Strange problem with task manager

Last couple of days have had weird problem with task manager .

Can open from ctrl alt del and end running tasks. click on more details wait about 5 seconds and task manager closes. reopen click more details and as soon as new window opens click on any of the tabs and instant task mgr closure.

Have tried running sfc /scannow did find one corrupt file which was repaired ran sfc again to check no problems ran taskman still same problem. Also ran scans with Defender and Avast both of which reported no problems.

Disabled all start-up programs using appwiz and tried again same problem

Boot into safe mode same problem

Have had 2 sessions with remote control from MS but still problem remains.

Short of a clean install anyone have any ideas how to fix please

Keith

 

Kougar many thanks for the reply.

I will certainly give it a try as at the moment it has me and MS beaten.

Keith

Edit
Gpedit has setting as Not configured so guess back to drawing board but in meantime will try windows recovery

 

Never heard of that before. AS Kougar says, it does look like a virus. There is no known bug that would cause that behaviour.

Hopefully, the advice will sort it, but somehow I don't think so.
But try running it directly from the C:\Windows\System32 folder and see if it could be a problem with a lost path?

P.S. Just one query. Which "running tasks" are you closing?

 

Thanks Davehc.

First the bad news - tried that but no difference.

Running tasks are not the problem. programs running at startup are problem namely magnifyer (don't know how that happened) and vrc recorder. If I use msconfig the start tab refers me to the startup tab in task manager so I can not stop progs loading.

Another strange thing is that I have also tried a clean boot and still get problem I suppose if I delete programs and reinstall that may work

Keith

 

In msconfig (referred) or the task manager, when you click the startup tab (if you are able?) you can stop any of the items from starting with the OS, by right clicking them under status and disabling. But in your post, you refer to "appwiz". This uninstalls them, of course, not disables them from starting with the OS? But, if you didn't need them, I guess this would come down to the same.
fwiw. Avast has been known to cause problems with windows 8, but perhaps they have cleaned it up. I only use the built in defender. I cannot see how it is related to your problem, but another thing that Avast, and some other antivirus programs do in windows 8, is disable the Firewall. This prevents the full use of the modern screen.

 

Many thanks Guys for the replies and suggestions.

Problem has now been sorted but I am still at a loss as to why it happened.
Saga:
Sfc ran reported no problems
Avast ran reported no problems

CURE
System refresh ran reported missing files and asked for installation cd.
After refresh win 8 got in a loop start-select keyboard-restart-request keyboard etc.
Booted from dvd ran refresh again ran no problems boot into win 8 checked task manager works fine.

WARNING
Although Documents and settings were retained all programs were deleted in my case 124 (yes I know I am greedy and also yes I use most of them) and this I was not expecting in addition system backups and restore were deleted so perhaps a full backup to an external drive is in order.

Anyway back in business so again many thanks for those replies and suggestion they will be tucked away for future reference if needed

Keith

 

Great going, kaybee. Sorry it had to be the "ultimate" solution.

 

I was doubtful that it was a virus reading through these replies as it was mentioned to still happen after running the system file checker, and afterwards, persisted within a clean boot state as well as safe mode.

Initially it may sound like something a virus would do, but if after scans, different boot states, and system file checker nothing suspicious went on, It's likely that it's not a virus, unless it's a new virus with a different approach at becoming hidden on your system; AV's don't have detections for it, and nothing else apparently obvious to suspicion was seen.

If you understand what a clean boot state is, and what is different about safe mode in comparison to a normal boot, you would probably narrow it down to corruption like I did. A virus might have initially caused this, and after being removed, would have left missing and/or corrupt files behind, but without no surefire way of telling, there's no saying what is what.

I was going to suggest checking your Event Viewer as with missing files, this is probably the reason for termination of your taskmgr.exe process with an error code, which could have been traced back to a cause... Perhaps functionality for the detailed view, graphs, or whatever, was placed and encapsulated within an external dynamic link library, that when called, caused a runtime error for the running process (taskmgr.exe) and terminated the it because it could execute a function embedded within the called dll because it was missing from the filesystem.

As mentioned though, this error should have been recorded in your Event Viewer.