Skype and Hangouts Power Off My Computer

Recently Skype has totally locked up my computer. My only option was a warm boot. Now it's begun to shut the machine off. Not shut it down, shut it off. The first time it happened, I thought it was a brief power failure because the computer blinked completely off without warning. So I started a session in Hangouts to talk to a friend about it and the same thing happened, and there was clearly no power outage.

I didn't even get a BSOD. And Event Log Viewer won't work, even though the service is running. I downloaded and ran dm log collector and the zip files are attached below. I would be very grateful for any attention or help anyone can offer.

simply you can kill these services if not used them also choose services that which one need to be used at startup simply check all services to choose at startup

If it only happens with certain types of communication I would begin by updating the network driver.

ethan11james said:

simply you can kill these services if not used them also choose services that which one need to be used at startup simply check all services to choose at startup

Thank you for your advice, Ethan.
However, I want the the service called Windows Event Log to run, so I can see the details of crashes, but it won't run. Not even when I have set it to run on startup. Something stops it. I don't know what does that.

And I want Skype to run and not crash my computer. I am trying to figure out what is doing that.

paul1149 said:

If it only happens with certain types of communication I would begin by updating the network driver.

Thank you for your attention, Paul. I did check my network drivers as you suggested, but they're all up to date.

I ran the System File Checker and was told there were two corrupted files that couldn't be fixed: pnputil.exe.mui and PNPXAssocPrx.dll.mui. Am I jumping ahead of things, here? What would be the proper next step?

Hi Ingrid,

Something's going on under the hood. I suspect a permissions issue and perhaps driver conflict. Those two files pertain to drivers, though I'm not sure they affect this problem. It might be better to run SFC from a Windows Repair disk, which you can make in Control Panel / Backup. It might be able to repair the files when they're not in use.

I recommend creating a System Restore point before going any further, and ideally a full system image you can revert to in a crisis.

The Event Viewer exit code led me to this page. I would attempt the fix in post #6. See what that does before moving on.

On the drivers, two things. My next step would be to download the latest driver from the machine maker, then uninstall the network card with its drivers. Reboot and then install the latest driver again.

Has there been any hardware change? Some previous network adapter? If so there could be a driver conflict.

The last thing I would suspect is registry or service permissions. The program Tweaking.com can reset these and much more. I have had great results with it, but a couple of times it made things worse, thus I recommend the backups.

Hi, Paul. Sorry for the delayed reply; I'm grateful for your interest and willingness to help. Life just kept me from being able to respond faster. My original post has sort of branched out, so I'm going to number the issues, to make things as easy for you as I can.

1. I"ve never had to back up my system, so I'd never set up Windows Backup. When I tried to run it, I got the error message, "The backup application could not start due to an internal error: Server execution failed(0x80080005)". There's a thread talking about this issue at the Technet forums here, but I don't really understand the solution. When we get to it, would you be able to explain to me what to do? Needless to say, I wasn't able to create a system restore point or a full system image.
2. I have my OS disk, so I ran sfc from that, but it was unable to repair the corrupted files. The log file in my Windows\Logs\CBS directory looks different than the log produced the first time I ran sfc. It has over 24k lines and it's three times too large to upload here. Um... what would you like me to do with it?
3. Regarding the Event Log Viewer, I tried the solution in post #6 of the thread you directed me to. When i tried to rename the file (the last step) I was told access was denied even when I gave myself full administrator privileges, rebooted and tried again. By the way, I'm without doubt the sole user of this computer, ever.
4. Given the bad luck i've been having thus far, I've been too nervous to uninstall my network card and drivers. When I'm more assured nothing insidious is lurking about on my hard drive... Btw: I run Norton Security Suite and I avoid warez and crackz like they're Ebola.

The only hardware change since this machine was built 3 years ago has been removing a defective drive that was one of a pair configured as a RAID. I never bothered to replace it. I used a Logitech H600 wireless headset (drivers in dongle). Recently I've been using a Logitech c270 webcam and most recently, a very cheap set of Cyber Acoustics speakers that use my Realtek drivers.

Hi Ingrid, sorry for the delay. All these problems seem to point to a permissions problem. This is what I would do:

First, copy all important personal data to an external drive.

Since Windows Backup won't make a system image, use a 3rd party prog to create a full disk image on another drive. I use Aomei Backupper, though many here like Macrium Reflect. Create a boot disk for it as well. This way, if something goes haywire, you can restore to the current state in less than an hour.

Then I would download and run the tweaking.com all-in-one windows repair tool. It's best to run it in Safe Mode with Networking. Go through all the steps, including creating a Restore Point, which might work in Safe Mode.

My guess is that permissions got messed up somehow, which has affected WMI.

If these don't work I would try to create a new administrative user account, to see if that would have correct permissions.

We can deal with reducing the size of the CBS.log later if it comes to that.

BW,
Paul