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Waldorf Sixpence
Sep 6, 2004

Often harder on Player 2
Problem description: I'm trying to fix a friend's computer which is having trouble connecting to their router. My phone is connecting fine to the Wi-Fi so I'm confident the issue is their PC.
When I open Network and Sharing Center instead of an ethernet connection I see "The dependency service or group failed to start" and no wired or wireless network seems to be available.

Attempted fixes: I have Googled and attempted every single variation of a fix for this issue that I can find. To the best of my knowledge it seems that the Network Location Awareness service isn't starting (and cannot be manually started) so I think the computer is unable to identify any networks?

Recent changes: Short version; a loving ton. Long version; my friend's housemate recently started getting extremely paranoid about trojans, bitcoin miners, keyloggers etc. No idea whether they were right or wrong, but they did god knows what to the machine, installing dozens of antivirus cleaners and who knows what else. I think it's possible that the registry was affected? But I can't give a definitive list of changes, sorry!

E: yeah turns out they were deleting registry entries pretty much on a whim, based on suspicious filesizes they considered to be viruses. Uhhhhhhhhhhhhh

--

Operating system: e.g. Windows 10 Home 64 bit

System specs: I don't know how many of the specs are relevant, but the router is a Sky broadband router (again, WiFi working totally fine on my phone) and their network adapter is listed as "Realtek PCIe GBE Family Controller" in Device Manager. For what it's worth, the light in the ethernet port flicks on when the cable is in.

Location: UK

I have Googled and read the FAQ: Yes

Thank you for any advice you can give me. I've been go googling and desperately trying different fixes for hours. I really don't want to have to reinstall windows on their machine and have them lose everything they've got installed but that's my last resort if all else fails.

Waldorf Sixpence fucked around with this message at 03:47 on Mar 12, 2017

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Mo_Steel
Mar 7, 2008

Let's Clock Into The Sunset Together

Fun Shoe
Going to assume they weren't smart enough to backup their registry manually before they messed around in there. You could see if they have a System Restore point from before they decided to gently caress with their registry. Failing that, you would probably have to use Win 10's "Reset this PC" and choose to keep their files when prompted; it'll remove any 3rd party apps and reset the registry back to defaults. Pretty painless if they run apps with cloud storage of settings like Chrome and Steam to be honest.

Waldorf Sixpence
Sep 6, 2004

Often harder on Player 2

Mo_Steel posted:

Going to assume they weren't smart enough to backup their registry manually before they messed around in there. You could see if they have a System Restore point from before they decided to gently caress with their registry. Failing that, you would probably have to use Win 10's "Reset this PC" and choose to keep their files when prompted; it'll remove any 3rd party apps and reset the registry back to defaults. Pretty painless if they run apps with cloud storage of settings like Chrome and Steam to be honest.

Yeah that's what I feared. No system restore (I checked) but didn't check to see if there was a registry backup. Not sure where to look for that but I'll have a Google. When you say it keeps their files but removes their apps, how does that work? Is all the file structure of those apps left in place but they're simply not installed in the registry? (Fairly novice at the inner working of the registry here, sorry!) She is mostly concerned about losing all her photos and such which I'm assuming would stay in place.

Actuarial Fables
Jul 29, 2014

Taco Defender
When doing a Windows Reset, your user profile folder ( c:\Users\UserName ) is saved, so Documents, Music, Videos, Pictures, and any other files and folders that might be in there are retained.
However, the hidden AppData folder is moved to c:\windows.old. The data is still there though, so you can move some stuff back in if you need.

Applications will be fully uninstalled, as the c:\Program Files and c:\Program Files (x86) folders are not saved when doing a reset. A Windows Reset is basically doing a reinstall except a few folders are put aside then put back in once the install is done. You will be given a list of what applications were removed though, so you don't have to remember what you had. (The list is pretty much what you see in the Programs and Features control panel).

I don't know the situation over there, but might be a good idea to recommend to her to put a password on her computer. Additionally, if her pictures are important, have her look into backing them up so that if something like this happens again - but worse - she won't lose those files at least.

Waldorf Sixpence
Sep 6, 2004

Often harder on Player 2
Thanks for the advice! Have reinstalled windows and now everything looks good. Can access Internet, have installed antivirus and malware checkers.
With regards to the password, there is no password required when booting up, I just get straight to the desktop. If I press windows-L to lock the computer, it then asks for a password. Which no one here knows. How can I reset this in order to set an actual password required for boot up?

E: sorted it. As I could log in as an administrator so long as I didn't lock the computer, I could go into cmd and change the user account's password there without it asking me to confirm the existing password! Sorted.

Waldorf Sixpence fucked around with this message at 19:15 on Mar 12, 2017

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