"Failed to connect to a Windows Service" - Win8.1

[Lord Percy]

Started saying this in a little message box on the bottom right of my screen, now loads of stuff is going wrong, e.g. Explorer crashes if I right click on any item. And other things.

I put the question up on the Windows Community but answers have so far been a bit slow, so I'll give it to BCF too.

Question here: https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/forum/windows8_1-performance/failed-to-connect-to-a-windows-service-win81/2c9af471-c4f1-4ab7-9dcc-0c8032004ac4

The first time the issue happened was a time when my laptop came out of my room and into the uni library with me. Literally the only different 'thing' was that it would have been unsuccessfully trying to connect to the library wifi network. Aside from that, my computer has always been run in the same way and has no new software or recent downloads. So I dunno what's caused it.

Bit of a long shot but thought I'd put it up on here. Cheers!

[mudcow007]

can you do a system restore?

[UncleFester]

Been looking at Porn?

Run malwarebytes or spybot search & destroy.

Failing that run system restore back to a point you know it was ok ...

But if you've been watching porn and got infected with stuff, it might have infected system restore too.

TL:DR Your computer has bad aids, back up your work and reinstall the operating system
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2017 Z1000SX

[Lord Percy]

Haha, I'm in China where porn is very limited. Literally the only thing I can get on is the 'Adult GIF' page of 4Chan...!!!

The system restore does actually work, just not for very long it seems.

I did a second system restore yesterday and all seems ok this time around. It might just be a matter of time before it goes bad again.

I fly home at the end of this month. Bonus is that I get a free version of Windows 10 from Microsoft at that time too (dunno why, they seem to be giving it away to all Win8 users?), so that'll be when I back everything up and start again.

I'll have a look at Spybot and all that as well. Thanks a lot

[UncleFester]

If you know what you are about ...

Spybot S&D - safer-networking.org and go for for the 1.6 version
malwarebytes.org - again go for the free home version
Hijackthis - https://www.trendmicro.co.uk/products/free-tools-and-services/

Update both of tthem and reboot into safe mode.

Go to properties for local disc C and click 'disk cleanup' - select everything and let it run through.

Once that's done you can use the two programs above to clean up any infections.

If you are still seeing issues ( and you think it's spyware related ) have a run through hijack this but you need to know what you are doing.

Sometimes it's just quicker / easier to format and start again.
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2017 Z1000SX

[mudcow007]

if restore works, then it fails shortly after...

after the restore does it perform an windows update?

[stinkwheel]

[Lord Percy]

Nope, no updates.

As said in the Windows Community page I linked to in the OP, I've actually got to the root of the problem but I dunno where to do from there.

It's something to do with windows system files being corrupt or missing, and the automatic fixing procedure doesn't work because it claims there's not enough memory somewhere. Even though my computer has tons of memory, as far as I'm aware..!

Anyway everything still seems to be ok since I did this second system restore. To be honest it may have done an update which I just didn't notice. If another update comes through and then things go funny again, we'll be onto something.

Cheers everyone

@UncleBFester I'll also have a look at the things you mentioned too