Programs Crash Upon Running (Not all Programs) Need Help.

Alright well to start this I don't know when it began. Maybe a couple days ago however am not sure exactly how it all occurred. So I am running into a issue with my laptop where it will run certain programs but not others and it is causing some rather large issues with things.

List of Programs that Work (A Very Short List):
Google Chrome
Windows Task Manager
Google Talk
Trillian
Kaspersky Pure 3.0

Programs that Don't Work:
Windows Media Player
Media Player Classic
Steam
Gamestop Now
Apple QuickTime
Apple Itunes
Many others don't work. They crash without ever once showing any sign of launching.

This is a huge issue as I cannot watch any videos on my laptop at all currently and I need to be able to watch videos due to classes.

Steam launches, updates, then crashes when it goes to load the main program. QuickTime and WMP and MPC all show no sign of loading at all and just fail to launch.

I have attached a screen grab of my processes running. Do need some help as this is a HUGE annoyance. I cannot find my re-install disk that came with the laptop so some help would be AWESOME! I might have a restore point from a long time back.

If additional information is needed please say so.

I would also like to note that I did a full system scan. Didn't find anything in the files, system structure, registry or anything else computer was clean.

Note:
I am not computer illiterate and have no issues messing with my system registry if needed to remove something that is running.

One thing for sure, in that picture you have too many instances of Google Chrome running, may be impacting resources available. If Chrome seemed to be actually closed when you did the screenshot it could mean Chrome isn't removing itself from RAM when it is closed.

Berton said:

One thing for sure, in that picture you have too many instances of Google Chrome running, may be impacting resources available. If Chrome seemed to be actually closed when you did the screenshot it could mean Chrome isn't removing itself from RAM when it is closed.

Nah that's just the tabs I had open when i took the screen grab. Am doing research trying to match something with the process and issue. Along with my e-mail. Google chrome is not the issue (that i'm aware of) as I've run these programs with about 10+ tabs running. If I close Chrome it empties out from the processes just fine.

(I get a little tab happy sometimes)

On that note for some reason 1 tab of chrome is generating 4 processes.

Berton said:

One thing for sure, in that picture you have too many instances of Google Chrome running, may be impacting resources available. If Chrome seemed to be actually closed when you did the screenshot it could mean Chrome isn't removing itself from RAM when it is closed.

Just an FYI; The behaviour described is completely normal and the reason for multiple Chrome.exe processes being listed in the Task Manager is that each Chrome tab, extension and plugin in use is treated as its own individual process for security reasons and so that if one tab crashes, your whole browser does not crash.

How exactly those programs crash? With BSOD or freeze completely or stop and not-responding when you start them or they don't even start?
All of them started to do this or eg. 3 days ago Steam worked but WMP not and 2 days ago non of them worked (they are not working since the exact same time?)
And how old is your laptop?

maudib32 said:

Vistangel said:

How exactly those programs crash? With BSOD or freeze completely or stop and not-responding when you start them or they don't even start?
All of them started to do this or eg. 3 days ago Steam worked but WMP not and 2 days ago non of them worked (they are not working since the exact same time?)
And how old is your laptop?

It all started at once. Windows media player and everything else just stopped working all at the same time. Now they all do the same relative thing just some act differently than others.

Windows Media Player - Opens then immediately crashes upon trying to play a video will play music
Media Player Classic - Same as WMP
Apple QuickTime - Doesn't even open
iTunes - Doesn't even Open
Steam - Goes to login screen then once logging in doesn't launch
Eve Online - Same Behavior goes to login screen then doesn't launch

So basically media players are acting differently however they still crash.
Games, steam or any other software doesn't really work. Chrome, gtalk, teamspeak, skype all seem to work fine.

Programs Install just fine. Got MPC and QuickTime to work after initial install then once I closed the software it will no longer launch.

As far as the age of the laptop I would have to say 4+ years. Dunno exactly though.

It seems like all internet-related softwares are working but no kind of media players or games are working. Maybe your video/music files and games are corrupted because of HDD failure which is very likely if your laptop is more than 4 years old and you haven't replaced it yet.
My 4 year old laptop's HDD has almost died and I almost lost my newly written 15 pages of my book and a lot of pre-made Youtube videos and paintings. Service couldn't do anything but I could repair it for myself and I still use it as an external HDD. Signs can be randomly disappearing files/corrupted files/programs not running or randomly crashing (altough for me, it hapenned in an instant and I couldn't boot, I got BSOD but my 8+ years old laptop acted like I described). So:
- It is maybe caused by HDD hardware problem (especially if random unexplained errors occur like in your case)
- Altough I can't help with that, rarely RAM would cause this but I'm not sure
- File system error (related to bad HDD but not hardware failure)
- Or caused by some weird Windows issue
Tell me your laptop specs (make and model, especially the HDD) so I can help you choose a good diagnostic tool for your HDD. There are a lot of other options we can try to find out what is the problem but if it's the HDD then you should act quiclky.
And to ensure it's not hardware failure, would you put your ear next to the laptop and tell me if it's making some kind of weird noises when the programs crash? (sratching, loudly clicking, trashing sounds).
(Maybe the problem is simpler and I'm making it too complicate but this kind of hardware failure is the most common and the worst as you would need to spend $500+ to recover data so it diagnosing does worth a try.)

Vistangel said:

maudib32 said:

Vistangel said:

How exactly those programs crash? With BSOD or freeze completely or stop and not-responding when you start them or they don't even start?
All of them started to do this or eg. 3 days ago Steam worked but WMP not and 2 days ago non of them worked (they are not working since the exact same time?)
And how old is your laptop?

It all started at once. Windows media player and everything else just stopped working all at the same time. Now they all do the same relative thing just some act differently than others.

Windows Media Player - Opens then immediately crashes upon trying to play a video will play music
Media Player Classic - Same as WMP
Apple QuickTime - Doesn't even open
iTunes - Doesn't even Open
Steam - Goes to login screen then once logging in doesn't launch
Eve Online - Same Behavior goes to login screen then doesn't launch

So basically media players are acting differently however they still crash.
Games, steam or any other software doesn't really work. Chrome, gtalk, teamspeak, skype all seem to work fine.

Programs Install just fine. Got MPC and QuickTime to work after initial install then once I closed the software it will no longer launch.

As far as the age of the laptop I would have to say 4+ years. Dunno exactly though.

It seems like all internet-related softwares are working but no kind of media players or games are working. Maybe your video/music files and games are corrupted because of HDD failure which is very likely if your laptop is more than 4 years old and you haven't replaced it yet.
My 4 year old laptop's HDD has almost died and I almost lost my newly written 15 pages of my book and a lot of pre-made Youtube videos and paintings. Service couldn't do anything but I could repair it for myself and I still use it as an external HDD. Signs can be randomly disappearing files/corrupted files/programs not running or randomly crashing (altough for me, it hapenned in an instant and I couldn't boot, I got BSOD but my 8+ years old laptop acted like I described). So:
- It is maybe caused by HDD hardware problem (especially if random unexplained errors occur like in your case)
- Altough I can't help with that, rarely RAM would cause this but I'm not sure
- File system error (related to bad HDD but not hardware failure)
- Or caused by some weird Windows issue
Tell me your laptop specs (make and model, especially the HDD) so I can help you choose a good diagnostic tool for your HDD. There are a lot of other options we can try to find out what is the problem but if it's the HDD then you should act quiclky.
And to ensure it's not hardware failure, would you put your ear next to the laptop and tell me if it's making some kind of weird noises when the programs crash? (sratching, loudly clicking, trashing sounds).
(Maybe the problem is simpler and I'm making it too complicate but this kind of hardware failure is the most common and the worst as you would need to spend $500+ to recover data so it diagnosing does worth a try.)

And when I mean tell me your system specs not like what you wrote there that "500gb HDD" and "HP" and "AMD Quad Core" but the model name and model number. Like Segate Momentus 5.100 (that's not a real Seagate number) or 111GB KINGSTON SV300S37A120G ATA Device (SSD) <- that's my real number
Try to give proper specs for reference, check out my specs down there. If you don't know the proper specs, download Piriform Speccy which will tell you Da Truth.

maudib32 said:

That I don't know. The HDD isn't making any strange noises. Just things are not working. I don't know what kind of HDD it is as it has been so long since I purchased the laptop. Laptop is a HP Pavilion Dv7. I've had issues with HDD's failing before with other computers and this isn't showing the signs of HDD failure really. I did try the videos and stuff that were not working on another computer (less than ideal since that computer is about 8 years old) and they played just fine so the files are not corrupted. I was thinking about doing a restore point and seeing how that goes and if it fixes some of the issues I am having.

The HDD sounds fine when I try to load the programs and stuff that are not working. However if it is gradual HDD failure it makes sense what is happening. But not ready to write it off just yet.

HDD - Samsung HM640JJ
Graphics Card - Radeon HD6770M
CPU - I swear this laptop has a AMD Processer but device manager is saying Intel Core i7-2630QM

(Story)My 8 year old laptop had a slow HDD failure which meant when I played Halo 1 the sounds randomly muted (I fired a pistol and it didn't make sound but the bullet had impact sounds) and textures disappeared (some black holes on the walls) and some weeks after then I could just boot XP with safe mode but my uncle did something and the HDD was still working some years ago. So it was weird too and it didn't make strange noises too and slowly became corrupted.

I looked up the HDD and I've seen it's not 500gb but 640gb. Btw it looks pretty good for a laptop.

If it isn't making sounds then it's not hardware failure. However the file system can become corrupted after a lot of years (=bad sectors) and if you're very unlucky maybe some 4-8 kb of your programs/videos will be unreadable and may cause the WMP and other player to freeze as they try to read the data but they can't.
If you'd made restore point then it's a good thing to try out if it's working.

Samsung Diagnostic Free Download - Softpedia
Here's the Samsung Disagnostic tool but I read those comments and seems like a complete garbage.

SeaTools | Seagate
Seatools may work, it's not locked to only Seagate HDDs as far as I know and it recovered my HDD (However I had a Seagate HDD)

Hard Disk Sentinel - HDD health and temperature monitoring
This is an agressive and somehow free program for ultimate specs and error checks for HDDs.

So there aren't any messages when the program crash? They just freeze? Did you try to reinstall them? Try safe mode if it works.
If not, install the latest drivers for sound/video card.

If you open task manager and go to performance tab (4th tab in Windows 7) how many threads do you see next to processor usage?