it was faulty. But it didn't solve my problem, so I proceeded with uninstalling other applications that had modified the shell.

My next try was to uninstall Acronis True Image 2013, and that did the trick !

Now my Windows 8 doesn't feel like pre-alpha anymore !

Thanks to all.
 
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