TIPS TO FIX 10 COMMON ERRORS WITH WINDOWS 8.1

SAFEBYTES SOFTWARE

Microsoft’s Windows OS (Operating System) has now existed for 30 years. Since its humble beginnings as windows 1.0 to its latest iteration, windows 10. As the years have gone by, Windows as an operating system, has become more and more ubiquitous and virtually dominating the worldwide market for operating systems.

However, many people have not yet made the transition to Windows 10, and keep using older versions of Microsoft’s flagship Operating System, be it because of convenience or preference.As such, many people still are using the version that came before Windows 10: Windows 8.1.

Unfortunately, no software is released completely bug free. Months and months are invested in quality assurance to make sure that a piece of software is ready to go to market, and will not suffer any catastrophic bugs (which are bugs that will completely disrupt the software they are present in, rendering it unable to continue working).

However, there are many permutations of actions that users may take with a product, and sometimes, it is rather hard to find every single bug that may occur. At other times, the level of quality assurance is just not up to par, or the QA team simply ran out of time before they could find all the bugs in the code, be it because of budget or deadline reasons.

Whatever the reason, the bugs are present in many pieces of software, and Windows (in all its incarnations) is no exception. In this article, we will go over some of the most common bugs and errors found on Windows 8.1 and how to fix them.

1) Explorer.exe crashes frequently. By this we don’t mean Internet Explorer (which is incidentally full of backdoors and security vulnerabilities that viruses can exploit to get to your PC. Strongly consider changing your browser, if you are still using IE).

The explorer.exe is the executable that allows windows to be Windows, so if you are experiencing this problem you know how hard it is to actually do anything.

In this case, the most common fix is to use the “refresh my PC” feature. This will essentially re-install Windows 8, but leave your files intact. Simply:

·         Go to “Settings”·         Go to “Change PC settings”·         Go to “Update and Recovery”·         Under “Refresh your PC without affecting your files” click on “get started”

Before you do this, be sure to back up the most important files you have in your PC, even if Windows says, files are not going to be affected. When it comes to PCs, always think “better safe than sorry”.

2) Svchost.exe is taking up a lot of processor resources. This process is a common one in Windows, it is essential in the implementation of a way, for a number of different services to share one process to reduce resource consumption. In other words, it helps your PC run more smoothly.

Several things can cause svchost.exe to malfunction and consume more resources than it should:·         Malware. Since it is such a common process, some viruses may try to disguise themselves as svchost.exe in order to run unimpeded. To fix this, a simple virus and malware scan of the computer should suffice.

·         uPNP (universal Plug and Play) service. This service scans your home network for devices compatible with Windows. It can go a little overboard and scan continuously for devices, using up a lot of resources in the process. If that is the case, simply:

- Open the control Panel- Open “Network and Internet”- Open “Network and Sharing Centre”- Click on “Advanced Sharing Settings”- Turn off “Network Discovery”

3) Windows 8 will not shut down completely. If your PC is not actually shutting down, but entering sort of a sleeping state (where you can hear the computer’s fan working and see that the screen is not turned off, but rather dimmed down, a lot), it might be a conflict with the way Windows is configured to treat shutdowns.

To fix this issue, simply:·         Press the Windows key plus the R key on the keyboard·         Type “powercfg.cpl” on the box and click  OK·         Click on “choose what power buttons do”·         Look for “change settings that are currently unavailable” and click on it.·         Uncheck “Turn on fast start-up”

4) DRIVER_IRQL_NOT_LESS_OR_EQUAL. This error is displayed on the Blue Screen of Death that is now akin to a horror story among Windows users. The message may seem overly technical and impossible for a layman to fix, but there is a rather simple explanation and fix for this particular error. This message is simply letting you know, that one of the drivers installed on the computer is causing a conflict and needs to be updated or replaced.

The text next to the message will give you a clue as to what the driver may be, and if you are quick and write down the message, a google search should be enough to pinpoint the offending driver.

If the computer restarts itself faster than you can write or you could not take note of the message for any reason, you can find a log of the BSOD errors on your computers in:

  C:/Windows/Minidump

These files are not exactly easy to read for most normal users, although, it is possible to be able to find what you are looking for by searching for names associated with certain hardware in your PC.If push comes to shove, you can always contact Microsoft’s technical service and they will gladly help you figure out what the BSOD error dump is actually saying.

Finally, if the problem persists, you might be dealing not with faulty drivers, but with faulty hardware. If that is the case, unfortunately the only option that is available is to locate the faulty hardware and replace it.