Yesterday, when Win7 started up, it claimed to not be genuine (which is false). Since then, when Win7 boots up, about 50% of the time dwm.exe (window manager?) and explorer.exe fail to load, leaving me with a black void. Restarting is the only potential solution.
I’ve done a malware scan, and there’s no malware there. Booting into safe mode, however, seems to be trouble-free.
Any guesses as to what’s going on?
Did you activate your copy? My wife’s laptop has a genuine copy of Windows 7, but we neglected to actually input the registration code after rebuilding it, and once the grace period expired (90 days, maybe?) it came up as “not a genuine copy of Windows”. Entering in the key fixed the problem and all is well now.
It’s been running since June 2010, so that can’t be it.
And just to be clear, it only warned about not being genuine this once, yesterday. Since then, it’s only having problems with dwm.exe and explorer.exe.
if there really is no malware (scanning doesn’t always catch stuff) then I’d bet dollars to donuts you’ve got bad RAM somewhere. The “not genuine” thing might have been the result of some RAM not being detected on that boot, and programs flaking out for no apparent reason are frequently the result of being loaded into malfunctioning memory.
Is there a foolproof way to verify that hypothesis, barring buying new RAM?
it’s not 100% foolproof, but it’s pretty reliable. if you see any errors, something’s wrong.
Boot off the Windows 7 DVD and run the memory test. Or download one of the many bootable CDs that has a memory test app.
What do the event logs say?
There’s a whole bunch of errors on startup in the logs, the first of which are…
The Workstation service hung on starting.
The Workstation service terminated with the following error:
Access is denied.
The Network Location Awareness service hung on starting.
So Windows is completely borked, ISTM. A repair might help, but I suspect a full reinstall will be called for.
My fear is the drive is corrupted. I’ll do the memtest and report back later.
Well, memtest was doing its thing when the machine rebooted, and here I am.
yeah, definite hardware problem. how many sticks of RAM are in there? if more than one, you might pull one, re-run memtest, then if needed swap to the other one and recheck. if it still has problems, then it could be motherboard, power supply, or even CPU.
oh, also check the CPU heatsink and make sure the fan is running and not clogged with dust. could be overheating too.
Thanks for the advice. Much appreciated.
What he said. When random and intermittent problems and reboots occur it is usually because of a faulty ram DIMM.
I tried scanning the memory with Win7’s own memory diagnostics tool and it reported no errors.
I can’t physically inspect the system myself, so I’m just trying to narrow it down before I pay someone to fiddle with it.
why not? just asking…
what brand/model is it or approximately how old?
Also check the motherboard for popped capacitors.
I’m disabled. I really need a helper monkey trained in IT; my brother usually performs that function, but he lives several hours away.
It’s custom-made: Intel board running an i5, built in May 2010. Initially I had a problem with the system not always booting up, and the drive got corrupted, so I upgraded the bios, reinstalled Windows, etc., and everything was fine. Until now.