Bit the bullet and reinstalled from scratch to 1511. Turned on ICS and sure enough, the 360 logs on to XBL without issue. Next will be to try and get to 1703 but no further. Perhaps at some point seeing if installing straight to 1709 doesn't work.
I was about to say, "Well, at least you know the culprit." But then I recalled that this could either be something functionally disabled in the Fall Creators Update, or something installed incorrectly (though the second is less likely?).
At least you won't have to spend $200.
I acknowledge that 1709 could have somehow installed incorrectly because my internet is so shit. Perhaps in between 1703 and 1709 the virus definitions that automatically update fucked with something. (Though 1703 introduced the need to 'reset' ICS before it would work again...) And unless something else downloaded and updated in the background without me knowing, I know I didn't add anything in between. I'll see what happens in the coming days and weeks.
As far as saving $200? Well, I also just bought a 1080ti, so...yeah.
In my defense, a new GPU was the last thing missing from a total upgrade I started a year and a half ago. I would have gotten a 980ti, but then the 1080s came out and I decided to wait. Either way, I needed an upgrade from a 9800+ I've been chugging along with. I'll get that X1 eventually.
Decided to go ahead and just install 1709 clean and the 360 can now log on to XBL with ICS. However, right now I have to turn sharing off and on when I reboot. I'll have to run through all the suggested fixes later, but at least I know it works.
Something during the upgrade broke it. A weird thing happened when I rebooted the PC with the 360 turned on and W10 tried to used the Ethernet port instead of Wi-Fi to connect. May be related, but a second reboot after manually connecting with Wi-Fi worked correctly.
lol. just got offered 1709. After you told me it was related to drivers, I took a peek at my device manager and saw that I had removed my joystick a while back when I moved, but because of the keymapping software creating some sort of virtual driver, it left an unknown device behind. I plugged everything back in to clear all that up, and low and behold, a few days later I'm being offered 1709.
So what the fuck is the windows 10 1079 update doing that's taking 8+ fucking hours to install? Literally started the update when I came into work this morning, now I may have to leave my laptop at the office over the weekend...
No it eventually finished, the last few percent just took ~1 hour each to tick. No clue what the hold up was. The part where the updater said “downloading” took maybe an hour, the “installing” part went from 9:30 am to 6:30 pm. This was the part where it says “your computer will need an update to the latest version to install security updates, continue your work and we will let you know when we are done”, not the part where it reboots and actually installs the updates.
edit: was upgrading from 1511 I think? One of the old versions that just went out of support.
It took me two days* to go from 1511 to (I think) 1604. The jump to 1703 and then 1709 were much faster.
You're probably always better off using the media creation tool to get the latest version and upgrading from that.
*It wasn't two straight days. Just two days of getting the damned thing to finally install in between actually needing to use it and my goddamned shitty 2Mbs (yes...megabit) internet speed.
I got a chance to look at my mom's laptop yesterday just to give it a once-over. Yeah, there's a good chance I'll need to do a reinstall.
It's not really her fault; there were a few updates that weren't going through, and her printer software had some bloat that was causing slow startups (I killed a bunch of processes in the Startup tab, so that helps).
You don't need to lecture me about her laptop being a Lenovo. I know what I'm dealing with re: Superfish. That being said, does anyone have experience with shutting off "press any key within X seconds to disable hardware check" during any boot/reboot? Is this a BIOS feature I can disable?
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ShadowfireVermont, in the middle of nowhereRegistered Userregular
Uh.. if it's doing that every boot even if you let it complete, that sounds like a hard drive failure. Run chkdsk /f, maybe sfc /scannow if you can get into the OS, but...
Also, Superfish has been gone for a while. No worries there.
Anyone else having a lot of annoying problems with thumbnail generation/storage since the Fall Creators Update?
It's an esoteric problem (I blame myself for having thousands of old manga scans, convention photographs, art book rips, etc.)--I get that after a certain point, every version of Windows gets angry at thumbnail preview storage and begins to shit the bed, and that you need to delete the files and generate new ones from scratch. Fine.
But since the update, Windows 10 has multiple features that seem to redundantly want to delete thumbnails--every automatic maintenance feature (which is set to run by default on a daily basis) apparently does it. There's a mechanism in Windows Explorer that does it. Changing regions and languages does it (along with wiping out your Indexing database). Some of these make sense, but at a certain point it's starting to feel like Windows really wants you not to have thumbnails (as though that wouldn't make navigating large numbers of images a huge pain in the ass).
On top of that, since thumbnail regeneration has to be automatic (unlike Indexing, which you can do manually), after Windows 10 gets its way, then at least in my case, I get horrible CPU performance with zero warning at times as Windows randomly picks a directory to try and generation thumbnails for because you happened to pass it by on your way to where you were looking. it gets so bad that the Start Menu might stop responding, along with basic Explorer functions ("Looking for locations.." on endless loop), etc. This seems unacceptable on a fairly modern i5 CPU, much less while playing a game.
Before the update, Windows would periodically delete your thumbnails, but not every day by default--and generating them wouldn't abruptly stop working or slow your PC down to a crawl. At this point I think it might be worth using a "barb wire" fix: denying the System permission to delete anything where the thumbnails are stored (only allowing you the user to do it). Multiple registry edits seem to only delay the issue.
It's a known issue. It happens for me all the time. Your best guess whether MS gives enough of a damn to fix it anytime soon.
As far as my previous issue with Internet Connection Sharing goes, I basically have to unshare then reshare the connection if I want it to work. Which is at least possible only because I direct installed 1709 rather than upgrade from a working 1511. It seems more likely to 'break' on a restart rather than a complete shutdown and reboot. But I haven't spent much time with that theory since an effective fix means I don't have to reboot.
Also a known issue. Also unknown when MS will deign to fix it.
I'm generally wary of registry edit fixes and prefer to use them as a last resort (sometimes they are, as with icon shell overlays). For Lock screens, for example, you're a lot better off trying to "trick" Windows 10 into deleting all your related registry values and replacing them then trying to fix them yourself.
That's what makes changing file permissions--something I really never enjoy, because the interface feels very draconian and hasn't changed since Windows 7 as far as I know--more attractive. This is all done automatically "in the background", which is the point, and makes it even worse when your CPU is losing its shit to the point where the Start Menu won't load and you can't even open File Explorer, or the thumbnail generation just abruptly stops and starts rolling backwards. But if you can stop any sort of automatic background system process from deleting anything--so that it has to be done manually, or via a deliberate command, like Disk Cleanup, that'll at least help if it works.
God damn it, I hate the lack of flexibility in picking time to update. There was no way to delay it when I shut the computer down last night and now it looks like it will take him 2 hours to boot so fuck me for wanting to get any work done this morning.
Well, now I'm getting occasional freezing (in the sense that the desktop goes partially and then fully nonresponsive, though my cursor still moves) which I think is in part due to thumbnail generation (basically the system going "Shit! There's a whole drive of photos that's been indexed! I better start making thumbnails even though the user isn't looking at them!").
It's getting irritating, especially because it really feels like this issue almost came out of nowhere (maybe Microsoft convinced that killing thumbnails as frequently as possible would save storage and improve performance?). I guess I better turn back on automatic maintenance and hope it doesn't delete my thumbnail cache twice a day with a security permission that should stop the system from doing anything of the sort.
Plus, I tend to customise as many settings so file explorer (or whatever they call it now) shows what I want. All I can say at the moment is thumbnails only regenerate after reboots and as slow as it is, never hogs resources to halt activity.
Did you install fresh to 1709 or go through an upgrade path?
SSD and HDD, though the operating system itself is on SSD. I've had two SSDs die out from under me, but I don't think that's the cause. Upgrade to 1709, I have way to much crap to do a fresh install of Windows 10, my excuse being that I'm fanatically diligent about keeping this maintained and organized until now.
At some point, maybe over the holiday, I may need to sit down, whip my thumbnails deliberately for once, reset most of the registry modifications, then test the permission fix while carefully rebuilding my thumbnail cache (there really needs to be a manual thumbnail building option, just like building an index, that seems like a comprehensive "fix" while not actually being the solution we'll never get). See if the permissions are hard enough to defy the system's routines.
I don't know just how bad things can get, I only know that when I upgraded things started going all wrong. And that was on a machine that had been wiped and installed only a month earlier. When I installed fresh again, most of the disturbing issues stopped. Now it's just all the niggling little shit that MS may or may not bother to fix.
Also, as to the HDD, if the directories that are constantly losing thumbnails are there, try changing the power profile for the drive to never turn off. I usually need to wait a few seconds before I can access a drive sooner or later.
I see your point, but I've been lucky enough not to have no other issues with the major updates so far (even the weird slowdown issue had more to do with a few games being really poorly optimized, a small amount of dust in my CPU, and other strange coincidences I think). It's hard to believe that thumbnails of all things would be something that breaking, I can't help but think the solution should be there.
And in a sense, the worse solution is: turn off all thumbnails, and pretend you're back in 1996. Or actually generate as much of your thumbnail catalog as you can, and just wait until the inevitable "too many thumbnail" problems rear their head instead of "fucking up while generating them." The actual hard crashes are rather unnerving--not even the courtesy of a blue screen, the PC just stops. Apparently I can play Hitman at 2160p, but generating a couple hundred thumbnails at a time isn't happening. This is why PC gaming has the reputation it does.
And of course, like you said, I'll be left with the millions of other tiny things that Microsoft will never address because of the billions of other things they have to think about in Windows. Thumbnails could be one of them (and certainly sounds like one).
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ShadowfireVermont, in the middle of nowhereRegistered Userregular
If you're using Wi-Fi, you can set it as a metered connection and it will not download and install without you starting it.
Ethernet gets rekt.
You can set Ethernet connections to metered too. I've done that for a few clients on satellite connections.
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\WindowsNT\CurrentVersion\NetworkList\DefaultMediaCost
Change permission on the key to give ownership to administrator account
Change the Ethernet DWORD to 2
reboot
If you're using Wi-Fi, you can set it as a metered connection and it will not download and install without you starting it.
Ethernet gets rekt.
You can set Ethernet connections to metered too. I've done that for a few clients on satellite connections.
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\WindowsNT\CurrentVersion\NetworkList\DefaultMediaCost
Change permission on the key to give ownership to administrator account
Change the Ethernet DWORD to 2
reboot
If you're using Wi-Fi, you can set it as a metered connection and it will not download and install without you starting it.
Ethernet gets rekt.
You can set Ethernet connections to metered too. I've done that for a few clients on satellite connections.
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\WindowsNT\CurrentVersion\NetworkList\DefaultMediaCost
Change permission on the key to give ownership to administrator account
Change the Ethernet DWORD to 2
reboot
Also, as to the HDD, if the directories that are constantly losing thumbnails are there, try changing the power profile for the drive to never turn off. I usually need to wait a few seconds before I can access a drive sooner or later.
Intruging. Under power options, I use a Samsung High Performance Profile (given that's my boot drive), which disables it on plugged in and set it to 0 on battery (I do plug my APC via USB for measuring purposes)--there isn't some more specific option right?
Under Power Options > Change Plan Settings > Change Advanced Power Settings
The first thing should be 'Hard Disk'. For me it's already expanded for whatever reason and shows that they turn off after 20 minutes. I can change it to 'Never' or as high as (apparently) thirty digits before I stopped checking.
My default options are Balanced and Power Saver and the only thing I ever really do is prevent it from turning off the display or going to sleep (which I change when I'm running things overnight but expect them to complete before I wake).
Under Power Options > Change Plan Settings > Change Advanced Power Settings
The first thing should be 'Hard Disk'. For me it's already expanded for whatever reason and shows that they turn off after 20 minutes. I can change it to 'Never' or as high as (apparently) thirty digits before I stopped checking.
My default options are Balanced and Power Saver and the only thing I ever really do is prevent it from turning off the display or going to sleep (which I change when I'm running things overnight but expect them to complete before I wake).
So basically the same thing. I only have my screen set to turn off (though programs like Kaspersky AV, AOMEI, etc., can shut the PC off after running a long process if I enable the option).
So I'm beginning to think Thumbnail Generation was as symptom of my ills, and not the cause: I had another crash this morning, in the same order--apps not responding, start menu options not responding, wallpaper vanishing, and then explorer crashing (and not resuming until I restarted the PC). During no time was task manager available, in fact trying to access things like the shutdown menu (while start was responsive) only seemed to make things worse. This time, I wasn't browsing libraries or videos.
The event log viewer is about as useless as it always is. Curiously, during all of it some things still worked--Explorer came up, as did an app. I think the condition caused problems with my network, since I lost communication with my printer, but again, probably incidental.
Whatever this is....hmmm.
EDIT: Trying some basic "Update got you crashing" fixes--updated Nvidia drivers (that were just a few days behind schedule), updated my secondary SSD (my primary Samsung Pro already was), disable Fast Boot in BIOS and Fast Startup, Disabled and Enabled my Display Drivers (yeah, don't really get that one, but whatever). At least this way I can go back to this post and know what I did try and what I didn't.
Welp I messed up...
Last night my Windows Update check for updates wasn't working, saying it couldn't check for updates cause the service wasn't running. So I looked online for a fix and the one I used was stopping the Update service, renaming the SoftwareDistribution folder (I renamed it to SoftwareDistributionOLD) and restart the update service. Hit check for updates again and it worked, up to date with nothing important found. BUT I lost my update history list and the ability to check for Microsoft Product updates.
Fast Forward to this morning and apparently Microsoft didn't update a ExpiryDate(?) cab file for their Windows Update on W7. I thought it was a problem my computer but it was Microsofts at fault.
So now im wondering if it is safe to stop the WU service, delete the current SoftwareDistribution folder, rename the old back to SoftwareDistribution and restart the service? I dunno what to do and I am afraid I might mess something up.
EDIT: Apparently a work around to get WU checking again is to uncheck the "check for Microsoft product updates" in the settings page.
EDITEDIT: Though in doing so removes the option to check it back on again. I probably shoulnd't bother messing with anything else.
In Short: Error is due to checking for microsoft updates while checking for windows updates. Turn it off and Windows updates works again. Replacing the Software Distribution Folder fixes WU for me since it too isn't checking for microsoft updates.
Riokenn on
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ShadowfireVermont, in the middle of nowhereRegistered Userregular
Try to run sfc /scannow in an admin command prompt.
Turn off BITS and Windows Update in Services, rename that Software Distribution folder again, then reenable the services.
Start Windows Update
Walk away for around two days.
If that doesn't fix it, reinstall. Welcome to Windows 7!
Yup I am aware. It's a problem on Microsofts side that I didn't see till this morning, but by then I had already did the shananigans in my previous post.
As it stands I'd rather not mettle with it anymore, WU is working since it isn't checking for microsoft product updates.
It's not a good solution, but that's why I regularly take full images of my boot drive. Not even Windows System Restore, just complete copies. Because I'm sure otherwise I'll fuck it up beyond repair, often times just trying to fix a small problem.
Speaking of problems, so I finally had some optimism that maybe, just maybe, I fixed my issues....and then the same thing happened two days later. Alt-tabbing out of games to check a Chrome, Chrome freezes, than the game freezes, than the Start Menu and then the whole system. Fuck.
Then as if to add insult to injury, when I restarted my PC...my thumbnail cache was reset. A lovely way to rub salt into the wound.
So much for those fixes. I guess the next step is to do a complete backup, then a repair installation--if I remember correctly, it should preserve all my settings, conventional programs, and even apps.
I'm a bit of an elitist about this. So many things stop fucking up a given system by playing games in windowed mode. Even if you don't have multiple monitors, it makes hopping into a browser or other program so much easier.
I get the immersion thing and all, but I'll take usability every time.
Not saying that's where your issue lies, but it's certainly not helping.
Trashing Software distribution is fine. You'll lose your update history and any downloaded updates but that's about it. sometimes its the only way to get rid of a corrupted downloaded update
Turned on my comp this evening and opened up WU. The red shield with an X was there telling me to check for updates. I had heard Microsoft fixed the problem when people would check for updates starting today.
Before I hit the check button I decided to check my settings and wouldn't ya know it, the box to check for Microsoft products was there ticked along with the box below it unticked. (Just like how I left it before making a new Software folder)
Anywho canceled out of settings and checked for updates and success! Even checked the .cab file to make sure it updated to the latest file.
All in all, only thing I lost was my update history, but everything else seems intact and working. n-n
I'm a bit of an elitist about this. So many things stop fucking up a given system by playing games in windowed mode. Even if you don't have multiple monitors, it makes hopping into a browser or other program so much easier.
I get the immersion thing and all, but I'll take usability every time.
Not saying that's where your issue lies, but it's certainly not helping.
It's not, seeing how the worse that used to happen when I alt-tabbed out of games was the games themselves wouldn't resume. That's a pretty far gap from "Windows shits the bed", to put it mildly. Considering this happened without a game running in the background, I doubt it's related. Also some games run weirdly worse in borderless window mode (and some weirdly better).
Even after registry edits, Automatic Maintenance is fucking determined to delete my cache. And it basically runs whenever the PC feels like it is idle, that timer doesn't seem to make a damn difference, and it wants to run more than once a day. I did learn one interesting thing: actually running maintenance manually didn't delete my cache (so maybe the registry edit works). The automatic, hidden service is actually three different things, one of which does (and may not be changeable via registry edit). I'm going to try disabling all of the related services entirely and see if that helps, but considering I've used both registry edits and permission options, I'm starting to think that this might simply be a thing you are not allowed to change in Windows, and no one realizes that yet.
And Jesus Christ, does the Windows deve team hate image thumbnail caches. It's like they're the United States Air force and image caches are the Syrian Army--even after you kill them, repeatedly, the mere fact they still exist is apparently a personal insult.
That thumbnail cache problem has been around for a decade, so don't hold your breath on a fix.
Yes, but it got substantially worse recently. The problem for a lot of people used to be, "My thumbnail cache is so big it's causing errors in the actual images," not "My thumbnail cache erases every 2 to 8 hours."
Posts
I acknowledge that 1709 could have somehow installed incorrectly because my internet is so shit. Perhaps in between 1703 and 1709 the virus definitions that automatically update fucked with something. (Though 1703 introduced the need to 'reset' ICS before it would work again...) And unless something else downloaded and updated in the background without me knowing, I know I didn't add anything in between. I'll see what happens in the coming days and weeks.
As far as saving $200? Well, I also just bought a 1080ti, so...yeah.
Something during the upgrade broke it. A weird thing happened when I rebooted the PC with the 360 turned on and W10 tried to used the Ethernet port instead of Wi-Fi to connect. May be related, but a second reboot after manually connecting with Wi-Fi worked correctly.
So, way to go, MS...
Enlist in Star Citizen! Citizenship must be earned!
Just by chance, was it stuck at 2%?
edit: was upgrading from 1511 I think? One of the old versions that just went out of support.
You're probably always better off using the media creation tool to get the latest version and upgrading from that.
*It wasn't two straight days. Just two days of getting the damned thing to finally install in between actually needing to use it and my goddamned shitty 2Mbs (yes...megabit) internet speed.
It's not really her fault; there were a few updates that weren't going through, and her printer software had some bloat that was causing slow startups (I killed a bunch of processes in the Startup tab, so that helps).
You don't need to lecture me about her laptop being a Lenovo. I know what I'm dealing with re: Superfish. That being said, does anyone have experience with shutting off "press any key within X seconds to disable hardware check" during any boot/reboot? Is this a BIOS feature I can disable?
Also, Superfish has been gone for a while. No worries there.
It's an esoteric problem (I blame myself for having thousands of old manga scans, convention photographs, art book rips, etc.)--I get that after a certain point, every version of Windows gets angry at thumbnail preview storage and begins to shit the bed, and that you need to delete the files and generate new ones from scratch. Fine.
But since the update, Windows 10 has multiple features that seem to redundantly want to delete thumbnails--every automatic maintenance feature (which is set to run by default on a daily basis) apparently does it. There's a mechanism in Windows Explorer that does it. Changing regions and languages does it (along with wiping out your Indexing database). Some of these make sense, but at a certain point it's starting to feel like Windows really wants you not to have thumbnails (as though that wouldn't make navigating large numbers of images a huge pain in the ass).
On top of that, since thumbnail regeneration has to be automatic (unlike Indexing, which you can do manually), after Windows 10 gets its way, then at least in my case, I get horrible CPU performance with zero warning at times as Windows randomly picks a directory to try and generation thumbnails for because you happened to pass it by on your way to where you were looking. it gets so bad that the Start Menu might stop responding, along with basic Explorer functions ("Looking for locations.." on endless loop), etc. This seems unacceptable on a fairly modern i5 CPU, much less while playing a game.
Before the update, Windows would periodically delete your thumbnails, but not every day by default--and generating them wouldn't abruptly stop working or slow your PC down to a crawl. At this point I think it might be worth using a "barb wire" fix: denying the System permission to delete anything where the thumbnails are stored (only allowing you the user to do it). Multiple registry edits seem to only delay the issue.
As far as my previous issue with Internet Connection Sharing goes, I basically have to unshare then reshare the connection if I want it to work. Which is at least possible only because I direct installed 1709 rather than upgrade from a working 1511. It seems more likely to 'break' on a restart rather than a complete shutdown and reboot. But I haven't spent much time with that theory since an effective fix means I don't have to reboot.
Also a known issue. Also unknown when MS will deign to fix it.
I'm generally wary of registry edit fixes and prefer to use them as a last resort (sometimes they are, as with icon shell overlays). For Lock screens, for example, you're a lot better off trying to "trick" Windows 10 into deleting all your related registry values and replacing them then trying to fix them yourself.
That's what makes changing file permissions--something I really never enjoy, because the interface feels very draconian and hasn't changed since Windows 7 as far as I know--more attractive. This is all done automatically "in the background", which is the point, and makes it even worse when your CPU is losing its shit to the point where the Start Menu won't load and you can't even open File Explorer, or the thumbnail generation just abruptly stops and starts rolling backwards. But if you can stop any sort of automatic background system process from deleting anything--so that it has to be done manually, or via a deliberate command, like Disk Cleanup, that'll at least help if it works.
Ethernet gets rekt.
It's getting irritating, especially because it really feels like this issue almost came out of nowhere (maybe Microsoft convinced that killing thumbnails as frequently as possible would save storage and improve performance?). I guess I better turn back on automatic maintenance and hope it doesn't delete my thumbnail cache twice a day with a security permission that should stop the system from doing anything of the sort.
Plus, I tend to customise as many settings so file explorer (or whatever they call it now) shows what I want. All I can say at the moment is thumbnails only regenerate after reboots and as slow as it is, never hogs resources to halt activity.
Did you install fresh to 1709 or go through an upgrade path?
At some point, maybe over the holiday, I may need to sit down, whip my thumbnails deliberately for once, reset most of the registry modifications, then test the permission fix while carefully rebuilding my thumbnail cache (there really needs to be a manual thumbnail building option, just like building an index, that seems like a comprehensive "fix" while not actually being the solution we'll never get). See if the permissions are hard enough to defy the system's routines.
And in a sense, the worse solution is: turn off all thumbnails, and pretend you're back in 1996. Or actually generate as much of your thumbnail catalog as you can, and just wait until the inevitable "too many thumbnail" problems rear their head instead of "fucking up while generating them." The actual hard crashes are rather unnerving--not even the courtesy of a blue screen, the PC just stops. Apparently I can play Hitman at 2160p, but generating a couple hundred thumbnails at a time isn't happening. This is why PC gaming has the reputation it does.
And of course, like you said, I'll be left with the millions of other tiny things that Microsoft will never address because of the billions of other things they have to think about in Windows. Thumbnails could be one of them (and certainly sounds like one).
You can set Ethernet connections to metered too. I've done that for a few clients on satellite connections.
Change permission on the key to give ownership to administrator account
Change the Ethernet DWORD to 2
reboot
There you go, then.
Thanks, that should do the trick.
Intruging. Under power options, I use a Samsung High Performance Profile (given that's my boot drive), which disables it on plugged in and set it to 0 on battery (I do plug my APC via USB for measuring purposes)--there isn't some more specific option right?
The first thing should be 'Hard Disk'. For me it's already expanded for whatever reason and shows that they turn off after 20 minutes. I can change it to 'Never' or as high as (apparently) thirty digits before I stopped checking.
My default options are Balanced and Power Saver and the only thing I ever really do is prevent it from turning off the display or going to sleep (which I change when I'm running things overnight but expect them to complete before I wake).
So basically the same thing. I only have my screen set to turn off (though programs like Kaspersky AV, AOMEI, etc., can shut the PC off after running a long process if I enable the option).
So I'm beginning to think Thumbnail Generation was as symptom of my ills, and not the cause: I had another crash this morning, in the same order--apps not responding, start menu options not responding, wallpaper vanishing, and then explorer crashing (and not resuming until I restarted the PC). During no time was task manager available, in fact trying to access things like the shutdown menu (while start was responsive) only seemed to make things worse. This time, I wasn't browsing libraries or videos.
The event log viewer is about as useless as it always is. Curiously, during all of it some things still worked--Explorer came up, as did an app. I think the condition caused problems with my network, since I lost communication with my printer, but again, probably incidental.
Whatever this is....hmmm.
EDIT: Trying some basic "Update got you crashing" fixes--updated Nvidia drivers (that were just a few days behind schedule), updated my secondary SSD (my primary Samsung Pro already was), disable Fast Boot in BIOS and Fast Startup, Disabled and Enabled my Display Drivers (yeah, don't really get that one, but whatever). At least this way I can go back to this post and know what I did try and what I didn't.
Gonna see if updating my video drivers fixes it.
Last night my Windows Update check for updates wasn't working, saying it couldn't check for updates cause the service wasn't running. So I looked online for a fix and the one I used was stopping the Update service, renaming the SoftwareDistribution folder (I renamed it to SoftwareDistributionOLD) and restart the update service. Hit check for updates again and it worked, up to date with nothing important found. BUT I lost my update history list and the ability to check for Microsoft Product updates.
Fast Forward to this morning and apparently Microsoft didn't update a ExpiryDate(?) cab file for their Windows Update on W7. I thought it was a problem my computer but it was Microsofts at fault.
So now im wondering if it is safe to stop the WU service, delete the current SoftwareDistribution folder, rename the old back to SoftwareDistribution and restart the service? I dunno what to do and I am afraid I might mess something up.
EDIT: Apparently a work around to get WU checking again is to uncheck the "check for Microsoft product updates" in the settings page.
EDITEDIT: Though in doing so removes the option to check it back on again. I probably shoulnd't bother messing with anything else.
In Short: Error is due to checking for microsoft updates while checking for windows updates. Turn it off and Windows updates works again. Replacing the Software Distribution Folder fixes WU for me since it too isn't checking for microsoft updates.
Turn off BITS and Windows Update in Services, rename that Software Distribution folder again, then reenable the services.
Start Windows Update
Walk away for around two days.
If that doesn't fix it, reinstall. Welcome to Windows 7!
Yay Windows Update!
As it stands I'd rather not mettle with it anymore, WU is working since it isn't checking for microsoft product updates.
Then as if to add insult to injury, when I restarted my PC...my thumbnail cache was reset. A lovely way to rub salt into the wound.
So much for those fixes. I guess the next step is to do a complete backup, then a repair installation--if I remember correctly, it should preserve all my settings, conventional programs, and even apps.
I get the immersion thing and all, but I'll take usability every time.
Not saying that's where your issue lies, but it's certainly not helping.
Before I hit the check button I decided to check my settings and wouldn't ya know it, the box to check for Microsoft products was there ticked along with the box below it unticked. (Just like how I left it before making a new Software folder)
Anywho canceled out of settings and checked for updates and success! Even checked the .cab file to make sure it updated to the latest file.
All in all, only thing I lost was my update history, but everything else seems intact and working. n-n
It's not, seeing how the worse that used to happen when I alt-tabbed out of games was the games themselves wouldn't resume. That's a pretty far gap from "Windows shits the bed", to put it mildly. Considering this happened without a game running in the background, I doubt it's related. Also some games run weirdly worse in borderless window mode (and some weirdly better).
Even after registry edits, Automatic Maintenance is fucking determined to delete my cache. And it basically runs whenever the PC feels like it is idle, that timer doesn't seem to make a damn difference, and it wants to run more than once a day. I did learn one interesting thing: actually running maintenance manually didn't delete my cache (so maybe the registry edit works). The automatic, hidden service is actually three different things, one of which does (and may not be changeable via registry edit). I'm going to try disabling all of the related services entirely and see if that helps, but considering I've used both registry edits and permission options, I'm starting to think that this might simply be a thing you are not allowed to change in Windows, and no one realizes that yet.
And Jesus Christ, does the Windows deve team hate image thumbnail caches. It's like they're the United States Air force and image caches are the Syrian Army--even after you kill them, repeatedly, the mere fact they still exist is apparently a personal insult.
Yes, but it got substantially worse recently. The problem for a lot of people used to be, "My thumbnail cache is so big it's causing errors in the actual images," not "My thumbnail cache erases every 2 to 8 hours."