Windows 8 update issues

Conar

Firstly...Windows 8 is really doing my nut :mad:

I ran the upgrade assistant last night and it said all was fine.
Ran the upgrade this morning to Windows 8 Pro (previously Win 7 Ultimate x64) and that coimpleted ok.
Installed Media Center update and that also seemed to install fine.

Now however when I try to open Video Library in Media Center it just says "media center has stopped working" and shuts down.
Same if I try to open a video in Explorer with Media Center.

If I use Media Player its fine.

So to troubleshoot I removed and re-added Media Center.
Still the same issue.

Saw people have had a few issues and mentioned rerunning the upgrade so tried burning the ISO and popping in the DVD while in windows. It picks up the DVD asks if I want to run setup, say yes, but nothing ever happens.
Extracted the ISO and tried running setup but the same thing happens.

Tried booting from the Windows 8 upgrade DVD but in order to run the upgrade it says I need to reboot into Windows and run it from there.
STALEMATE!

So I then try to log a support ticket with Microsoft via http://support.microsoft.com/ph/6527
but that just goes into a support loop.

Before I have to do a wipe and start from scratch does anyone have any ideas?

Fysh

Have you tried the factory reset option available in the Windows 8 boot menu? See here or any of the millions of Google results for "Windows 8 reset" for details.

(To clarify - I haven't had this problem so I don't know if the reset will fix it, but it's got to be worth a try as long as you have your data backed up...)

Conar

I hadn't seen the new refresh but was trying not to lose system data so I wouldn't have to set up my satelite channels in MC.
Anyway I gave up and gave that Refresh option a go.
Seemed to work a bit better as afterwards MC was able to play the videos.

Success?
Nope.

I tried rescanning the channels and it blue screened with an NTFS error.
Rebooted and tried again but the same.

Now I've run a boot time chkdsk /R on the OS drive and its been stuck on 27% for about 2 hours now.

Not a great start to windows 8

Fysh

Conar wrote: »

I hadn't seen the new refresh but was trying not to lose system data so I wouldn't have to set up my satelite channels in MC.
Anyway I gave up and gave that Refresh option a go.
Seemed to work a bit better as afterwards MC was able to play the videos.

Success?
Nope.

I tried rescanning the channels and it blue screened with an NTFS error.
Rebooted and tried again but the same.

Now I've run a boot time chkdsk /R on the OS drive and its been stuck on 27% for about 2 hours now.

Not a great start to windows 8

Eesh

Is it only your tuner card and related software components that cause problems? If so, it would be worth taking out/disabling the card and testing MC to see how it behaves.

What's your tuner card, for that matter? Do you know if the vendor's release Windows 8 drivers yet? (The Upgrade Advisor should have picked this up for you before installing, admittedly...)

testicle

Conar wrote: »

I hadn't seen the new refresh but was trying not to lose system data so I wouldn't have to set up my satelite channels in MC.
Anyway I gave up and gave that Refresh option a go.
Seemed to work a bit better as afterwards MC was able to play the videos.

Success?
Nope.

I tried rescanning the channels and it blue screened with an NTFS error.
Rebooted and tried again but the same.

Now I've run a boot time chkdsk /R on the OS drive and its been stuck on 27% for about 2 hours now.

Not a great start to windows 8

Sounds like your Hard Drive is knackered. Stop blaming Windows 8 for your hardware problems.

Conar

testicle wrote: »

Sounds like your Hard Drive is knackered. Stop blaming Windows 8 for your hardware problems.

Thanks for the insight but that's not what the problem was the disk is fine. Checkdisk test finally finished after about 2.5 hours. After a bit of troubleshooting I narrowed it down to the Pinnacle dvb-t card in the machine. Once I had that figured some googling found someone else with the issue who had resolved it by using avermedia drivers. I uninstalled the pinnacle drivers and installed the avermedia ones and all is fine.
The checkdisk issue also seems to be a problem with windows 8 as I see a few posts online saying it stalls for long periods at 27%.
So while I am a fan of Microsoft OS's the fact that the upgrade test didn't flag a compatability issue and the bluescreens pointed to a file system issue didn't make my entry into windows 8 an easy one.

Now that its actually up and running I'll need to set up all my channels again :-(

Conar

Fysh wrote: »

Eesh

Is it only your tuner card and related software components that cause problems? If so, it would be worth taking out/disabling the card and testing MC to see how it behaves.

What's your tuner card, for that matter? Do you know if the vendor's release Windows 8 drivers yet? (The Upgrade Advisor should have picked this up for you before installing, admittedly...)

Thanks. You were right about the tuner card. Not sure why media center wouldn't go into video library initially but that was throwing me off altogether.

Capt'n Midnight

Conar wrote: »

Thanks for the insight but that's not what the problem was the disk is fine. Checkdisk test finally finished after about 2.5 hours.

The windows chkdsk surface scan does NOT check the disk,

all it does is try to read every part of the disk and let the drive re-map bad sectors. - if the drive was making strange noises during the scan then not a good sign

get something like partedmagic CD (so not in windows) or manufacturers diagnostics to read the SMART info

hdtune - not sure if works on windows 8

Conar

Capt'n Midnight wrote: »

The windows chkdsk surface scan does NOT check the disk,

all it does is try to read every part of the disk and let the drive re-map bad sectors. - if the drive was making strange noises during the scan then not a good sign

get something like partedmagic CD (so not in windows) or manufacturers diagnostics to read the SMART info

hdtune - not sure if works on windows 8

Thanks but its all good.
I was running chkdsk as the error was filesystem related but was pretty certain the drive was fine before starting anyway so i figured it was a red herring. I thought maybe there was some file corruption from the upgrade.
I'm just setting up media center again, its my main box for watching and recording tv so my wife is fond of all this down time :-)
Once done I'll run a proper offline disk test to be doubley safe but I dont expect to find issues.

The driver for the tv tuner has caused the exact same issue for others so its safe to assume thats the last I'll see of the issue.

Conar

On a side note when I did the refresh it removed all my apps as expected but it puts a little link on the desktop with a list of all the apps it removed and links to install most of them.
I have to say thats a really nice feature.

Conar

testicle wrote: »

Sounds like your Hard Drive is knackered. Stop blaming Windows 8 for your hardware problems.

I've decided just to rewrite your comment.

testicle wrote:

Sounds like your Hard Drive is knackered. Maybe try to run some tests on your hardware to rule that out before wasting your time troubleshooting the OS. You might have just gotten unlucky and suffered a hardware failure just before the upgrade.

Now, that's more helpful and less unneccessarily confrontational isn't it

Fysh

Acronis Drive Monitor should let you check the drive SMART info and find out if there are any problems.