Windows freezing up for anybody else?

[QuantumQuest]

I want to make a few comments too, noting that the contributions on the thread are already excellent.

Running two antivirus programs at the same time will cause problems. They lock the files that they are examining and, if they grab the same file, it's freeze time...

This is absolutely essential. As I read the OP, I initially thought that there was one antivirus on a permanent basis and jim hardy just disabled it and run another one in order to check for malware. Two antivirus programs running both at the same time is just a source of various problems and also there will be a lot of false positive and some (maybe many) undetected real alarms.

Long story short, I believe Windows is actually pretty stable and predictable.
It's just that we only need 1 or 2 badly written programs or drivers, and our system starts exhibiting unstable behavior - under certain circumstances.

As I have already run and develop on Windows platforms for years - I use also Linux in my work, I wouldn't disagree with this but the real problem for every single version of Windows is Microsoft policies. Now, while these are very protective and well designed for many cases there is a lot of cases that they aren't. I cannot really count the number of cases that I got in need of finding / devising some workaround and this is certainly a bad thing for an OS.

The Windows version that jim hardy runs has been proven to be a stable one - taking the various SP's and updates into account. I can confirm this too as I have already a machine with this OS for seven years with no problem at all.

I think that for both problems mentioned, the source(s) can potentially be various things. The safe way to go is to boot in safe mode and see what the behavior of the system is. Then you can begin to see if it is software (maybe faulty / corrupted drivers, conflicting programs etc.) or hardware (faulty or not anymore compatible with the OS). Trying to modify the registry - I have personally done it a lot of times in older versions of Windows, is not of much help in a vast number of cases, as there may be the same or correlated settings in various places of the registry.

 

[jim hardy]

Just had a second successful wakeup from sleep
system seems to be noticeably better now.i think i'll delete those things @I like Serena suggested deleting
and go back & un-rename the ones i did on my own up in Regedit Graphics list one at a time
\
but first will try that safe mode boot(sleep a while)

i'm back now in safe mode

This is absolutely essential. As I read the OP, I initially thought that there was one antivirus on a permanent basis and jim hardy just disabled it and run another one in order to check for malware.

That's indeed what i had done
ran Malware Bytes too, it reported clean, but uninstalled it as well just in case. I'm NOT a software guru by any stretch.

Startup was flawless, i even cycled monitor power afterward just to see if it caused any upset which it did not .

Most likely candidate is those four entries where @I like Serena suggested deleting - i only renamed them so i think i'll go back and delete.

Thanks Folks
I don't know what we fixed but it has either removed or masked the symptoms.

@phinds Thanks for validating my opinion of Windows (Shutters?) 10 and that awful busybody Cortana .

 

[jim hardy]

Thanks all, going to put this machine in sleep and go defrost the freezer. Got to make use of the daylight and the cool day.

old jim

 

[phinds]

@phinds Thanks for validating my opinion of Windows (Shutters?) 10 and that awful busybody Cortana .

I spent several hours just figuring out how to delete as much of the voluminous crap as possible and disabling as much as possible those things that Windows just won't LET you get rid of (like Cortana). Even with all that, I refuse to put Win10 on my workhorse workstation. The laptop only gets used a few times a year so I can live with Win10 instead of paying an extra #100 to retrofit it w/ Win7

 

[jim hardy]

I bought a Win7 pro disk from a retired microsoft employee
just can't abide ten's irrationality
......
Deleted those files in HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Run
but Windows wouldn't allow the Default REGSZ (value not set) deletion

we shall see if black screen comes back.

Am getting popups telling me to change my Windows update setting back from "Never" - i guess they still snoop around anyway.

.................
Boring Anecdote Alert -
After we got the plant computer running in 1973 we did not ever update the operating system, to the vendor's considerable dismay.
It ran well until 2002 oops 1992 when we replaced it..
29 oops 19 years was i think not a bad run for an old Data General Nova 840 with magnetic core memory .
It did give trouble though when the moving head disk developed seek errors due to a defective op-amp in the head positioning servo loop. Its slew rate deteriorated so at max head speed the drive sometimes lost count of the track number and had to recalibrate itself to track zero...
Once in a while it would fail to notice the mistake. That's where i learned about the assembly language command "LED" - Load and Execute Data.
The only symptom was an occasional crash. Once it reprinted a report from a year earlier and that was the tipoff that we needed. We knew printer output was spooled to disk so that had to be a disk error.
Sure enough the disk diagnostic showed trouble on long track seeks but only at highest speed. Oscilloscope showed degraded rise and fall times at the opamp output that caused a race in downstream logic.

Moral of that boring anecdote -
Software ?
1. If it isn't broke don't fix it.
2. Do it right the first time.
That Windows has accrued so many thousands of updates does not create in me, well, let's just say 'a sense of well being' .

old jim

 

[Tom.G]

but Windows wouldn't allow the Default REGSZ (value not set) deletion

No, it won't. Each "item" must have at least one "value", even if it is empty! Subsequent entries in an "item" are pointers to names/values of subservient entries.
It's just a fancy linked list of name-value pairs; where the "value" may be a pointer to another name-value pair. (IIRC)

An overview of the registry internals is here: http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc750583.aspx

 

[jim hardy]

It's just a fancy linked list of name-value pairs;

Thanks Tom
Vocabulary for understanding the Registry :
Keys ? Bins? Hives ? Trees? Cells ? Roots? Blocks ? Indexes? Kernels? Pools ? Object manager? Configuration manager ?
This dog is too old. Gives me hives.

I took one operating systems course. Myriads of pointers and lists. I decided programming wasn't for me because i can't remember names.
But i admire those who can do it well.

 

[jim hardy]

For the record, I do see a checkbox labeled Show more restore points...

Well you were exactly right, and checking it gave me a restore point from 26th of September...

Since the 'black screen' came back i just tried it
successful restore
successful restart even if a slow one, without black screen
so i quickly set Windows Updates to "NEVER AGAIN !" because the restore undid yesterday's change
and i'll see how it does today.
Will look at those REGEDIT HKEY entries again.

with fingers crossed

thanks again for all the help

old jim

 

[jim hardy]

and i'll see how it does today.

Well, my Firefox browser disappeared. Fortunately there was a copy from 2006 on the other drive, version 3 i think, so was able start it and download version 56.
I'd uninstalled IE when undid the involuntary Windows 10 'upgrade' earlier this year
Ghost of Cortana ? ' Hell hath no fury...'

 

[Idyit]

I've had similar issues with two Phillips monitors, it's a hardware problem in the Monitors interface card, one would "Flip" on every few seconds, nothing fixed it until I put a new monitor on , then problem vanished. The other Monitor (Same brand), would take about 20minutes to warm up before the flickering behaviour stopped.

Try swapping the monitor outputs and if the problem persists then I'd say the monitor has a faulty interface card.

As for the lock ups it's very hard to say, if the Taskmanager is reporting very low or zero CPU use, then I'd be guessing the Network drivers are at fault.

I've had this with a couple of Dell machines recently, one laptop and two desktops, the only way I could fix them was to use the PowerShell scripts PSWindowsUpdate.zip which I downloaded from Microsoft (I am using windows 10, but it should still work on windows 7 if you are lucky), the scripts found a whole bunch of drivers which fixed the reboot / power / network issues on all the machines, although it has started happening again on one of the laptops.

I've also found that the Dell implementation of the Intel Rapid Storage drivers is faulty at a hardware level, and was corrupting the HDD of both the Dell laptops, I ended up changing them both to AHCI (You need to enable AHCI in windows before rebooting otherwise windows will not find the kernel driver at startup and will never start again so beware, check this link for a rundown on how to do this ... https://winaero.com/blog/switch-from-ide-to-achi-after-installing-windows-7-or-windows-8/)

So try swapping the monitors, use the PSWindowsUpdate.zip to check for updates (It uses the same microsoft website, so I have no idea why the standard update doesn't find them and if you are using a dell with the Intel Rapid Storage enabled, you may want to consider swapping to AHCI, but the last is something you need to approach with caution as it may kill your machine if you get it wrong, switching back to Intel Rapid Storage in BIOS may not help after you have enabled the AHCI, I don't know why, but I'd guess windows kernel drivers get confused after automated repair)

Good Luck Jim ;-)

 

[rbelli1]

I have found two bugs (probably features if you ask Microsoft) from upgrading to Windows 10. Both are related to windows update. One is that the wake-up is still programmed for Windows update even if you turn off automatic updates. So the computer turns on at 3 in the morning and wakes me up too unless I remember to turn off the monitor. Normally it will be programmed to update and hibernate once again. But if you turn updates off then no update occurs and no re-hibernate occurs either.

The second is that *something* is actually done at the mandated update time that disallows hibernate to operate properly. It takes an extremely long time to hibernate and then rarely wake up in an operable state.

BoB

 

[Idyit]

You should disable the wake timers in your power options, and check the BIOS doesn't have any wake timings set.

I've started using the ...
shutdown -hybrid -s -t 00

Instead of hibernate, it allows for a much faster startup, and actually switches the machine off completely.

These days I tend to use the PowerShell script for updates as it appears more reliable.

 

[rbelli1]

You should disable the wake timers in your power options, and check the BIOS doesn't have any wake timings set.

I did that. Update re-enables them. Updating and rebooting is the only fix I have found. Regardless, the crashy thing precludes long term avoidance of updates anyway.

BoB

 

[Idyit]

Nasty Windows ... this link may help it's a bit of a trek though ...
https://superuser.com/questions/973009/conclusively-stop-wake-timers-from-waking-windows-10-desktop

 

[rbelli1]

Nasty Windows ... this link may help it's a bit of a trek though ...

I did all of that (several hours of sleep lost finding all of them). It kept the wake-ups at bay for a while then update re-enabled them. I give up. I just try to remember to do the updates in a sort of timely fashion.

The only effective option I found was to hibernate then when it tried to wake back up shut down at once. This works but Windows becomes unstable for some unknown reason.

It's frustrating how Windows update has gone passive aggressive on insisting on updates.

BoB

 

[Idyit]

Indeed, I found the preview release fast ring broke my machine on a regular basis, got sick of it and went back to the Creators update, which is a lot more reliable (Understandably I guess)

I've never found the hibernation shutdown to be reliable, so the hybrid shutdown option sounds like it may be your best answer.

Wake timers won't wok if it's actually powered down, and the startup speed is very comparable (On my machine(s) at least).

 

[rbelli1]

I've never found the hibernation shutdown to be reliable

It works great for me until the second Tuesday of every month.

Wake timers won't wok if it's actually powered down

That explains my success of mashing the power button to keep it in hibernate.

and the startup speed is very comparable

It depends on how much crap you have installed. I have every development environment from here to Timbuktu installed and every one wants to start their services and check for updates on startup. That takes forever.

BoB

 

[Idyit]

Mmmm, I'd install a SSD, and I use Virtual machines for the dev environments much easier to manage and transfer.

 

[jim hardy]

I have found two bugs (probably features if you ask Microsoft) from upgrading to Windows 10. Both are related to windows update. One is that the wake-up is still programmed for Windows update even if you turn off automatic updates. So the computer turns on at 3 in the morning and wakes me up too unless I remember to turn off the monitor. Normally it will be programmed to update and hibernate once again. But if you turn updates off then no update occurs and no re-hibernate occurs either.

The second is that *something* is actually done at the mandated update time that disallows hibernate to operate properly. It takes an extremely long time to hibernate and then rarely wake up in an operable state.

BoB

I sounds as if that didn't get undone when i reverted this machine from 10 back to 7.

 

[Idyit]

It's possible, but from memory Windows 7 had all those update paradigms already so it may be a "standard" windows "feature".
Hibernation is never reliable after updates, the core kernel files will most likely no longer match the memory dump.

It really does sound like you'd be better of re-installing the core OS, and setup some virtual machines for your dev environments, it will take some time but, in my opinion you will end up with a much more manageable solution.

I'd recommend Oracle Virtual box for the VM's, Hyper-V doesn't support USB mapping (not natively anyway) and allows for hiding the NX flag which makes the VM much more portable between bare metal boxes. You find the performance very good in the VM's these days, as long as your CPU supports all the latest Virtual Technologies. You may have to buy another Windows 7 license, nut only one should be enough as I don't think the DLC licensing will be smart enough to realize the multiple installs.

VMWare is another option, but I haven't used it for a long time so can't really tell you much about it.

 

[rbelli1]

Hibernation is never reliable after updates,

I found this out the hard way.

It really does sound like you'd be better of re-installing the core OS, and setup some virtual machines for your dev environments, it will take some time but, in my opinion you will end up with a much more manageable solution.

Probably. But to solve a once a month or so wait of a few minutes I will just live with it for now.

Stability is fine as long as no updates are pending. Another Windows 10 foible I have found is that when it needs a reboot is needs a *reboot*. Shutting down then starting up does not work like in 7.

BoB

 

[rbelli1]

I sounds as if that didn't get undone when i reverted this machine from 10 back to 7.

Fortunately if you undo those changes they will stay undone in 7.

BoB

 

[rootone]

If you don't like the way Windows is going, there is always the option of a Linux ( or even Apple),
Personally I think Windows had it's good moments and some bad ones.
My latest automatic update (Win10) made my PC seem like totally burned out and dead until I turned off the power for two minutes, then it was OK.

 

[jim hardy]

If you don't like the way Windows is going, there is always the option of a Linux ( or even Apple),

That's looking better every day.

Task Manager shows sixty entries of 'esrv.exe' running
and seventy of 'conhost.exe'

Complete scans by Security Essentials and Malware Bytes both report no malware found

that can't be right...

 

[I like Serena]

Wow. How did you achieve all of that!

It should be clear that you shouldn't have so many instances of either esrv.exe or conhost.exe.
I don't even recognize them.
Did they nestle themselves into one of the registry entries I mentioned before or some such? As a result of installing some kind of application?

Anyway, the first thing I'd do is to right click one of them and try to kill it - just to see what happens.

 

[rootone]

Apparently esrv.exe is an non essential process which is not a part of windows, it's a power monitoring process added to Sony PCs.
https://www.file.net/process/esrv.exe.html

 

[I like Serena]

Just looked up 'esrv.exe' and the first hit said:

OK, after some reading you are correct this is not a Sony only issue, that service is also contained in a lot of Intel Software Products, please try this:

1. Go to Control Panel (accessible by right clicking your Start Menu button if you are not on the Creators Update, if you are, type Control Panel into Cortana Search)
2. Open Programs and Features.
3. Look for Intel Driver Update Utility, if you find it, uninstall it
4. Reboot

Didn't you say you installed some Intel driver?
I trust products of Microsoft and Intel most, but... maybe we've got to get rid of this particular thingy...

 

[Idyit]

I agree, uninstall the Intel Management stuff, it's useless and consumes resources for no reason.
After that if those processes are still there you can use msconfig to disable the all startup processes and then slowly re enable them to figure out what's causing it.
It's time consuming but will help diagnose any issues you've created by installing 3rd party software or dev environments.

Like I said in my original post the DELL implementations of the INTEL rapid storage hard drive interface is buggy to say the least, and it wouldn't surprise me if other manufacturer implementations are buggy as well.

The DELL machines I have had problems with exhibited the slow/non responsive behaviour and the only fix was to switch the machines to a pure AHCI setup.

But you must enable the AHCI drivers in the OS before you reboot the machine because Windows disables them if they are not used for boot speed reasons.

If you don't enable them before reboot, the OS will never boot again and the windows repair will only make the problem worse, I found that switching the INTEL Rapid Storage back on in the BIOS didn't help either, and I had to rebuild the first machine from scratch so be very careful if you attempt this and make a backup before you start !.

 

[jim hardy]

Didn't you say you installed some Intel driver?

I think i remember doing that and it cured some symptom.

I just uninstalled Intel Utility Update Driver and those two no longer show in Task Manager,
and it's not so sluggish

if past is any indication it'll be okay for a couple hours then something else will happen.

Windows Update set to NEVER
Restored to a mid -september restore point a couple days ago

Laptop is in shop getting rid of Windows 10 and fresh install of Windows 7 Pro(thanks to a PF friend) , new battery and more ram. It has been pretty dependable.
When it comes will do something about this desktop.
Maybe it needs more RAM ? How much do you guys find being used, nothing running but Firefox on PF.?

 

[Idyit]

That looks about right, windows tends to allocate about half the available memory for processes, but 2 gig is simply not enough in todays environments.

4 is the max for 32 bit OS's, 8 is a good working size for 64 bit OS's.

I've got 16 gig installed and my machine tends to run at about 6 gigabytes all the time.