Windows 8.1 "breaks"

Anarchyz11 · April 20, 2015

I've got a really pissed off girlfriend with a wonky computer, and she won't get off my case until I fix this so she can play her friggin' game.

Yesterday she shut down her computer and wanted to move it somewhere else in the apartment. When she hooked everything back up and booted it up, it got to the Windows 8 login screen, but everything was completely blank. As in, it displayed a solid colored background as it should, but there was no login input nor could anything be inputted to bring it up.

I re-installed the OS from a USB stick and everything seemed fixed for a few hours. After leaving it sit for a bit and coming back to it, the same problem occurred, except since it was already logged into Windows, we instead got a non-functioning desktop. Desktop icons were magically gone, nothing would open when clicked, etc. A good reboot resulted in the same problem as in the beginning.

My initial thought is either the HDD (2 years old) has gone bad, but frankly I have no clue and just want this issue to be resolved. Anyone whose had a similar problem or can provide advice would be much appreciated.

Anarchyz11 · April 20, 2015

Could be dying hard drive. You can test this by unplugging the hard drive, putting it into a working system and running a SMART test on it with something like PASSMARK.

Will do this. Thankfully my setup is right next to hers and we use the same chipset, so testing parts will be easy-ish.