Windows Repair All in One-Issue with Action Center Notification *SOLVED*

[animal]

Hi, so I tried your product, hoping it would give me a little extra "push" for my system. It appears, though, that something went wrong. My action center notification on my task bar continuously pops in and out. This is distracting and annoying as I auto-hide my taskbar, and it drags the bar back down, then up again. Repeat, ad-nauseam. Not only that, but it is telling me that my anti-virus (both Avast! and Windows Defender) is turned off. WD is turned off, but Avast! is not. I'm assuming this is causing the pop up message, but I can't tell as it too quick to read. I've tried using system restore, and NONE of my restore points work any longer. Unfortunately I did not back up my registry. I am running Windows 8.1. Asus K55A (laptop). If you need any more info, I'd be more than happy to provide it, but would be much more happy if I could get this resolved. Thanks for the freeware, and your time. Hope to hear from you soon.

[animal]

Also, while running the program I ran into an issue with number 4(repairing WMI). The program hung for over an hour, so I killed the task, and restarted the program, unchecked number 4 and let it do it's thing. Hope that helps some. If I can think of anything else I'll be sure to post it.

[animal]

My sound isn't working either. Neither speakers nor headphones.

[Shane]

Killing the WMI repair is what caused the problems.

You need to run that repair and let it finish as a lot of things depend on WMI, so killing it when it isnt done will cause problems.

If it seems to be hanging for a while grab a screen shot of the cmd.exe window so I can see where it is at that is taking so long.

Once the WMI is repaired, after a extra reboot or so or after your Avast updates itself it will write itself back to the WMI and the action center will stop complaining

Normally the Repair WMI backs up the AV info from it for the action center and then puts it back in, but since you killed it, it wasnt able to do that. but like I said that isnt a problem as the AV will update itself back to it once WMI is repaired properly.

I run the Repair WMI on plenty of Windows 8.1 computers and haven't had it hang up like that before. make sure Avast is disabled when you run it.

Shane

[Shane]

Looks like Avast might be the cause of some of the problems with the repair

http://www.tweaking.com/forums/index.php/topic,1933.msg12545.html#msg12545

Shane

[animal]

Uninstalling Avast, the re-running the repair. I'll be back asap.

[Shane]

Cool beans

Remember let it finish, you can use the system monitor on the repair Windows to tell if anything is happening on the system. Normally the Repair WMI takes from 2 to 10 min depending on the system. So if it takes a long time get a screen shot for me so I can see what command it is on

Shane

[animal]

Ok, so Avast uninstalled. I ran the repair. Nothing took too long, nothing hung, it ran and completed, then restarted. I am still getting the pop up/message bubble. When I try to open Defender via Control Panel, I get the error you'll see in the attached image. When I try to start it via Action center it opens system32, which is on the right of the image. The message bubble still pops in and out.(the action center bubble you can see in the image is NOT the bubble I've been mentioning, that is open because I clicked it.) And my sound is gone. I'm not noticing any other issues at the moment. It may be important to know that I'm running 8.1 Professional with Media Center. I said 8.1 earlier.

[animal]

The bubble appears even after I turn off security notifications. The sound issue doesn't affect video playback, just audio. Videos play, just without sound. No sound from any windows actions, streaming, etc. Sound device is turned on and recognized/good in device manager. Just trying to give you all the info I have here.

[Shane]

The Windows defender service might be set to disabled, some AVs turn it off when they install.

Lets go check the services next. Check the audio service and the Windows defender service. Are they both running and set to automatic?

Shane

[animal]

I restarted Windows Audio service to no avail. I don't see any other services that would pertain to audio, input would be appreciated.
As far as Defender goes, I've included a screenshot. Researching error code now.

[animal]

I run Malwarebytes, Avast, and Spybot religiously, I highly doubt there is any infection. I also run TDSS killer from time to time. Never anything super harmful detected from any of the programs.

[Shane]

No antivirus or scanner is perfect and they can only catch what they know. So lets not count out anything just yet.

First lets check a few things.

1. Go to the properties of the Windows Defender service, it should show the start path it has. Get a screen shot of that for me.
2. Unplug your speakers from the port in the back, once unplugged see if you get a x in the sound icon in the tray icon. Windows should detect when the speakers are plugged in. Once you get the x if you dont already plug the speakers back in.
3. Go to the sound options in the control panel and post a screen shot of the playback devices.

If you haven't used it yet try malwarebytes anti rootkit tool, it is different than their normal scanner
http://www.malwarebytes.org/antirootkit/

Lets go from there

Almost 6:30 PM for me and about to have dinner, if for any reason I dont respond soon I will post back first thing in the morning, but I should be around for a bit more

Also if Avast is uninstalled download my Windows Repair 2.6.1, do a reg backup and run every single repair as well.

Shane

[animal]

OK, screenshot included for Defender service. I'm using a laptop, so my speakers are built in. If I plug head phones in, it recognizes that I've done so, but does not play any audio. I've got MBAR running now.

[animal]

MBAR ran, found no malware. Though I am getting this error as well when I try to play music. All data is stored locally. No NAS, mapped drives, etc.

[animal]

Ran the backup and created a restore point, ran the repair and checked every box. Still getting the bubble and no sound. Gonna run every program I have to scan for any malware just to be sure that isn't the case. 

[animal]

So I noticed that the bubble wasn't popping up after a restart, for a while. After some time it popped up again. So I checked all my delayed start services:

Background intelligent transfer service
Google update service
Iconman_R (Realtek card reader patch tool)
Intel mgmt and security application local mgmt service
Intel mgmt and security application user notification service
Security Center
Software protection

I restarted the last 5, as they all seem to be related to my problem. No luck on the sound, but the bubble isn't popping up. My action center still says that I have no anti-virus, or anti-spyware.

Not trying to flood the thread, just letting you know. Thanks for the help.

[Shane]

I am curious what the problem is myself. I want to see if I can find what is happening, that way if it is something I can automate fixing then I want to add it to the repair program

I have time today, send me an email, I will use teamviewer and connect to you and work with you on it and see if I can trace down what is happening. Will be a lot faster this way 

My email is shane at tweaking.com and I am in Oregon, so just need to find a time when we are both online.

Shane

[animal]

Sending email now.

[animal]

Apparently something went wrong with com+, I'll let Shane leave a detailed explanation of what happened. Thanks so much for the time and effort bud. 

[Shane]

Turns out there is an odd bug in Windows 8 when you register certain files a new registry location gets removed that has to do with COM+.

When that regkey is removed and com+ breaks all kinds of things goe nuts. This regkey was not in any other version of Windows.

Thankfully I found it and will be adding a repair for those regkeys for Windows 8 in the program and it will keep it from happening again :-D

Shane