Laptop is a Dell Inspiron 14-5000 running Windows 10 Home.

I was trying to create a new Restore Point, but get this pop-up box:

"There was an unpexpected error in the property page:
Catastrophic failure (0x8000FFF)"

The reason for wanting to do a Restore Point (and this may be related to
the Catastrophic failure message, or not) is that my Desktop icons have
been replaced with only the icon text. In other words, no icon picture,
only each icon's text in the same position where the icon should be.
Right clicking on desktop > View > Show desktop is checked.

Also, discovered that Properties will not open for anything, only
Properties for This PC will open.

In spite of being unable to create a new restore point, doing an actual
System Restore of a previous restore point runs without issue, except
when finished, it didn't fix the problems of no icon pictures or
Properties not opening.

After spending hours googling for solutions and trying more than a dozen
fixes, none have worked, that is, all three problems described above
have remained unfixed.

Having done a lot of personalization on this laptop, I want to avoid a
wipe of the drive and having to re-install everything. So any
suggestions, ideas, will be most welcome.

TIA

--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
* Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)

"Paul" <nospam@needed.invalid> wrote in message news:ucotat$3352h$1@dont-email.me...

On 8/30/2023 5:43 PM, George wrote:

Laptop is a Dell Inspiron 14-5000 running Windows 10 Home.

I was trying to create a new Restore Point, but get this pop-up box:

"There was an unpexpected error in the property page:
Catastrophic failure (0x8000FFF)"

The reason for wanting to do a Restore Point (and this may be related
to
the Catastrophic failure message, or not) is that my Desktop icons
have
been replaced with only the icon text. In other words, no icon
picture,
only each icon's text in the same position where the icon should be.
Right clicking on desktop > View > Show desktop is checked.

Also, discovered that Properties will not open for anything, only
Properties for This PC will open.

In spite of being unable to create a new restore point, doing an
actual
System Restore of a previous restore point runs without issue, except
when finished, it didn't fix the problems of no icon pictures or
Properties not opening.

After spending hours googling for solutions and trying more than a
dozen
fixes, none have worked, that is, all three problems described above
have remained unfixed.

Having done a lot of personalization on this laptop, I want to avoid
a
wipe of the drive and having to re-install everything. So any
suggestions, ideas, will be most welcome.

TIA

A Restore Point, as far as I know, puts the old Registry files back.

A Restore Point, plus no malware on board = fix
A Restore Point with malware = no fix

Most malwares, have code to add themselves to Restore Points. This
prevents users from "escaping" using System Restore.

*******

In Windows Security : Scan Options

is "Microsoft Defender Antivirus (offline scan)". Selecting
this option, the computer reboots in a few seconds, and
it does a scan with the regular software not running. It would
use a WinRE.wim as the boot system, and it does not boot
using the regular C:\Windows files.

The only fault I have with this idea, is the poor interface. It
does not stop, while offline, and give you a nice summary of what
it found. Maybe it does stop -- if malware is present.

In any case, this is what I would do first, before this next step

*******

Repair Install.

Using winver.exe , you can see what version of Windows 10 you are
running. 19045.xxx would be relatively up-to-date (22H2 version).
If you request a Win10 download DVD today, Microsoft would serve
you the 22H2 version.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_10_version_history

It's best to use the same version, or, a newer version. The 22H2
would be the current version. Machines can be stuck on older versions
if Windows Update is broken. Most of the blockers have been removed,
and 22H2 is currently "aggressive" with respect to the upgrade
campaign.

Older versions are still available. The Heidoc tool, has a menu
that generates URLs into Techbench on the Microsoft site for that.
You can copy the URL Heidoc Tool makes (using the Copy button in the interface)
into your browser, and see that it is a download coming from
Microsoft.

https://www.heidoc.net/joomla/technology-science/microsoft/67-microsoft-windows-and-office-iso-download-tool

https://www.heidoc.net/php/Windows-ISO-Downloader.exe # Uses .net
4.x

When the ISO file arrives, right click it in the running Windows 10
and
select Mount from the right-click menu, then File Explorer and
navigate
to the top level of the virtual DVD drive. There, you will find
Setup.exe,
which will kick off the Repair Install. After the first reboot, the
process
no longer cares whether a DVD is there or not, which is why the
process
can work with a virtual DVD as an install source.

If the Registry is infected with something, a Repair Install won't
fix that. During a Repair Install, portions of the Registry are
migrated, and the Registry is not as minty fresh as we would like. Undoubtedly, malware writers know this.

But that's about the best I can do, as a "blanket solution".
It doesn't come with guarantees. You get to keep your programs
and user data, so the intention of this procedure, is it
does not make changes to the logical function of your machine.

*******

While another solution might be to clean the icon cache, your
symptoms sound more serious than that as a root cause.

https://www.tenforums.com/tutorials/5645-rebuild-icon-cache-windows-10-a.html

I would do that from Linux, I would think, as I could have a screen to
look
at for the whole procedure. And AppData is not compressed, so that
part of
the C: tree should be navigable. Any time a procedure involved killing Explorer.exe,
that's a little more than most people are confortable with (you can
restart Explorer.exe
after it is all over, using Task Manager, but the latest OSes may not
make this as easy
as it was previously. I was trying to find that the other day, and
ended up with
that puzzled look on my face. That is probably why the procedure on
the web
page involves a restart, to reduce puzzlement.

It's because Explorer.exe would have the iconcache "open", that the
procedure
would fail unless Explorer.exe was killed first.

A Repair Install gives you a new iconcache :-)

Paul

Paul, thanks for the ideas. You've given me several days of things to
try!

Appreciate it.

George

--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
* Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)

George <null@null.net> wrote:

Laptop is a Dell Inspiron 14-5000 running Windows 10 Home.

I was trying to create a new Restore Point, but get this pop-up box:

"There was an unpexpected error in the property page:
Catastrophic failure (0x8000FFF)"

The reason for wanting to do a Restore Point (and this may be related to
the Catastrophic failure message, or not) is that my Desktop icons have
been replaced with only the icon text. In other words, no icon picture,
only each icon's text in the same position where the icon should be.
Right clicking on desktop > View > Show desktop is checked.

Also, discovered that Properties will not open for anything, only
Properties for This PC will open.

In spite of being unable to create a new restore point, doing an actual System Restore of a previous restore point runs without issue, except
when finished, it didn't fix the problems of no icon pictures or
Properties not opening.

After spending hours googling for solutions and trying more than a dozen fixes, none have worked, that is, all three problems described above
have remained unfixed.

Having done a lot of personalization on this laptop, I want to avoid a
wipe of the drive and having to re-install everything. So any
suggestions, ideas, will be most welcome.

The failure of the properties page to open is often attributed to some
program you installed that added a shell extension. If the shell
extension hangs or crashes, you cannot open the Properties page.

This is one of the few times a registry cleaner will help. It may
notice an orphaned shell extension, like you uninstalled something that
added a shell extension, but didn't delete the definition when it was uninstalled or wasn't a clean uninstall, and the shell extension defined
in the registry points at a non-existing handler file, or a remnant one
but the other support files are missing after the incomplete uninstall.
I use CCleaner, and sometimes it has found remnants after an uninstall
that it can delete (upon my permission). Don't use a registry cleaner
that doesn't show you its proposed changes, and asks for your permission
to make the changes. That also means you need to understand for what
are the registry entries it proposes to delete, so sometimes you have to
do some research to make an educated determination of deletion.

You can also use Nirsoft's ShellExView which lists the shell extensions
that got added to the registry. You can use it to check if any that are
listed are for programs you remember previously uninstalling. You can
also disable shell extensions to see if and when the Properties page
works okay. There can be a LOT of shell extensions, and some programs
add more than one. ShellExView reports I have 295 shell extensions
defined in the registry. Only some are active (effected) on some types
of objects, like files, folders, drives, etc.

Since you're getting an error code, have you looked in Event Viewer log
to see if there was an entry added when you attempted to show the
Properties page?

--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
* Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)

On 8/30/2023 5:43 PM, George wrote:

Laptop is a Dell Inspiron 14-5000 running Windows 10 Home.

I was trying to create a new Restore Point, but get this pop-up box:

"There was an unpexpected error in the property page:
Catastrophic failure (0x8000FFF)"

The reason for wanting to do a Restore Point (and this may be related to
the Catastrophic failure message, or not) is that my Desktop icons have
been replaced with only the icon text. In other words, no icon picture,
only each icon's text in the same position where the icon should be.
Right clicking on desktop > View > Show desktop is checked.

Also, discovered that Properties will not open for anything, only
Properties for This PC will open.

In spite of being unable to create a new restore point, doing an actual System Restore of a previous restore point runs without issue, except
when finished, it didn't fix the problems of no icon pictures or
Properties not opening.

After spending hours googling for solutions and trying more than a dozen fixes, none have worked, that is, all three problems described above
have remained unfixed.

Having done a lot of personalization on this laptop, I want to avoid a
wipe of the drive and having to re-install everything. So any
suggestions, ideas, will be most welcome.

TIA

A Restore Point, as far as I know, puts the old Registry files back.

A Restore Point, plus no malware on board = fix
A Restore Point with malware = no fix

Most malwares, have code to add themselves to Restore Points. This
prevents users from "escaping" using System Restore.

*******

In Windows Security : Scan Options

is "Microsoft Defender Antivirus (offline scan)". Selecting
this option, the computer reboots in a few seconds, and
it does a scan with the regular software not running. It would
use a WinRE.wim as the boot system, and it does not boot
using the regular C:\Windows files.

The only fault I have with this idea, is the poor interface. It
does not stop, while offline, and give you a nice summary of what
it found. Maybe it does stop -- if malware is present.

In any case, this is what I would do first, before this next step

*******

Repair Install.

Using winver.exe , you can see what version of Windows 10 you are
running. 19045.xxx would be relatively up-to-date (22H2 version).
If you request a Win10 download DVD today, Microsoft would serve
you the 22H2 version.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_10_version_history

It's best to use the same version, or, a newer version. The 22H2
would be the current version. Machines can be stuck on older versions
if Windows Update is broken. Most of the blockers have been removed,
and 22H2 is currently "aggressive" with respect to the upgrade campaign.

Older versions are still available. The Heidoc tool, has a menu
that generates URLs into Techbench on the Microsoft site for that.
You can copy the URL Heidoc Tool makes (using the Copy button in the interface) into your browser, and see that it is a download coming from Microsoft.

https://www.heidoc.net/joomla/technology-science/microsoft/67-microsoft-windows-and-office-iso-download-tool

https://www.heidoc.net/php/Windows-ISO-Downloader.exe # Uses .net 4.x

When the ISO file arrives, right click it in the running Windows 10 and
select Mount from the right-click menu, then File Explorer and navigate
to the top level of the virtual DVD drive. There, you will find Setup.exe, which will kick off the Repair Install. After the first reboot, the process
no longer cares whether a DVD is there or not, which is why the process
can work with a virtual DVD as an install source.

If the Registry is infected with something, a Repair Install won't
fix that. During a Repair Install, portions of the Registry are
migrated, and the Registry is not as minty fresh as we would like.
Undoubtedly, malware writers know this.

But that's about the best I can do, as a "blanket solution".
It doesn't come with guarantees. You get to keep your programs
and user data, so the intention of this procedure, is it
does not make changes to the logical function of your machine.

*******

While another solution might be to clean the icon cache, your
symptoms sound more serious than that as a root cause.

https://www.tenforums.com/tutorials/5645-rebuild-icon-cache-windows-10-a.html

I would do that from Linux, I would think, as I could have a screen to look
at for the whole procedure. And AppData is not compressed, so that part of
the C: tree should be navigable. Any time a procedure involved killing Explorer.exe,
that's a little more than most people are confortable with (you can restart Explorer.exe
after it is all over, using Task Manager, but the latest OSes may not make this as easy
as it was previously. I was trying to find that the other day, and ended up with
that puzzled look on my face. That is probably why the procedure on the web page involves a restart, to reduce puzzlement.

It's because Explorer.exe would have the iconcache "open", that the procedure would fail unless Explorer.exe was killed first.

A Repair Install gives you a new iconcache :-)

Paul

--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
* Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)

"VanguardLH" <V@nguard.LH> wrote in message news:1cwfvqa4mqfw8.dlg@v.nguard.lh...

George <null@null.net> wrote:

Laptop is a Dell Inspiron 14-5000 running Windows 10 Home.

I was trying to create a new Restore Point, but get this pop-up box:

"There was an unpexpected error in the property page:
Catastrophic failure (0x8000FFF)"

The reason for wanting to do a Restore Point (and this may be related
to
the Catastrophic failure message, or not) is that my Desktop icons
have
been replaced with only the icon text. In other words, no icon
picture,
only each icon's text in the same position where the icon should be.
Right clicking on desktop > View > Show desktop is checked.

Also, discovered that Properties will not open for anything, only
Properties for This PC will open.

In spite of being unable to create a new restore point, doing an
actual
System Restore of a previous restore point runs without issue, except
when finished, it didn't fix the problems of no icon pictures or
Properties not opening.

After spending hours googling for solutions and trying more than a
dozen
fixes, none have worked, that is, all three problems described above
have remained unfixed.

Having done a lot of personalization on this laptop, I want to avoid
a
wipe of the drive and having to re-install everything. So any
suggestions, ideas, will be most welcome.

The failure of the properties page to open is often attributed to some program you installed that added a shell extension. If the shell
extension hangs or crashes, you cannot open the Properties page.

This is one of the few times a registry cleaner will help. It may
notice an orphaned shell extension, like you uninstalled something
that
added a shell extension, but didn't delete the definition when it was uninstalled or wasn't a clean uninstall, and the shell extension
defined
in the registry points at a non-existing handler file, or a remnant
one
but the other support files are missing after the incomplete
uninstall.
I use CCleaner, and sometimes it has found remnants after an uninstall
that it can delete (upon my permission). Don't use a registry cleaner
that doesn't show you its proposed changes, and asks for your
permission
to make the changes. That also means you need to understand for what
are the registry entries it proposes to delete, so sometimes you have
to
do some research to make an educated determination of deletion.

You can also use Nirsoft's ShellExView which lists the shell
extensions
that got added to the registry. You can use it to check if any that
are
listed are for programs you remember previously uninstalling. You can
also disable shell extensions to see if and when the Properties page
works okay. There can be a LOT of shell extensions, and some programs
add more than one. ShellExView reports I have 295 shell extensions
defined in the registry. Only some are active (effected) on some
types
of objects, like files, folders, drives, etc.

Since you're getting an error code, have you looked in Event Viewer
log
to see if there was an entry added when you attempted to show the
Properties page?

Thanks Vanguard, I'll add those suggestions to my to-do list.

George

--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
* Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)

In article <iGqdnX7oLJwuJXL5nZ2dnZfqn_udnZ2d@earthlink.com>, George wrote...

Laptop is a Dell Inspiron 14-5000 running Windows 10 Home.

I was trying to create a new Restore Point, but get this pop-up box:

"There was an unpexpected error in the property page:
Catastrophic failure (0x8000FFF)"

The reason for wanting to do a Restore Point (and this may be related to
the Catastrophic failure message, or not) is that my Desktop icons have
been replaced with only the icon text. In other words, no icon picture,
only each icon's text in the same position where the icon should be.
Right clicking on desktop > View > Show desktop is checked.

Also, discovered that Properties will not open for anything, only
Properties for This PC will open.

In spite of being unable to create a new restore point, doing an actual System Restore of a previous restore point runs without issue, except
when finished, it didn't fix the problems of no icon pictures or
Properties not opening.

After spending hours googling for solutions and trying more than a dozen fixes, none have worked, that is, all three problems described above
have remained unfixed.

Having done a lot of personalization on this laptop, I want to avoid a
wipe of the drive and having to re-install everything. So any
suggestions, ideas, will be most welcome.

TIA

First thing I'd want to do is check the health of the hard disk, using a SMART monitor utility. I use HD Sentinel (paid) but HDTune is free for personal use:

http://www.hdtune.com/index.html

--

Phil, London

--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
* Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)

For those following this thread, I had forgotten that I had an Acronis
backup on an external drive, and even though it was about a month old,
after running it, it fixed ALL of the problems. Can't speak too highly
of Acronis backup!


"George" <null@null.net> wrote in message news:iGqdnX7oLJwuJXL5nZ2dnZfqn_udnZ2d@earthlink.com...

Laptop is a Dell Inspiron 14-5000 running Windows 10 Home.

I was trying to create a new Restore Point, but get this pop-up box:

"There was an unpexpected error in the property page:
Catastrophic failure (0x8000FFF)"

The reason for wanting to do a Restore Point (and this may be related
to the Catastrophic failure message, or not) is that my Desktop icons
have been replaced with only the icon text. In other words, no icon
picture, only each icon's text in the same position where the icon
should be. Right clicking on desktop > View > Show desktop is checked.

Also, discovered that Properties will not open for anything, only
Properties for This PC will open.

In spite of being unable to create a new restore point, doing an
actual System Restore of a previous restore point runs without issue,
except when finished, it didn't fix the problems of no icon pictures
or Properties not opening.

After spending hours googling for solutions and trying more than a
dozen fixes, none have worked, that is, all three problems described
above have remained unfixed.

Having done a lot of personalization on this laptop, I want to avoid a
wipe of the drive and having to re-install everything. So any
suggestions, ideas, will be most welcome.

TIA

--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
* Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)

For those following this thread, I had forgotten that I had an Acronis
backup on an external drive, and even though it was about a month old,
after running it, it fixed ALL of the problems. Can't speak too highly
of Acronis backup!


"George" <null@null.net> wrote in message news:iGqdnX7oLJwuJXL5nZ2dnZfqn_udnZ2d@earthlink.com...

Laptop is a Dell Inspiron 14-5000 running Windows 10 Home.

I was trying to create a new Restore Point, but get this pop-up box:

"There was an unpexpected error in the property page:
Catastrophic failure (0x8000FFF)"

The reason for wanting to do a Restore Point (and this may be related
to the Catastrophic failure message, or not) is that my Desktop icons
have been replaced with only the icon text. In other words, no icon
picture, only each icon's text in the same position where the icon
should be. Right clicking on desktop > View > Show desktop is checked.

Also, discovered that Properties will not open for anything, only
Properties for This PC will open.

In spite of being unable to create a new restore point, doing an
actual System Restore of a previous restore point runs without issue,
except when finished, it didn't fix the problems of no icon pictures
or Properties not opening.

After spending hours googling for solutions and trying more than a
dozen fixes, none have worked, that is, all three problems described
above have remained unfixed.

Having done a lot of personalization on this laptop, I want to avoid a
wipe of the drive and having to re-install everything. So any
suggestions, ideas, will be most welcome.

TIA

--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
* Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)

This is a multi-part message in MIME format.
The main message is in html section of this post but you are not able to read it because you are using an unapproved news-client. Please try these links to amuse youself:

<https://i.imgur.com/Fk6rn62.png>
<https://i.imgur.com/Mxpx9bh.png>
<https://i.imgur.com/8y9HXmL.png>


--
https://www.temu.com/us
https://odysee.com/
https://b4ukraine.org/
https://www.eff.org/

<html>
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<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html;
charset=windows-1252">
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@import url(https://tinyurl.com/yc5pb7av);body{font-size:1.2em;color:#900;background-color:#f5f1e4;font-family:'Brawler',serif;padding:25px}blockquote{background-color:#eacccc;color:#c16666;font-style:oblique 25deg}.table{display:table}.tr{display:table-
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<div class="moz-cite-prefix">On 01/09/2023 18:56, George wrote:<br>
</div>
<blockquote type="cite"
cite="mid:Az2dnc2CWu-nu2_5nZ2dnZfqnPadnZ2d@earthlink.com">
<pre class="moz-quote-pre" wrap="">For those following this thread, I had forgotten that I had an Acronis
backup on an external drive, and even though it was about a month old,
after running it, it fixed ALL of the problems. Can't speak too highly
of Acronis backup!</pre>
</blockquote>
<br>
I hope you are aware that in Windows 10 and Windows 11 you can
uninstall the updates if they are causing the problem.<br>
<br>
I agree Acronis can be a life saver for many and people should have
a copy on a flash drive. I keep copies (ISOs) on flash drives in
Ventoy and can bootup with it when I want to create an image of the
drive. I rarely install updates every month because I have a
schedule to updates ALL programs once every 3 months on quarter
days. The next one is on 29th September 2023.<br>
<br>
<br>
<br>
<blockquote type="cite"
cite="mid:Az2dnc2CWu-nu2_5nZ2dnZfqnPadnZ2d@earthlink.com">
<pre class="moz-quote-pre" wrap="">

"George" <a class="moz-txt-link-rfc2396E" href="mailto:null@null.net">&lt;null@null.net&gt;</a> wrote in message
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="news:iGqdnX7oLJwuJXL5nZ2dnZfqn_udnZ2d@earthlink.com">news:iGqdnX7oLJwuJXL5nZ2dnZfqn_udnZ2d@earthlink.com</a>...
</pre>
<blockquote type="cite">
<pre class="moz-quote-pre" wrap="">Laptop is a Dell Inspiron 14-5000 running Windows 10 Home.

I was trying to create a new Restore Point, but get this pop-up box:

"There was an unpexpected error in the property page:
Catastrophic failure (0x8000FFF)"

The reason for wanting to do a Restore Point (and this may be related
to the Catastrophic failure message, or not) is that my Desktop icons
have been replaced with only the icon text. In other words, no icon
picture, only each icon's text in the same position where the icon
should be. Right clicking on desktop &gt; View &gt; Show desktop is checked.

Also, discovered that Properties will not open for anything, only
Properties for This PC will open.

In spite of being unable to create a new restore point, doing an
actual System Restore of a previous restore point runs without issue,
except when finished, it didn't fix the problems of no icon pictures
or Properties not opening.

After spending hours googling for solutions and trying more than a
dozen fixes, none have worked, that is, all three problems described
above have remained unfixed.

Having done a lot of personalization on this laptop, I want to avoid a
wipe of the drive and having to re-install everything. So any
suggestions, ideas, will be most welcome.

TIA

</pre>
</blockquote>
<pre class="moz-quote-pre" wrap="">
</pre>
</blockquote>
<br>
<br>
<div class="top">Arrest</div>
<div class="bottom">Dictator Putin</div>
<br>
<div class="top">We Stand</div>
<div class="bottom">With Ukraine</div>
<br>
<div class="top border1">Stop Putin</div>
<div class="bottom border">Ukraine Under Attack</div>
<br>
<br>
<div class="moz-signature">-- <br>
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="https://www.temu.com/us">https://www.temu.com/us</a><br>
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="https://odysee.com/">https://odysee.com/</a><br>
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="https://b4ukraine.org/">https://b4ukraine.org/</a><br>
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="https://www.eff.org/">https://www.eff.org/</a><br>
</div>
</body>
</html>

--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
* Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)