Group Policy service

Hmmm. Of course as before, along with not being able to run Task Manager or use any right-click functions, I am unable to open up the elevated command prompt. I shall have to wait until such time as the gremlins are taking a break and then jump in, at which point, doubtless, everything will appear to be working correctly !

lx07 said:

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.

pmfturner said:

Hmmm. Of course as before, along with not being able to run Task Manager or use any right-click functions, I am unable to open up the elevated command prompt. I shall have to wait until such time as the gremlins are taking a break and then jump in, at which point, doubtless, everything will appear to be working correctly !

If nothing is working I would jump straight to the repair install if you have (or can download somehow using another PC) a Windows 10 ISO and put it on a USB key.

USB Flash Drive - Create to Install Windows 10 - Windows 10 Forums
then
Repair Install Windows 10 with an In-place Upgrade - Windows 10 Forums

You'll not lose your currently installed programs.

Ok, to cut a very long story short (a good chunk of yesterday !), I have tried to re-install Windows 10 through ACER’s routine on the PC (via Alt F10). When I have tried to “Reset your PC”, the message “A required drive partition is missing” which seems to have occurred during the upgrade of 8.1 to 10.
However, this morning I have been able to open the Admin Command Prompt and run the System File Checker, with the results being “Windows resource protection did not find any integrity violations”.
Any suggestions as to the next steps ?

lx07 said:

If nothing is working I would jump straight to the repair install if you have (or can download somehow using another PC) a Windows 10 ISO and put it on a USB key.

USB Flash Drive - Create to Install Windows 10 - Windows 10 Forums
then
Repair Install Windows 10 with an In-place Upgrade - Windows 10 Forums

You'll not lose your currently installed programs.

While you can, download the Windows 10 ISO and put it on a USB key. USB Flash Drive - Create to Install Windows 10 - Windows 10 Forums

If you don't have a spare USB key go and buy one. 4GB is sufficient and you can get a 8GB one from ASDA or some other supermarket for less than £5 (as far as I remember around Christmas 2014). They are not expensive anyway.

The problem is 8.1 recovery partition doesn't work after upgrade to 10 so if you have Windows 10 on USB you can use that instead - either to do a repair install or (worst case) clean install.

I would also suggest (as you have an admin command prompt) making a new local administrator account right now.

From your admin command prompt enter this (changing the name (in red) and password in (in green) if you want to):

Code:

net user "pmfTurner2" "Password123" /add

Code:

net localgroup administrators "pmfTurner2" /add

You can then sign off, sign on as pmfTurner2 user and see if it works... It will say "Getting things ready..." for a while the first time you sign on as the new user - don't worry about that - it is normal..

Do make the USB though - it will the useful if not now then later.