Windows 10: Is My Windows 10 Corrupt - Settings Not Being Saved And Possibly More

What is the progress with uninstalling all of the antivirus software products with the applicable uninstall tools?
Superantispyware
Avast
Malwarebytes

To fix the event viewer is a registry technique.
Are you more comfortable making changes in the registry or performing a reset with save files.
A reset with save files should fix all of the corruption. Applications will need to be reinstalled.
Antivirus products would not need to be uninstalled with the uninstall tools as they would be uninstalled with the reset with save files.

 

I'm Ok making changes to the registry, but I'm unsure what fixing the event viewer does. My last resort is a reset because who would want to reinstall everything........which leads me back to what fixing the event viewer actually would do.

As for uninstalling Avast, SAS, and MB, I haven't done those yet because I thought I was just going in order in steps. There's still other stuff I haven't done.......I haven't run any memory tests, I haven't done anything with that Dell drivers page, and I didn't d'load the "chipset" d'load that was listed as an important dell update that was located on the same page as the BIOS update was. I have no idea if any of the above stuff was needed to be done or not.

I guess I'm a little turned around at this point.

 

The registry step appears easy but a simple mistake can cause harm.

The opening post had comments about corruption.
So far there have been 2 areas of corruption identified:
1) The drive file system
2) The event viewer

The event viewer has all of the information about what happens on the computer:
critical events: BSOD, crashes, etc.
warnings
information
The log collector was able to collect the event viewer files but it reported corruption.
When there are problems on the computer and you want to know what happened most of the events were reported in the event viewer.
If you cannot open the event viewer then you are handicapped.

The HD Tune test results for the benchmark displayed a very low transfer rate for the drive.
Most drives should have a minimum transfer rate > 30 - 50.
The transfer rate on the drive was < 1.
What is the age of the drive?

What other corruption had you noticed on the computer?

The reset with save files requires re-installation of all drivers.
That fixes any BSOD that was caused by misbehaving software and hardware drivers.
It makes the drivers up to date.

So I'm presenting all of this to you so you can put it on a balance and make the decision.

If you fix the event viewer corruption and then find there is other corruption that was not detected at this time then you may want to at that time perform a reset with save files.
If you want better performance from the drive you would then replace the applications and drivers.

So you can think about the various pro and con and report at a later time in the thread what you want to do.

Performing the Memory testing does not impact any of the above. It has little if anything to do with the operating system.

The RAM is mismatched. RAM modules should be in pairs with the identical SKU. Memory testing can pass and mismatched RAM can produce BSOD. So the mismatched RAM does not produce errors or a fail on Memory testing.

The Memory testing will allow you to test all of the RAM. Whether you can keep using the mismatched RAM or not depends upon whether there are any BSOD. And if mismatched RAM is used it has the uncertainty of a BSOD.

The drive file system corruption results were not able to be viewed as they are in the event viewer. I will need to look in the files that were collected by the log collector to see if they are there. If they are I can post that information into the thread.

If you can run the Memtest86+ version 5.01 test it will take approximately 1 - 2 hours / GB RAM. The testing needs to be continuous. That is approximately 16 to 32 hours.

Think about all of the pro and con and post into the thread what your preferences are. Either method is okay, they have their pro and con.

 

Never mind, now I see what the event viewer is and why it needs to be fixed.

 

The RAM can also be tested 1 module at a time.
If the motherboard has multichannel capability this will not be tested when modules are tested 1 at a time.

The "settings not being saved and possibly more" we have not discussed.
Whatever this is would be fixed by the reset with save files.

We could do the event viewer fix and then see what happens.

Whatever is corrupt is not being detected by sfc /scannow nor dism /online /cleanup-image /restorehealth.
So the corruption is deeper than the OS and is in the registry.

 

There were no chkdsk reports in the logs after 3/5/2018.
So the current status after the chkdsk /x /f /r was not reported.

Now you can run the Memtest86+ version 5.01 testing:
Memtest86+ - Advanced Memory Diagnostic Tool

When the testing has completed 8 or more passes please use a camera or smart phone camera to take a picture and post an image into the thread.

The RAM testing can be done 1 RAM stick at a time but it will not test multichannel capability.

Post into the thread at a later time your preference for the drive, operating system, registry, event viewer, drivers, BSOD testing, etc.

 

The age of the drive is the same as the computer - which I believe is probably a little over a year, maybe a year and a half? Just out of curiosity - since I use HD Sentinel, the only thing I ever pay attention to is what the status of the health of the HD is. It says 100%. Is it not?

As for other corruption, the only things I've noticed have to do with the saving of certain settings. The ones I've mentioned already, but I've also noticed little things that I swore weren't like that before. It seemed like my cookies on a certain site got wiped out and possibly some settings in uBlock origin that also seemed to have reverted. Other than that, I've had issues with the front USB's since the beginning. I was never sure if it was just the thumb drive I was using or not, but like I mentioned, I did have the thumb drive in there transferring files when the computer rebooted last week. Not sure if there's any correlation.

I'd like to atleast take one shot at getting the event viewer up and running, it seems crazy not too. If the registry tweak is self explanatory than I should be able to do it. Some I've seen are easy, some have scared me a little.

I'll continue this tomorrow, I really need to go to sleep. Thanks.

 

Okay.
The registry step is easy.
Mistakes are not tolerated in the registry.
An extra brand new restore point can be made.
A Macrium backup should have already been made.
This is the registry technique:
https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/...ewer-log-files


Code: 3/13/2018 21:03 wevtutil.exe : Failed to read events. The event log file is corrupted. At C:\Users\CT\Downloads\resources\main.ps1:175 char:1 + &"$env:SystemRoot\System32\wevtutil.exe" query-events Application /q: ... + ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ + CategoryInfo : NotSpecified: (Failed to read ...e is corrupted.:String) [], RemoteException + FullyQualifiedErrorId : NativeCommandError[/quote] The above may not fix the failure to open the event viewer.
So a backup plan is needed.


In the left lower corner search type system > open system control panel > on the left pane click advanced system settings > under startup and recovery system failure > un-check automatically restart

With automatically restart checked you can easily miss BSOD crashes unless there were browsers or work open that was closed by the crash.
Having automatically restart un-checked you will see the BSOD window for each BSOD crash. There can be crashes that are not BSOD crashes and those can still be missed. With a BSOD windows you always want to make sure that you allow it to rise to 100% before closing the window so that there is sufficient time to create the dump file. On the BSOD windows you will also see the bugcheck. Sometimes you may see the misbehaving driver in the form *.sys. If you see a misbehaving driver displayed please record it and post it into the thread.

In order for the settings to fix please reboot and then reopen the startup and recovery system failure settings to confirm that automatically restart is un-checked.

 

Ok, so it looks like I'm going to do a reset. I noticed a password on a website I visit everyday is no longer being saved and I just have far too many things going on right now to go further in with this. Luckily with this computer I started to use portables when available so after reading about resetting, this shouldn't be too bad.

After I do a reset, is there anything I can do to make sure everything was cleared up? Besides me being able to see if my settings are being saved I mean. I'm assuming this will also fix the event log. Since I'm not sure what caused this, and since this may have been something incremental in nature - means that maybe the USB's being temperamental right from the beginning was some sort of sign?? Will the event log let us know something like that?

And is there anything I can run, or scan, every now and then in the future that would tell me something is not right. Running SFC/DISM scans don't seem to clue you in on anything, atleast for whatever happened in this instance.

Thanks alot.

 

1) Reset with save files should fix the event viewer / registry and other problems.
2) Reinstall all new drivers only from the computer or component manufacturer website.
The computer manufacturer website is always first choice.
3) Install applications
4) Make a backup image using Macrium
Macrium Software | Macrium Reflect Free
5) view this link and save it on the computer in case it is needed in the future:
Backup and Restore with Macrium Reflect Windows 10 Tutorials
6) Create redundancy for files > back up important files to another drive or to the cloud.

These are tools that can be used as frequently as you want:
1) sfc /scannow
2) dism /online /cleanup-image /restorehealth

If you use a HD instead of SSD this can be run frequently:
3) chkdsk /scan

If you are concerned about a problem you can perform and in place upgrade repair:
Repair Install Windows 10 with an In-place Upgrade Windows 10 Tutorials
Download Windows 10

4) Use just 1 antivirus product that is always on
5) If you want an additional AV product use a manual product so that AV products do not compete with each other and compromise the security.

6) Many computer manufactures have their own diagnostic tools for computer hardware.
Run the full diagnostics twice per year.
This is relatively easy and can be run overnight.
Support for Inspiron 3650 | Diagnostics | Dell US

 

So I did everything I needed to do this past weekend. I wish I realized how easy it was going to be to do a reset. I was waaaaay to thorough in what I needed to backup because I was worried that I would lose files. But everything was saved, and so far so good. I taxed out my USB hubs with some pretty heavy file transferring and like I said, so far so good. I appreciate all your help to probably a sometimes thankless job. I'm gonna run the event viewer at some point and see if I can read it for future problems. Thanks alot again.

 

Nice progress.
That's great news.
Please run this log collector and I'll look at the logs for any troubleshooting.
log collector v2-beta08.zip
(extract > open)

 

Here's the log. Things are not right though. There are settings that are not being saved.

 

Ok, so I tried souljazk's suggestion and he may be onto something. There were little things here and there that weren't looking right after the reset and I wasn't sure if they were just tweaks I had done and couldn't figure out again. But when I sign in as admin everything looks normal again. For instance, after the reset, the icons on the notification area side have little white boxes around them, and the cortana search box was white. I figured out how to change the cortana box, but it kept reverting back to white. Under the admin sign in, there are no such white lines and the cortana box is also not white.

Before I go, for seemingly the 107th time in the last week, of setting up everything on the admin sign in to how I used to have it and see if anything changes.................how is using the admin sign in different than using my user profile?? I mean there's ALOT to change to get the admin sign in to look and feel exactly like my user profile was. If I did that, can I eventually delete my user profile? And could I eventually rename the admin account to my initials (CT) just like it is now?

 

Well my Cortana search bar just turned white even in the admins log in. This really f'ing sucks. Not really sure what to do now.