Win 8.1: login ok, then mouse spins forever :(

dubcat

dubcat

dubcat

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5 Jan 2005
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753
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South East, UK
Hi, I have no idea what has gone wrong with win 8.1 and I am hoping you can help. My system boots fine and I can login with no problem. However, once my desktop loads up the system is unresponsive. The mouse moves no problem but when I go over the menu bar at the bottom of the screen I get a perm spinning wheel. I booted in to safe mode and it's ok for a few seconds but then the mouse goes in to spinning wheel mode to indicate the system is busy and never stops doing this.

Can anyone help me debug this before I throw my entire system through the window? It's driving me mad and I feel helpless!

Before today the system was fine and I was really enjoying using it.
 
More info, once the desktop is loaded I can move the mouse around over the recycle bin and other icons on my desktop and it highlights the icons as normal. As soon as I select an icon though with a single click the spinning wheel appears forever. If I try to double click an icon my desktop background goes white.

While safe mode does lock up, safe mode with command prompt works and does not lock up.
 
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dubcat said:
Hi, I have no idea what has gone wrong with win 8.1 and I am hoping you can help. My system boots fine and I can login with no problem. However, once my desktop loads up the system is unresponsive. The mouse moves no problem but when I go over the menu bar at the bottom of the screen I get a perm spinning wheel. I booted in to safe mode and it's ok for a few seconds but then the mouse goes in to spinning wheel mode to indicate the system is busy and never stops doing this.

Can anyone help me debug this before I throw my entire system through the window? It's driving me mad and I feel helpless!

Before today the system was fine and I was really enjoying using it.
Click to expand...

Could be many things from faulty ram,so do a memory test to faulty HD or corrupted OS etc...

First thing I would do is a memory test.
 
Could it really be memory though? I mean it works fine until I'm logged in (safe mode or normal mode), and even then it does not crash as such. It just goes in to perm busy mode. Going in to command line safe mode does not result in a freeze at all!
 
dubcat said:
Could it really be memory though? I mean it works fine until I'm logged in (safe mode or normal mode), and even then it does not crash as such. It just goes in to perm busy mode. Going in to command line safe mode does not result in a freeze at all!
Click to expand...

I had a faulty stick of ram and OS would still boot and I could use OS to a point, would give the odd freeze and mouse cursor spinning etc basically you have to rule everything out to be sure,don't assume anything.


Yes it can be a pain doing the detective work but only real way you'll find the cause of the issue.

I prefer using memtest86+ http://www.memtest.org/ ,you can make a bootable memory test with that.

I always have a spare working HD so I can do a clean install of Windows on that to rule out the faulty HD etc ie if its still locking up then the issue is something else.
 
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Do you have anti-virus installed? I've seen this happening with Norton and/or McAfee on lower end hardware before.
 
No AV installed. Will run memtest. I ran osx on this system for ages with no issues (years). Seems coincidental that this has happened shortly after installing windows which is why I don't think its hardware related. Still, it's important to discount the memory so will test it.
 
Right, have memtested it and no issues there.

I can't get to task manager. It's locking up before I can load anything up, even in safe mode :(
 
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