Critical Services Failed - Windows 8

mrochester

mrochester

mrochester

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Joined
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Newcastle upon Tyne
Hi all

I bought an upgrade to Windows 8 Pro a day or two after release, and I've been using it since. Last night I installed an updated driver for my Xfi soundcard. Upon reboot, Windows 8 reported that a 'Critical Service Failed'. I was then stuck in an endless BSOD/Reboot loop. I performed a few of the recovery options available on the Windows 8 DVD (system restore, automatic repair etc), and I was able to successfully boot into Windows 7 too from here. However, Windows 8 was a complete no go, with nothing working. In the end I had to go for the Refresh option, which removes nearly all of your installed programs, resets all your settings, but leaves your data in tact. This finally worked.

I'm just really annoyed that Windows 8 managed to fail so spectacularly so quickly. At least the Refresh option is there, which did at least minimise the recovery pain.

Not feeling too confident about 8 now :(

M.
 

mrochester

mrochester

mrochester

Soldato
OP
Joined
29 Sep 2003
Posts
5,820
Location
Newcastle upon Tyne
PhillyDee said:
Was the PC working perfectly fine before you installed the driver?

If yes, then its the driver. If not, its your PC and/or windows.

Same follows for everything. If you drive a car and crash it into a wall and it was working perfectly before the 6th pint, then it was not the cars fault!
Click to expand...

It was the restart that occurred after the driver installation that was the problem. But who's to say that if I restarted without having installed the newer driver it wouldn't have done the same? What makes me think it wasn't is that restoring to a point before the driver was installed didn't fix the problem, nor does it explain how the same driver installed after the refresh suddenly worked.

If its at all relevant, the BSOD was coming up before I even got to the boot menu.
 
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