Totally un-responding W10 install

I've been given a machine to look at for a friend but it has me stumped, and I'm quite techy!

W10 Pro, booted it the other day and is now stuck at a blank desktop (personalised background image is there), with a totally unresponsive taskbar. Spinning wheel when you try and click or right click it. Ctrl + alt + del works, but task manager just doesn't load. I can get to the login screen and reboot. But that really is about it! Exactly the same in safe mode, except I randomly get the option to "end process" of Windows when I click.. chkdsk /f /r run via W10 install media and it reported no problems, but I didn't think it would. I can read the drive fine if I remove and connect to another machine.

If I reboot, it sometimes hangs at the spinning wheel (for an hour plus), some times reboots fine, sometimes I'm told "closing 1 app and shutting down" and that "task host window is stopping background tasks (\Microsoft\Windows\International\Synchronize Language Settings)", which does end automatically after a minute or so.

I'm running out of ideas to try next...! Obvious thing is pull any data required off the drive and do a clean install, or attempt a repair install but I'd rather leave this as a last resort.

Any suggestions welcome!

Thanks.

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PS Can't include Windows version as I can't get a run / command prompt to run winver....

Try rebooting it three times in a row before you log in.

Interesting - thanks. It doesn't actually have a password set (it's not mine!!), so it's logging in automatically. let me see if I can set a password on the user account to prevent auto logging in, and then try that. Thanks for the quick reply.

Next, try creating a new account if that doesn't work. The previous voodoo-like suggestion has helped some people recover from evil Widoze spirits, but I can't provide you a technical explanation behind it

Love solutions like that... I have to admit I did actually see it on Google earlier and meant to try the password addition before posting. just on reboot number three now...

Not sure how I can create an account if I can't get into CP or settings at all Or am I missing something obvious?

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Mmm no joy with the reboot-three-times-voodoo magic trick...dammit.

eludlow said:

Love solutions like that... I have to admit I did actually see it on Google earlier and meant to try the password addition before posting. just on reboot number three now...

Not sure how I can create an account if I can't get into CP or settings at all Or am I missing something obvious?

Can do from command prompt

Add Local Account or Microsoft Account in Windows 10 like so

Ahh yes of course - let me boot from install media and sort that way.

But first...supper! or my wife will kill me :)

eludlow said:

Ahh yes of course - let me boot from install media and sort that way.

But first...supper! or my wife will kill me :)

Oh no! Go eat and eat a serving for me too

Right, fed and watered and not murdered by spouse!

This is even more peculiar. I boot into the Windows recovery environment and head to command prompt. Create the local user using net user temp /add to get back ​The user was successfully created but could not be added to the USERS local group. Never seen that before. But I can still add the temp user to the administrators group...but then I restart - and there's only the one original account available to log in to.

My diagnosis would be this machine is effed...but I like a challenge if any other ideas / suggestions?! Thanks.

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Just going to try adding that account again and running net local group users temp /add