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klrcommute
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Win10 strangeness...ideas?

Mon Sep 25, 2017 1:56 pm

Some pretty weird recent behavior on the Windows 10 that I haven't been able to trace back to any particular action.

1.) Steam desktop shortcuts disappeared, along with a few others like This PC
2.) Start button menu altered, with things like Control Panel disappearing
3.) Can search menu for example Control Panel, and link comes up, but clicking it does nothing
4.) Downloads folder contents disappeared

All this funny business immediately made my think malware, but Defender, Malwarebytes, and AVG turned up nothing. Doesn't rule anything out, but not surprising since I don't use Windows for anything but running games.

There have been some Windows updates and the like since this began, but for all of Win10's problems, I have a hard time believing it could be so jacked up as to do something like this?

Most likely going to format that drive and start over with a fresh install, but it's all so bizarre I wondered if anyone had come across anything like this? Thanks
 
ludi
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Re: Win10 strangeness...ideas?

Mon Sep 25, 2017 2:07 pm

Sounds like system corruption. Have you checked your disk and your memory for errors?
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Omniman
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Re: Win10 strangeness...ideas?

Mon Sep 25, 2017 2:30 pm

I would definitely find the brand of hard drives diagnostic utility and run it. I saw a Hitachi drive do this sort of stuff a few years back where it was slowly going brain dead.
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klrcommute
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Re: Win10 strangeness...ideas?

Mon Sep 25, 2017 3:00 pm

I tried to let Windows repair itself, but no dice.

I haven't tried a full diagnostic scan on the drive, but I'll do so. It's actually an 850 EVO that's less than 2 years old, definitely doesn't get written to much, but anything's possible.

As far as drive corruption goes, it's actually set up as dual boot and I've had zero issues on the Linux side of the drive.

It's a mystery.
 
klrcommute
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Re: Win10 strangeness...ideas?

Mon Sep 25, 2017 3:19 pm

Just scanned drive for errors via Windows and installed Intel RST and Samsung Magician to see if they had anything to say, but I got nothing.
 
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Re: Win10 strangeness...ideas?

Mon Sep 25, 2017 3:20 pm

Run a RAM diagnostic as well.
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LostCat
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Re: Win10 strangeness...ideas?

Mon Sep 25, 2017 3:29 pm

klrcommute wrote:
Most likely going to format that drive and start over with a fresh install

If you can hold off, the Fall Creators Update is due very soon. I have no idea how long it'll take to actually roll out though, but you can usually jump the line.

I don't see any control panel stuff on mine either though, cept in the Windows System dir.

Sounds like some metadata got broken and lost the links. It does happen. Hadn't heard of it happening on an SSD though.
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klrcommute
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Re: Win10 strangeness...ideas?

Mon Sep 25, 2017 3:41 pm

just brew it! wrote:
Run a RAM diagnostic as well.

Just ran a Windows Memory Diagnostic Tool test without issue. I'm not getting any random application errors or abrupt shutdowns like any other bad RAM I've seen, but most of ya'll are more tech savvy than I.
 
klrcommute
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Re: Win10 strangeness...ideas?

Mon Sep 25, 2017 3:45 pm

LostCat wrote:
klrcommute wrote:
Most likely going to format that drive and start over with a fresh install

If you can hold off, the Fall Creators Update is due very soon. I have no idea how long it'll take to actually roll out though, but you can usually jump the line.

I don't see any control panel stuff on mine either though, cept in the Windows System dir.

Sounds like some metadata got broken and lost the links. It does happen. Hadn't heard of it happening on an SSD though.

It's just weird though, right? What nukes the the contents of a downloads folder, random desktop icons, and throws a wrench in the functionality of your start menu?

I already think Win10 is a total dumpster fire in regards to doing inexplicable things, but if an update were at the heart of this I'd imagine there'd be some evidence of it online? And I haven't found any similar complaints, that's why I figured I'd run it by you guys.
 
LostCat
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Re: Win10 strangeness...ideas?

Mon Sep 25, 2017 3:48 pm

Did you turn Storage Sense on at any point? It does clean up the download folder at times.

Otherwise yeah, couldn't tell ya.
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MOSFET
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Re: Win10 strangeness...ideas?

Mon Sep 25, 2017 3:55 pm

Similar behavior has been seen when Downloads and various other folders have been moved to a different partition/drive, and that part/drive is then removed. If you're single partition / single drive, it could be corruption, and it could be relatively minor. Sometimes it's just sunspots - nothing to worry about, just a big mystery. Sometimes it's more.

Control Panel quick links were removed in the first Creator's Update, and WIndows (Defender + background) has been pretty aggressive at scrubbing since the CCleaner malware announcement. So that may actually be nothing.
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klrcommute
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Re: Win10 strangeness...ideas?

Mon Sep 25, 2017 4:11 pm

LostCat wrote:
Did you turn Storage Sense on at any point? It does clean up the download folder at times.

Otherwise yeah, couldn't tell ya.

Just checked, but nope.
 
klrcommute
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Re: Win10 strangeness...ideas?

Mon Sep 25, 2017 4:14 pm

MOSFET wrote:
Similar behavior has been seen when Downloads and various other folders have been moved to a different partition/drive, and that part/drive is then removed. If you're single partition / single drive, it could be corruption, and it could be relatively minor. Sometimes it's just sunspots - nothing to worry about, just a big mystery. Sometimes it's more.

Control Panel quick links were removed in the first Creator's Update, and WIndows (Defender + background) has been pretty aggressive at scrubbing since the CCleaner malware announcement. So that may actually be nothing.

The most suspect thing I have to go on is the 12 SEP windows update which I installed on the 19th, around the time this stuff started cropping up. I installed another windows update just now, but didn't seem to resolve any of this strangeness.
 
klrcommute
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Re: Win10 strangeness...ideas?

Mon Sep 25, 2017 4:28 pm

Another oddity, when I open This PC>Desktop there's nothing in it. In spite of there being files and shortcuts on my desktop. But if I move an existing shortcut somewhere else, and then back to the Desktop, it will populate the PC>Desktop folder. Like all my user metadata is all screwed up or something, like one of you was saying.

I don't remember what the file structure is supposed to be like, but shouldn't there be a Users folder in C:/? I don't see one. I can type C:/Users in the navigation bar and it will take me there. But then all I see is a Default.migrated and a Public folders. Where's the named user account that I'm logged in on?
 
n00b1e
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Re: Win10 strangeness...ideas?

Mon Sep 25, 2017 4:57 pm

Any new software/driver installed recently? There's also System Restore as an option.
 
Aether
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Re: Win10 strangeness...ideas?

Mon Sep 25, 2017 6:38 pm

klrcommute wrote:
I don't remember what the file structure is supposed to be like, but shouldn't there be a Users folder in C:/? I don't see one. I can type C:/Users in the navigation bar and it will take me there. But then all I see is a Default.migrated and a Public folders. Where's the named user account that I'm logged in on?


Unless you have changed the location of your user folder, it should be under C:/Users. Type %HOMEPATH% in the navigation bar and see where it takes you. If the folder is under C:/Users but hidden, it's possible that the attributes of the folder and the subfolders and files in it got jacked up somehow, and that this is causing weirdness with your files and settings. If so, you may have to read up on the ATTRIB command to reset attributes. I had an issue a while back in which I had to do this, but unfortunately I can't remember what the issue was. (Stupid old brain!)
 
klrcommute
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Re: Win10 strangeness...ideas?

Mon Sep 25, 2017 6:54 pm

Aether wrote:
klrcommute wrote:
I don't remember what the file structure is supposed to be like, but shouldn't there be a Users folder in C:/? I don't see one. I can type C:/Users in the navigation bar and it will take me there. But then all I see is a Default.migrated and a Public folders. Where's the named user account that I'm logged in on?


Unless you have changed the location of your user folder, it should be under C:/Users. Type %HOMEPATH% in the navigation bar and see where it takes you. If the folder is under C:/Users but hidden, it's possible that the attributes of the folder and the subfolders and files in it got jacked up somehow, and that this is causing weirdness with your files and settings. If so, you may have to read up on the ATTRIB command to reset attributes. I had an issue a while back in which I had to do this, but unfortunately I can't remember what the issue was. (Stupid old brain!)



There's something screwed up going on there. I type your %HOMEPATH% and it does indeed take me to my user folder. BUT it's 'empty,' unless you click on properties, in which case it has 12gb of stuff in it. The filepath reads like it should C:/Users/'my username' but if I travel to the actual C:/Users directory, my user folder is nowhere to be found, in spite of properties 'hidden' files box being checked. I haven't a clue how any of this happened unless the Windows update just borked all of it for no apparent reason.

Wait a minute...that shouldn't be flagged as 'hidden'! That's my problem! Wtf, windows?

That was it! Somehow my user folder got flagged as hidden and that's where all these problems came from, even the start menu not properly linking to things like Control Panel. Such an odd issue, and no idea how it came to be. Thanks again everybody for the help though! I never would have figured this out without that %HOMEPATH% command.
 
LostCat
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Re: Win10 strangeness...ideas?

Mon Sep 25, 2017 7:10 pm

https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/win ... bb1?auth=1 is the best I can come up with. Apparently it has happened before, in previous Windows.
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Aether
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Re: Win10 strangeness...ideas?

Mon Sep 25, 2017 7:59 pm

I'm glad that it turned out to be that simple to fix!
 
klrcommute
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Re: Win10 strangeness...ideas?

Mon Sep 25, 2017 8:09 pm

Aether wrote:
I'm glad that it turned out to be that simple to fix!

If only it hadn't taken me half the day to reach that conclusion :lol:
 
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Re: Win10 strangeness...ideas?

Mon Sep 25, 2017 8:26 pm

klrcommute wrote:
Aether wrote:
I'm glad that it turned out to be that simple to fix!

If only it hadn't taken me half the day to reach that conclusion :lol:

Most problems are simple after you figure them out! :wink:
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