Win 8 All apps and Charm Bar missing from Desk Top

Hi everyone,

Right off the bat I must tell you I have only used Win 8 a few times "on this LT". It belongs to a friend and I can usually get him out of trouble. This time not so much.

It is a HP Pavilion and that is really all I can tell you about it. Below is why:

When I power up the machine it opens to "what I presume is the Desktop" OK. However there is only the clock, Wi-Fi and Batt/AC icon on the screen. There are no Apps showing, no Charm Bar and no keyboard shortcuts work at all. If I click any place on the screen it opens to a gmail sign in page and that is it.

I probably should also mention that I get nothing hovering my mouse in the lower right corner. I didn't want to assume folks would know this

Now the clincher is that this is his wife's machine and she can't remember the PW for this gmail account. So I can't even sign into it to see if that even brings me anyplace beyond the gmail account.

One thing I did notice was that an automatic update did download itself while I was writing this. I shut down and let them load and restart hoping maybe all would be well on the restart. Not that lucky.

Oh, and did I mention he did not receive a disc with the machine nor was he in tuned to create a Rescue Disc.

Any ideas how to get him out of this jam.

 

The first screen you described is the lockscreen. Hitting 'Enter' or sliding your finger up the screen will go to login (requires touchscreen).

 

It is not a touch screen and when I hit enter it goes right to a pink page with the sign to a gmail mail account the owner doesn't remember the PW to.

 

That..is a problem. This is how you log into your computer. It won't be a gmail account either, but a Live account (which is probably using a gmail address like my own). In which case, the owner can reset it online.

 

It is not a touch screen and when I hit enter it goes right to a pink page with the sign to a gmail mail account the owner doesn't remember the PW to.

 

That computer surely had a recovery partition on the hard drive when new; this is standard on HP and many other new computers. And, the recovery partition, which is usually designated as drive D, can be run to restore the computer to its original software and OS configuration. To run this recovery partition on a HP computer, hitting F11 repeatedly as soon as the computer is turned on will open the recovery panel and you can proceed from there. Now, if they deleted the files on the recovery partition, then this won't work.

WARNING: Running the recovery procedure from the recovery partition will erase the hard drive and reinstall the OS. So, any user files will be lost.

If they have files they want to keep and those files are not backed up on some external media, I would create a Live CD with a version of Linux, such as Ubuntu. By running it off the DVD drive, as opposed to installing it, user files can be retrieved.

 

This is great info, I have heard talk about this but never really looked into it before. I just spent some time looking into it and will be giving this a try before using F11. I found a very informative site for doing so here: https://help.ubuntu.com/community/LiveCD

Thank for this great information

 

Thanks for everything everyone. I ended up doing a reinstall via disks purchased from HP. Everything worked as planned, now I just have to repeat all of the tweaks I had previously made for her. I also plan to install Malwarebytes Pro to the machine.

I found out yesterday that she never renewed the preinstalled Norton after the free 60 days. She said she tried to but couldn't figure it out. I have to figure this is why she got such a bad attack on the machine.

I never particularly liked Norton as it is just too intrusive on one's machine. After installing Malwarebytes I will be completely removing Norton as I normally do.

Thanks all, I just wanted to let everyone know the final outcome.

 

Keep in mind Malwarebytes Anti-Malware is for malware; you should still have an anti-virus program. I suggest Avast! Free Edition.

 

Interesting, as I understood it Malwarebytes is a on stop shop. I suppose the name should have been an indicator. I also use MS Essentials along with Malwarebytes is that an expectable combination?

Thanks for the wake up call

 

Yes, that's an acceptable combination.