Annoying Freezing Issue

By WizardCM
in The Fast Ring (Insider Previews)

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Community Regular

WizardCM

Posted
Posted

So I'm having a very weird issue in the Release Preview that I never had on the Consumer Preview. This is running natively on my laptop (all specs here).

Basically, almost at random but usually during downloads/installations, the operating system freezes program-by-program, starting with the taskbar. It's not the kind of freezing that turns white and gives the options to 'End Task,' but one where it seems more like an image overlay. Usually you can also tell by the frozen cursor animation, but the cursor can still be moved (for a time. Usually the last thing to go is the active application or the desktop (as in the icon selection box or the context menu).

I have attempted to look through Event Viewer, but other than the forced shutdown I have to perform to fix the issue, there doesn't seem to be anything else of use.

For one run I had Task Manager running on my secondary monitor, but on the freeze there was no unusual spike in any of the sections.

At first I thought it was a graphics driver issue, so I updated both the Intel and NVIDIA graphics drivers. This has not improved the issue.

Any suggestions are greatly appreciated.

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https://www.neowin.net/forum/topic/1081347-annoying-freezing-issue/
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Enthusiast

Rafael

Posted
Posted

I've seen this on my machine in pre-RT and know others with the same issue. As far as I can tell, it's network I/O related. Something is jamming up, bringing the whole system down with it. (The network is used to communicate locally, too.)

The best thing you can do to help is:

  1. Enable kernel memory crash dumps (Start Search 'Advanced System Settings', click Settings under Startup/Recovery, last dropdown)
  2. Enable CrashOnCtrlScroll (http://support.microsoft.com/kb/971284)
  3. When the hang occurs, hit Right-Ctrl + Scroll + Scroll to crash the system and create a memory.dmp
  4. When asked to report issue, say No
  5. Fish out the memory.dmp in \Windows folder and send it to me. (Ping me on Twitter/Email)

Issue fixed, dumps no longer required.

Community Regular

WizardCM

Posted
  • Author
Posted

Rafael, I am more than willing to help out, but am unsure how exactly to enable CrashOnCtrlScroll (plus my laptop doesn't have a visible Scroll Lock button). Think you could point me in the right direction?

Edit: Found the registry change. Rebooting now. Will email you as soon as I have the dump.

Community Regular

WizardCM

Posted
  • Author
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For anyone that needs a temporary fix, disabling all the network adapters seems to do the trick. Major obvious downside though...

And Rafael, as I sent over Twitter, I had no luck actually getting the log file. :(

Enthusiast

Quppa

Posted
Posted

I'm also having freezing issues with the Release Preview running natively on my laptop (a Dell Studio XPS 13 with the hard drive replaced with an SSD), but in my case the entire system freezes (including the cursor) and I'm forced to do a hard reset. The hard drive activity light stays off when the system has frozen.

I tried isolating the issue without success. Installing Nvidia's latest Windows 8 (CP) drivers didn't help, and I also tried using the default Microsoft WDDM 1.2 drivers, the Nvidia's latest Windows 7 drivers and the older drivers from Dell's website. Turning off the wireless network adapter had no effect. Freezing tended to occur when installing programs but also when simply browsing the internet, and it seemed to be unrelated to high CPU usage (I was able to run a CPU stress test without problems). Unfortunately the event log was clean, which makes it a bit difficult to track down possible causes.

For now I've reinstalled Windows 7 and everything seems to be fine, which I hope suggests it's not a hardware issue. I guess it's still pre-release software for a reason.

Veteran

~Johnny

Posted
Posted

I'm also having freezing issues with the Release Preview running natively on my laptop (a Dell Studio XPS 13 with the hard drive replaced with an SSD), but in my case the entire system freezes (including the cursor) and I'm forced to do a hard reset. The hard drive activity light stays off when the system has frozen.

I tried isolating the issue without success. Installing Nvidia's latest Windows 8 (CP) drivers didn't help, and I also tried using the default Microsoft WDDM 1.2 drivers, the Nvidia's latest Windows 7 drivers and the older drivers from Dell's website. Turning off the wireless network adapter had no effect. Freezing tended to occur when installing programs but also when simply browsing the internet, and it seemed to be unrelated to high CPU usage (I was able to run a CPU stress test without problems). Unfortunately the event log was clean, which makes it a bit difficult to track down possible causes.

For now I've reinstalled Windows 7 and everything seems to be fine, which I hope suggests it's not a hardware issue. I guess it's still pre-release software for a reason.

In that case I would have advised installing all the original Dell provided drivers from their support website - I had something similar on my Dell Studio XPS 16, and after I'd installed all the old default drivers and custom Dell stuff it seems to be working stable for now. I couldn't tell you which driver / install sorted it though :p

Enthusiast

Quppa

Posted
Posted

In that case I would have advised installing all the original Dell provided drivers from their support website - I had something similar on my Dell Studio XPS 16, and after I'd installed all the old default drivers and custom Dell stuff it seems to be working stable for now. I couldn't tell you which driver / install sorted it though :p

I'll keep that in mind for next time, but I think I might just wait until RTM and hope that it's more stable by then. I had installed several drivers from Dell's website (from memory: the chipset driver, audio driver, video driver, card reader driver, wireless network adapter driver and touchpad driver) and I was still experiencing the same issue.

Enthusiast

Rafael

Posted
Posted

I can't edit my previous reply, but it'll be helpful if folks instead send me a Complete memory dump as opposed to Kernel memory dump. Be aware this may contain PII but I think I've established I'm pretty trustworthy at this point. (Besides, finding your data in a multi-gigabyte dump isn't fun or easy.)

Explorer

dub40

Posted
Posted

I am also experiencing the same issue with an HP probook 4350s. Now that you guys mention it, it does seem to happen when I am browsing with chrome. I'm using IE 10 for a while to see if this helps.

Chris123NT, what is this "green Ethernet" setting you speak of on your NIC? Is it some sort of power saving feature?

Contributor

GJVC

Posted
Posted

I too have this problem, a few times every day everything just starts freezing up and I'm forced to shut off my laptop using the powerbutton.

If it is any help, in the event viewer I see a lot of errors with this message:

"The machine-default permission settings do not grant Local Activation permission for the COM Server application with CLSID

{9BA05972-F6A8-11CF-A442-00A0C90A8F39}"

Grand Master

Sulphy

Posted
Posted

I can also report the same issue, i suspected Nvidia drivers, as my lockups happen when multimedia or a game is running... but very random though! first lockup happened after 5 hours of Diablo3 .... then more frequent after that. Was running pretty well for a couple of days before the lockups started. Got irritated and went back to Win7 .... once Nvidia releases new drivers, ill be having another go!

Mentor

LightShadow

Posted
Posted

I can also report the same issue, i suspected Nvidia drivers, as my lockups happen when multimedia or a game is running... but very random though! first lockup happened after 5 hours of Diablo3 .... then more frequent after that. Was running pretty well for a couple of days before the lockups started. Got irritated and went back to Win7 .... once Nvidia releases new drivers, ill be having another go!

From the amount of people with this problem (including me) I doubt it's Nvidia drivers. As I don't have Nvidia on mine.

Grand Master

Chris123NT

Posted
Posted

I am also experiencing the same issue with an HP probook 4350s. Now that you guys mention it, it does seem to happen when I am browsing with chrome. I'm using IE 10 for a while to see if this helps.

Chris123NT, what is this "green Ethernet" setting you speak of on your NIC? Is it some sort of power saving feature?

Go to Device manager, expand the network adapters category, right click your nic and go to properties, under the advanced tab look for something that says either "Green Ethernet" or "Energy Efficient Ethernet". Set it to disabled and apply it.

3 days and 12 hours since I changed that setting and still no freezes *knocks wood*

Explorer

dub40

Posted
Posted

Go to Device manager, expand the network adapters category, right click your nic and go to properties, under the advanced tab look for something that says either "Green Ethernet" or "Energy Efficient Ethernet". Set it to disabled and apply it.

3 days and 12 hours since I changed that setting and still no freezes *knocks wood*

Thanks for the input Chris. I didn't see that particular setting for my NIC, but I did see an option for the computer to disable the device to save power. I'll try that setting to see if it makes a difference.

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