If any of you PC experts could help me, I would appreciate it, so here goes…

my desktop is kind of acting up and I don’t know how to fix it. On the screen the program tiles or apps, whatever you want to call them, all work but the little title or description below the tiles has disappeared, and also, anytime a dialog box pops up, there is no text in it. (When I say dialog box, I mean the box that pops up when you try to close a program and the box pops up and says “do you want to close this app” and it has the ok or cancel box inside that. There is no text in anything….it’s just an empty box and two smaller empty boxes inside that box. Luckily I know the ok box is on the left so I’m able to close the program.

If I right click on an empty part of the screen, a box opens up (I’ve been trying to troubleshoot) but there is no text or description of the various settings, just 5 or 6 empty selections to choose from. I’ve gone to display settings but can’t find anything applicable to my problem. I’ve tried Microsoft but couldn’t find a similar problem.

Does anyone know what I can do or where to go to find help? I don’t even have the computer vocabulary to accurately describe exactly what’s wrong. I’ve tried to just restart the computer, hoping that would reset whatever has been turned off. I did have this problem once before and was able to fix it but I got lucky, because like I said, when I try to fix the display on the Home Screen, any settings or dialog box that pops up doesn’t have any words or text in them. All the selections are there but no words. I hope this makes sense to someone who might be able to help. You can PM me if you want.

Thanks for any help, E

 

Not sure what your problem is, but a search turned up this:

https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/...8-34f514f7e974

And this:

https://www.tenforums.com/general-su...-randomly.html

Sounds no bueno. I’d try starting Windows in safe mode and seeing what happens. To get there, restart your computer and press F8 before Windows starts.

If the problem persists, you might have to reinstall Windows from scratch. Good luck

 

Thank you. I clicked on the first link and that is exactly what is going on with my computer. I’ll keep digging down that path.

Thanks again!

 

I bought a MAC and haven't had any problems in the 6 years that I've owned it. Windows based computers just go bad over time....

 

I've had a surface pro for 6 and a custom built desktop that's going on 8 they work just like the day I built/bought them. Pay for quality get quality returns.

 

​​​​​​The last time i watched a mac lockup and reset-because its just a computer not a golden tablet- the guy said "well that wasn't the Mac's fault that was my fault".

It turns out Mac users are very tribal, have OS problems just like Windows users, but because they spent 4x what they had to they must justify the expense through mental gynmastics.

 

Not true. You get what you pay for. My last Windows laptop is still going strong after 8+ years. Stay away from the $400 Dell specials and pay for a top end Windows machine. You'll still save 50% over a similar Mac.

 

That’s not my experience with Mac. It has its issues on occasion and the butterfly keyboard is a failure. But I’ve run a good bunch of both types of machines and the Macs, in my experience, are 5-10 times less likely to develop software execution problems. They aren’t perfect, but better in my view. Is that difference worth the extra cost? I can only answer that for myself (yes).


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

 

I didn’t mean to start a Mac vs. PC debate. My mom was a computer teacher at our local high school and when they hired her, she successfully got them to change from a PC computer lab to a Mac lab, because she believed so strongly that the Mac line was superior to PC. And when it comes to security (hacking and viruses) they are. But what do you do when you want to do something that only a PC can do? Don’t you have to reboot it to start using parallels? I have a VPS for my trading systems and can’t access it on my IPad. I might be able to on an actual Mac laptop or desktop…I don’t know, but when we had the surface, I was able to check things when I didn’t want to get my laptop out.

Don’t get me wrong, I wouldn’t choose to go back to the surface for our work device.

As an update to my original problem, after reading through the links jaxsurf sent, it sounded like the root issue was a Windows update that didn’t play well with the other installed drivers and such so I went in and downloaded all of the available optional updates including a recent windows optional update and rebooted the computer. It rebooted normally and everything was working as it is supposed to, so I ran a backup ( I had never backed it up before in 7 years) so if the issue resurfaces, I’ll have a current starting point if I have to uninstall windows and reinstalll or do a factory reset.

Thanks again Jax.

 

If you’re brave enough, you could try disabling Windows auto-update. The MAJOR caveat being you are now in control of the update schedule.

Windows update frequently causes issues like this (some hardware more than others) and if you move to a manual update process you can take the time to review the update and verify it will not bork your system before it’s simply thrust upon you. You can also perform a quick backup or snapshot before running the updates so you have a known good point to return to.

If you don’t think you’re savvy enough to actually check this monthly or so though, then don’t disable it.