Suddenly lots of problems with Windows 8.1 Lenovo laptop

June 7, 2022 4:54 AM

Not sure where to start. Lots of things are not working, one after the other.

First, dropbox stopped working. I did a reinstall, which worked for a day, and then it stopped. I followed instructions for clearing dropbox related files and doing an offline install, but the installations could not complete. After a while the install programs would not even start. At the end, I could not download files through firefox (even small files).
Tried changing target drive for downloads. no luck.
Tried running sfc /scannow, but it won't run. Windows Resource Protection could not start the repair service.
Tried running DSIM ... restorehealth (or so) and it also would not run.
Tried to startup using only essential processes using msconfig and now i can't get back to normal. I can't start msconfig.
I have checked recently that I am not running out of hard drive space.

Windows 8.1 on a Lenovo thinkpad x1 carbon 3rd generation.

This is all in the last 24-48 hours

Thanks for any help!

posted by melamakarona to Technology (5 answers total)

I forgot to add: at some point when saving files I was working on I could not do so.
posted by melamakarona at 5:14 AM on June 7, 2022

Sounds like the hard drive might be failing. Can you go into Event Viewer (just search for Event viewer from Start) and look at the System logs (Windows Logs folder > System)? See if you have a bunch of them labeled Disk. I know you said you're not running out of hard drive space, but how close are you? Under 10% left and Windows starts acting really weird.
posted by deezil at 5:32 AM on June 7, 2022

This is not a good set of symptoms, and your first step needs to be backing up as much as you can as soon as you can. What you're describing sounds like filesystem corruption.
posted by mhoye at 7:02 AM on June 7, 2022

Ok, so somehow (I don't remember quite how I got there, but I think it was attempting to run some utility and then being asked if I wanted to do a scan or scan and repair) I chose the latter, which occured during startup, and now things work again, dropbox installed, could re-adjust msconfig options for startup, everything fine. I guess I am wondering if this could have been a minor corruption which was repaired, or e.g. hardware problems which will reappear any minute now.
posted by melamakarona at 7:47 AM on June 7, 2022

Could be either a minor fixed glitch or a hardware failure that will returned. But really, there's no difference. Assume the worst and make a verified backup. Then at least make incremental backups until the drive fails.
posted by jclarkin at 9:19 AM on June 7, 2022