Having an absolute nightmare with windows 8. Plaese help =(

[OldJamaica]

Im a musician and make music on my pc. I had xp and it served me well for years , but due to the software increasingly becoming more CPU hungry , I've been forced to upgrade , so I bought myself a new asus base unit on 26/12/2013 , and for 1 week installed lots of VSTs to try and get my new pc set up the way my old laptop was. . The new PC is 15 days old today and im having loads of problems. I'll try to keep it short and to the point.

1. when I tried to install a particular vst , in the space where I had to enter my serial number , it wouldn't let me and said "log in as administrator". I am the only person using this computer , and I am set up as an admin. When I investifated "user accounts" and "permissions" , it says I have "full control" but there is a box at the bottom which is greyed out , called "special permissions" and I cant tick it.

2. All of a sudden , windows explorer hangs when exploring either of my 2 external drives , but only when I get down to 3rd level files. When I right-click a file to select "play using windows media player " , the right click menu doesn;t appear and the green search bar s taking forever , stops , and hangs.

3. windows media player has stopped working , and when I try to play music files with the built-in asus player ( which the files are associated with ) it tells me I have to update in the store , so...the store loads , I try to update it and it kept saying pending. Eventually it said installed , but still doesnt work because explorer keeps scanning my drives and hanging.

4. I finally had enough of this and discovered I could refresh windows , so I tried that. After half an hour of finger tapping , it informed me it couldnt refresh it. Great !!

5. I thought " yeah , i'll set it back to that system restore point I made where everything was working fine " , so I opened sys restore , and my restore point had been replaced with one the pc made itself.....yesterday.

6. Sometimes when i restart the pc , it wont start right and says "preparing automatic repirs". The little circle spins for a while , then the computer clicks and I realise its stopped , so I press the power button to turn it off , turn it back on again and sometimes a light blue screen will appear saying " your pc wouldn't start" and suggests I look at  "bad system config info"

I feel like hurling it through a window right now. Windows 8 is a nightmare !!!
Im careful when installing things and always try to do things by the book , so why all this crap

Please can someone help me. This shouldn't be happening to a 2 week old PC. At least I still have my warranty , but I have a lot of work to do and its crucial I get it done , and I don't want to spend another tedious week installing VSTs all over again , so that really is the last resort.

I dont even know where to start to fix this debacle of a PC  =(

[BC_Programmer]

1. when I tried to install a particular vst , in the space where I had to enter my serial number , it wouldn't let me and said "log in as administrator". I am the only person using this computer , and I am set up as an admin. When I investifated "user accounts" and "permissions" , it says I have "full control" but there is a box at the bottom which is greyed out , called "special permissions" and I cant tick it.

Windows does not set you up as the admin account. Vista,7, and 8 attempted to fix the critical security problem of XP whereby all programs had full control over everything. The common misconception is for people to think theyhave been limited in what they can do, "golly I own this computer of course I'm an admin" type thing. But the capability exists to prevent any program from running amuck on your system, since you need to explicitly run the program as administrator.

Whatever program is installing your VST needs to be run as administrator. To do so right-click it's icon and select "Run as Administrator". You should be able to install stuff now.

2. All of a sudden , windows explorer hangs when exploring either of my 2 external drives , but only when I get down to 3rd level files. When I right-click a file to select "play using windows media player " , the right click menu doesn;t appear and the green search bar s taking forever , stops , and hangs.

I'd be inclined to suspect the Drives are on their way out, personally. It may be a case of taking ownership of the files.

Here's a way to easily add that to Windows 8. In this case you would want to right-click the HDD (after adding the above) and "take ownership" of the drive. Other considerations: What file system are your externals using? If they are FAT32 I would almost guarantee drive problems and you should run a disk check on them.

Depending on the contents of the folders in question, Windows might be generating previews or thumbnails or something. You an disable it by running:

Code: [Select]

regsvr32 /u shmedia.dllin an elevated command prompt. (My method is to press the windows key, type cmd, rightclick cmd.exe, and select "Run as Administrator" to get an elevated Prompt).

windows media player has stopped working , and when I try to play music files with the built-in asus player ( which the files are associated with ) it tells me I have to update in the store , so...the store loads , I try to update it and it kept saying pending. Eventually it said installed , but still doesnt work because explorer keeps scanning my drives and hanging.

this seems to point towards corrupted data on the drive (especially if it's using FAT32).

5. I thought " yeah , i'll set it back to that system restore point I made where everything was working fine " , so I opened sys restore , and my restore point had been replaced with one the pc made itself.....yesterday.

That's odd. I have restore points going back about a month on my laptop. (Also running windows

[soybean]

Can you briefly explain what VST is?  Does VST mean Virtual Studio Technology?  Generally, for your purposes, is a VST a plugin to Windows Media Player or some other media player?   Approximately how many plugins do you need? 

You mentioned a "built-in asus player".  Is this strictly software, or does this include special hardware?

With Win XP, was Windows Media Player your primary tool for listening to music?  Do you, or did you, use special software for mixing elements of music? 

Are you actually running Windows 8 or 8.1?