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#1
Blank windows, unresponsive services, failing installations after 4 mo
I've searched around for solutions for these issues, so apologies if this is known and I missed it.
I upgraded to Windows 10 about 4 months ago without issue. Yesterday I noticed that certain applications wouldn't open (with no errors thrown), so I restarted. From that point on, the problem has only gotten worse. Opening Chrome shows a blank window with only the minimize, maximize, close buttons visible. Same for Tiger VPN. Steam gets stuck after the 'verifying install' window when it tries to connect to my account, and some Windows services/settings just don't do anything when I try to open them. For example, the nVidia Control Panel. Most programs crash when I close them. None of this happened at all until today.
* I've booted into safe mode and uninstalled programs, ran MalwareBytes (0 threats detected), and updated various drivers.
* I found that if I open the task manager there are 6 or 7 processes running for Chrome. If I kill the lowest one in the list, the Chrome window stops being blank and starts displaying and behaving normally. The same thing occurs with TigerVPN, which for some reason has two instances instead of the usual one.
* When I try to install the latest video drivers, installation fails but doesn't give me any useful error message.
I downloaded a new Windows 10 ISO so that I could repair the installation. I do a clean boot and start the setup process, but can only get up to the "Making sure you're ready to install" screen before it gets stuck in a loop. It asks me if I want to wipe everything or keep my files/apps. I choose to keep files and apps and then it sends me back to the previous screen, where it stays for about 20 minutes before repeating.
I'm a software engineer and I know my way around a computer, but this is baffling to me. Has anyone run into this before?
Last edited by Throwaway 12345; 22 Dec 2015 at 09:41.