Group Policy service

pmfturner said:

I'm sure I'm being stupid !

No, I don't think so.

You have explained clearly what is the problem (I'm sorry if I took you off on a tangent about authorities but no-one apart from me seems to care about that).

In any case you need to go through them one by one. You do what the tutorial says and you take a screen print.

You say: I have tried this tutorial and here are the results:

Option 1, first thing, this is the result (and here is the picture)
Option 1, second thing, this is the result (and here is the picture)
and so on

It is unreasonable to expect someone else to be able to help with your problem if it works for them (it works for me).

Absolutely I'll help (I've plenty of spare time) but only if I can add some value.

Best of luck, hali

Ok, I've tried the very first option :-

Option One: Open Elevated Command Prompt from Win+X Quick Link Menu

Having done this several times already with no result, the following message opens this time :-

"Do you want to allow this app to make changes to your PC ? Program location = C:\WINDOWS\system32\cmd.exe
Yes / No"

I have tried to run cmd.exe from this location before with no result, but having tried yet again, the same message as above appears - very puzzling to have two different results at different times.

Should I go for YES ?

pmfturner said:

Ok, I've tried the very first option :-

Option One: Open Elevated Command Prompt from Win+X Quick Link Menu

Having done this several times already with no result, the following message opens this time :-

"Do you want to allow this app to make changes to your PC ? Program location = C:\WINDOWS\system32\cmd.exe
Yes / No"

I have tried to run cmd.exe from this location before with no result, but having tried yet again, the same message as above appears - very puzzling to have two different results at different times.

Should I go for YES ?

Are you seeing a box like this yes?



if so, click YES and then see what happens. If all goes well, you then can do sfc /scannow

Say Yes. Exactly this is the point.

After that YOU choose what to write in the command box.

Don't say Yes as a matter of habit, but in this case you should for sure.

Ok have done the following :-

C:\WINDOWS\system32>sfc /scannow
Windows Resource Protection did not find any integrity violations.

Then

C:\WINDOWS\system32>Dism /Online /Cleanup-Image /RestoreHealth
The restore operation completed successfully.
The operation completed successfully.

Everything appears to working as it should now - File Explorer, Task Manger, I can now access Command Prompt (Admin), etc, but I don't think I've actually changed anything. I've learnt quite a bit, and wasted a lot of your time on the forum, and now there seems to be nothing wrong. I am really not going mad, and there is an intermittent gremlin lurking somewhere, but am no nearer tracking it down.

Many thanks for your help.

You've not wasted time - it is in fact impossible to do that I think (you may disagree). What you have done is proved there is no corruption in your Windows system files (which is a good thing).

As for your problem, I guess you have to wait for it to happen again and then see if you can think what happened just before...

Thanks for your help - I've certainly learnt a bit more about Windows 10. One thing you can help me with, how do you take a screen dump when you're in what I would call a DOS screen, i.e. at the command prompt ?

pmfturner said:

Thanks for your help - I've certainly learnt a bit more about Windows 10. One thing you can help me with, how do you take a screen dump when you're in what I would call a DOS screen, i.e. at the command prompt ?

You have 2 options.

First is to select all (Ctrl + A), Copy (Ctrl + C) and then paste (Ctrl +V). If you want to post it here you can put [CODE] <whatever text> [/CODE] tags around it like this:

Code:

Microsoft Windows [Version 10.0.10586]
(c) 2015 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved.

C:\WINDOWS\system32>ping www.google.com

Pinging www.google.com [216.58.212.100] with 32 bytes of data:
Reply from 216.58.212.100: bytes=32 time=10ms TTL=55
Reply from 216.58.212.100: bytes=32 time=11ms TTL=55
Reply from 216.58.212.100: bytes=32 time=11ms TTL=55
Reply from 216.58.212.100: bytes=32 time=11ms TTL=55

Ping statistics for 216.58.212.100:
    Packets: Sent = 4, Received = 4, Lost = 0 (0% loss),
Approximate round trip times in milli-seconds:
    Minimum = 10ms, Maximum = 11ms, Average = 10ms

C:\WINDOWS\system32>

.

The other option is to use Snipping Tool, click on New then Window Snip to get a picture like this:





You can upload pictures as described here Screenshots and Files - Upload and Post in Ten Forums - Windows 10 Forums

Ok, 2 weeks on and still some issues. On booting up this morning, again Task Manager/Elevated Command Prompt won't work, and the same issues in File Manager, such as not being able to copy or open files on right clicking. On booting up a week ago, no windows programs at all would work, including Edge, Word, Excel, Powerpoint programs etc and indeed "appeared" to have been deleted from my PC, although clearly not - just not 'visible' or useable.
This ongoing issue appears to be related to start-up, when not all Windows 10 elements appear to operate.
Any ideas anyone ?

If you run the "sfc /scannow" command and it reports no errors as it did before then Windows thinks all it's components are fine.

Problem with right click are usually caused by faulty shell extensions. Sorry about the terminology - "shell extensions" just means things added to the default windows user interface or "shell". You can try the steps in post 4 and 6 here to try to resolve that by turning all Microsoft ones off and then on again one by one until you find the culprit.

After that the best diagnostics I can think of is to make another administrator account and see if the error happens there. There is a tutorial for making a new account here User Account - Add in Windows 10 - Windows 10 Forums

If the error happens in the new account as well then your install is corrupt and the best bet is a repair install - Repair Install Windows 10 with an In-place Upgrade - Windows 10 Forums

If the error happens in your old account but not the new one then the best bet is to copy all of your documents to the new one and retire and then eventually delete the old account. There are a few steps required (and they vary depending if you are using a Microsoft account or not) so let us know what the results of your testings for shell extensions and making a new account are first.