End Process / End Task on Hung / Not responding programs does nothing!

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yes... if you read what I said, even taskkill /f, end process, and end process tree don't do it... (the only option in the programs list (rather than processes) is end task, all the others are options under processes or using command line). and i have reinstalled the OS twice now. I do not doubt that it is some conflicting program or driver, but it does not excuse M$ from its failure to allow me to successfully kill a process.

Monday, January 19, 2009 3:18 PM

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I am experiencing the same problems. The fact that Task Manager> End Process nor Taskkill works is maddening.

Monday, January 19, 2009 7:04 PM

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The first thing to try is SFC, which I would have expected you to say you had tried already. (sfc /scannow) Anyone who can use taskkill should be able to handle that without instruction. If the CBS.log reports failure on taskkill et. al., you are going to have to look for Malware damage to brought up from Vista.

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Mark L. Ferguson MS-MVP

Rightclick for 'Open Link in a New Tab' to read my 'Signatures 101' thread

Monday, January 19, 2009 10:13 PM

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dude, there isn't any malware on my computer. it is an entirely clean install and behind a strong firewall and NAT. and for the record, i DID run it, and it is clean.

Monday, January 19, 2009 10:46 PM

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marinebio72 said:

dude, there isn't any malware on my computer. it is an entirely clean install and behind a strong firewall and NAT.

Never say that twice... cause you might get it!

It was a good tip from Mark. Who's been on computer for more than a week knows that!

Ok, let me give you some too: memory check F8 at startup; then update your drivers;

Do kill explorer.exe if you have to. Kill it with task list or sysinternals (microsoft now) utilities. Just kill the task, not with child... bla bla. If you need to get it back, taskmanager and RUN explorer.exe.

Explorer or IE crashing... hum... memory or spyware/virus problems!

Adelino Araujo

Monday, January 19, 2009 11:05 PM

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no dude, the problem is that it wont kill explorer.exe. no matter how hard you try, it wont actually kill it. already have run a memcheck, and that isnt the issue. ive updated all drivers as much as currently possible. i know how to run explorer.exe, but i dont like having 3 instances because i can't kill two of them at all. and when they are hung like that, the new one doesnt actually load the taskbar (because it never went away)

i appreciate the suggestions, but if you look at what we are saying the issue is, its that it is unkillable.

Monday, January 19, 2009 11:11 PM

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If the system is clean, you are left with the only remaining posibility. (It's not like thousands are reporting taskkill failure) The best drivers you can get are not good enough.

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Mark L. Ferguson MS-MVP

Monday, January 19, 2009 11:36 PM

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you are clearly missing the importance of this bug. It is not an important issue that the drivers are causing hangs. That should be expected given that it is a beta, and better drivers will come along. the disturbing fact is that the operating system (or more accurately, the admin user) does not have the ability to kill hung processes. It is totally irrelevant what driver/program is causing the issue. when you do an taskkill /f or end process (or process tree), the program should be terminated, regardless of whether it wants to ignore the terminate request. this comes from the clean shutdown model that MS started working with for vista. but if a process (such as explorer.exe) cannot be killed without holding down the power button, this is a HUGE HUGE problem.

Tuesday, January 20, 2009 6:19 PM

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Start -> Switch User

heheheh ;)

Tuesday, January 20, 2009 8:00 PM

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I have the same issue. Luckily I have a reset button on my custom built unit.

Tuesday, January 20, 2009 8:09 PM

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Just to note--I get this too, many many programs are getting 'stuck' and nothing short of a cold boot will get them out. Right now I have itunes, media center stuck and not 'killable' behind this IE window. Itunes guarantees me a stuck app, media center only does it about 50% of the time. Nothing (task mgr, command line, sysinternals) will kill stuck apps for me in Win7.

/curt

Friday, February 6, 2009 7:42 AM

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Yep, a real PITA, task manager, resource explorer etc are all useless when an app hangs and WILL NOT end a process no matter how many times you atempt to kill it. Once that occurs nothing gets you out of it except a hard reset.

I have found the 64 bit version far more unstable and susceptable to apps hanging the system and it is really very frustrating. Hopefully it is just due to the beta code

Friday, February 6, 2009 8:02 AM

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This has nothing to do with W7, this is true for all Windows NT based OS versions. When you kill a process, the user-mode part of the process is thrown away. But the kernel-mode part can't go away until all drivers are finished with the thread(s) that belong to that process.

For example, if a thread is executing an I/O operation, the kernel signals to the driver responsible for the I/O that the operation should be canceled. If the driver is well-behaved, it cleans up the bookkeeping for the incomplete I/O, cleans up the thread state and releases the thread.

If the driver is not well-behaved (or if the hardware that the driver is managing is acting up), it may take forever for it to clean up the incomplete I/O. During that time, the driver holds that thread (and therefore the process that the thread belongs to) hostage.

So you probably have a badly behaving driver on your system that exhibits the problems you describe, this is not surprising giving the beta state of some of the drivers (display, network) running on W7.

Friday, February 6, 2009 10:20 AM

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willy denoyette said:

This has nothing to do with W7, this is true for all Windows NT based OS versions. When you kill a process, the user-mode part of the process is thrown away. But the kernel-mode part can't go away until all drivers are finished with the thread(s) that belong to that process.

For example, if a thread is executing an I/O operation, the kernel signals to the driver responsible for the I/O that the operation should be canceled. If the driver is well-behaved, it cleans up the bookkeeping for the incomplete I/O, cleans up the thread state and releases the thread.

If the driver is not well-behaved (or if the hardware that the driver is managing is acting up), it may take forever for it to clean up the incomplete I/O. During that time, the driver holds that thread (and therefore the process that the thread belongs to) hostage.

So you probably have a badly behaving driver on your system that exhibits the problems you describe, this is not surprising giving the beta state of some of the drivers (display, network) running on W7.

it has everything to do with W7. You are missing the point entirely. XP could kill processes. Vista was less able to. W7 doesn't bother to give you any control over hung processes at all. Many programs without drivers at all are experiencing this. And even if it IS a faulty kernel-level driver (which it could be in some cases), the OS ought to be able to kill the offending process. Isn't that what they wanted in Vista by retaining more kernel control? Having to hard shutdown your computer on numerous occasions, even if due to a faulty driver, is not acceptable. The system ought to have the final say over a thread, period. The fact that it will not let you end it is nothing more than an attempt to further limit the user-level control over the system, and has gotten to the point of insanity.

Friday, February 6, 2009 1:49 PM

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I too find it very annoying that Vista and Win7 often do not allow one to kill processes or to shut down the system.
I many situations the only way out is a hard reset.

There should at least be a "shutdown /force" (leaving NTFS intact if possible).

Thursday, February 12, 2009 11:12 AM

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I have this problem too. Typically with explorer exe.

Killing the process from task manager or with taskkill *MUST* kill the process even if that means an immediate BSOD because a stupid driver refused to let go. OK, I went overboard a little, but the point is that task kill is task kill and should do what it's supposed to. First ask nicely, wait a little, ask not so nicely, wait a little, then kill, kill, kill.

So kill the stupid task already!!!

Thursday, February 12, 2009 12:58 PM

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I actually don't think you are going overboard at all on suggesting that taskkill /f should work, even if it will force an immediate BSOD. At least if it forced a BSOD I would have some way of tracking down the offending driver/hook, if that is indeed what is causing it.

Thursday, February 12, 2009 1:17 PM

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Once again, when a process can't get killed, it's because it has a thread blocked in a kernel mode driver. There are several possibilities for this, or the driver has a bug which makes that the OS fails to cancel the IO request and return to the OS, or the driver is badly written and did not indicate that it could be canceled when starting the IO request. The OS can not reliably remove a thread in such case, a driver is a shared resource, that is - it can be used by multiple processes (even simultaneously), removing a thread cold, would result is a corrupted driver state,and this would impact all process relying on that driver.
So again, the problem here is a faulty driver, not the fact that you can't kill a process, this ain't new, it's been like this since NT4.
If you need to know what driver is suspending the process termination, you'll have to attach a kernel debugger and inspect the pending thread's call stack.

Thursday, February 12, 2009 3:10 PM

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that is only half of the story. Taskkill seems to think that it was effective in killing the process, even though it wasn't. if the only problem is as you suggest, this would NOT be the case. this is a system level problem, not just a faulty driver issue. at the end of the day, if the only way that i can recover is to hold down the power button, this is causing FAR more problems than it would to actually force it to kill it. And to say that it has been this way since NT4 is heavily misleading. The system has actually given you control to end an offending process with end process tree, and here it does not.

Thursday, February 12, 2009 3:54 PM

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Taskill, Process Explorer Taskmanager you name it is a user process issuing a call to TerminateProcess (Win32 API), the user part of the process will get removed by the OS no big deal, but the kernel part cannot under the conditions described here:
http://blogs.technet.com/markrussinovich/archive/2005/08/17/unkillable-processes.aspx
note that this was written before Vista release, as I said this has always been like this, for the simple reason that the OS won't trash it's internal state because of a single faulty driver, such would certainly lead to system crashes (BSOD) lost work for other running applications or worse a corrupt File System.

Thursday, February 12, 2009 4:14 PM

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and somehow you think holding down the power button is a BETTER solution?

Thursday, February 12, 2009 4:16 PM

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A blocked application ( a zombie) doesn't prevent you to restart the system isn't it? You can exit other running applications if any ,so you can save your work .

Thursday, February 12, 2009 4:38 PM

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maybe you are misunderstanding something, or not reading the discussion. when this happens, you are unable to restart your computer, or shut it down, it will hang indefinitely (tested up to 24 hours in a row). SOMETIMES it will BSOD out after about an hour, but that doesn't seem to always happen. the only solution is to hold down the power button, which is more damaging than a user-induced BSOD, which is why we are saying that would be preferable.

Thursday, February 12, 2009 4:47 PM

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Where in this thread was said that you could not shutdown/restart? Have you waited long enough? stoping a system with hung kernel threads may take a while.
As I said you get the chance to save your work by terminating the other applications, before turning off, right?
Also, your BSOD after about an hour has nothing to do with this "Not able to kill a process, task), it's another (possibly related) issue - a faulty driver.
A BSOD is the result of a kernel initiated stop, it's purpose is (1) to stop ALL activity in the system to prevent further damage, (2) to enable debugging, by generating the minidump. A power down will not cause more damage than a BSOD, supposing you have closed your other applications, it's even less damaging because you may have saved (some of) your work.

Thursday, February 12, 2009 5:17 PM

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willy denoyette said: Where in this thread was said that you could not shutdown/restart? Have you waited long enough? stoping a system with hung kernel threads may take a while.

marinebio72 said:

Is anyone else having the issue where sometimes when a program will hang (either a 3rd party like mozilla firefox/thunderbird or explorer.exe) clicking end task does nothing at all? It is very VERY frustrating. Additionally, when this happens, you are forced to turn off your computer by holding down the power button, because it will never complete the shutdown sequence. I should also note that taskkill /f does NOTHING but reports "success" when you attempt to kill a a program. At the time of this posting, explorer.exe has two instances open in task manager, neither of which I am able to kill with end task, or right click and end process or process tree (although the child programs they spawned that WERE responding when end process was pressed will close).

This problem occured in vista as well, but it seems substantially worse in windows 7. I am at a loss, and will have to stop using the OS altogether. I recognize that it could be a driver malfunctioning or something, but the operating system NEEDS to allow you to kill unresponsive processes. explorer.exe has now been stalled and hung for 48 minutes without doing ANYTHING.

Any reply on this would be useful, this problem is about as bad as it can possibly get for an operating system. I am now pressing/holding the power button to shut down. How useless.

marinebio72 said:

maybe you are misunderstanding something, or not reading the discussion. when this happens, you are unable to restart your computer, or shut it down, it will hang indefinitely (tested up to 24 hours in a row). SOMETIMES it will BSOD out after about an hour, but that doesn't seem to always happen. the only solution is to hold down the power button, which is more damaging than a user-induced BSOD, which is why we are saying that would be preferable.

tGavo said:

Yep, a real PITA, task manager, resource explorer etc are all useless when an app hangs and WILL NOT end a process no matter how many times you atempt to kill it. Once that occurs nothing gets you out of it except a hard reset.

pmeinl said:

I too find it very annoying that Vista and Win7 often do not allow one to kill processes or to shut down the system.
I many situations the only way out is a hard reset.

I almost didn't even both to reply to your question... seriously dude, please read the forum before making comments. is 24 hours not enough? is 3 different people saying numerous times you can't shut down not enough? My point about the 1 hour BSOD is that the SYSTEM NEVER shut down, but finally BSOD'd out once or twice (normally it just hangs on shutting down or logging off perpetually, like i said, i waited on this step for 24 hours once.) I don't even know what to say to you.

Thursday, February 12, 2009 5:28 PM

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Ok, you have said you need to switch off because shutdown never ends, the other two are not those who started this thread, I usually ignore these - me too - reply's, sorry.
But you are ignoring my point, which is that you can't kill a process that got stuck in driver code. Bad drivers can cause a lot of damage, they run in kernel space and have the same privileges as the kernel and they can overwrite other drivers code or data. Also the shutdown code goes through kernel code and a lot of driver's code, for instance the system needs to flush the FS cache to disk, turn of the PnP devices power (those supporting power control), switch the monitor to standby mode , signal the BIOS to shutdown the power supply, etc....whenever the shutdown process hit's the hung (faulty) driver, chances are that the shutdown never finishes or finishes in a BSOD.

Thursday, February 12, 2009 5:57 PM

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i hope you guys are flooding MS about this problem. if i was you i would send this problem by hitting "send feedback" at least 2-3 times a day to MS.

the loader the roar from you guys, the better chances of MS people actually looking into the problem.

I have had same issue with IE8 just hanging there and not closing at all, even after selecting end process from task manager

Thursday, February 12, 2009 11:35 PM

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I can't send feedback on an issue that I don't have, it's up to you to send feedback whenever you encounter such an issue.
A problem like this (A process that gets stuck in driver code or in kernel code), can only be solved by first identifying the faulty kernel code (driver module), YOU and only you are able to inform MS about this issue at the moment it occurs on your system.
There are several ways to report this, or you identify the faulty driver yourself by attaching the kernel debugger tool to the hung process and report all info you can get in order to identify the issue and report it back with "Send feedback".
Another option is to take a dump of the process by using Taskman (Show processes of all users - Right Click hung process - Create Dump file) the dump will automatically be transferred to MS whenever WER kicks in.

Friday, February 13, 2009 1:12 AM

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if you don't have anything to add other than repeating yourself, please stop posting in this forum willy, it is getting to the level of trolling.

Friday, February 13, 2009 2:00 AM

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First a confirm: just to be clear - when this happens, the system *will not* complete shutdown. Ever. Not even if you're begging it on your knees.

Let me just say that at the moment, my Win7 computer is running *ALL* MS provided drivers. Everything was installed or updated by Win7 or MS Update.
Now, I know that those drivers are not written by MS (usually), just certified, but hinting so strongly about bad drivers would also suggest that the certification / logo program procedures might have gotten too lax?

Also AFAIK the only kernel mode drivers in NT kernel are disk and network. I'm probably mistaken here, but how exactly can the simplest drivers in the system be *THAT* bad?

Let me tell you another example of a problem I have on an XP computer (also) because of this:
I have reinstalled my system with AHCI support about half a year ago. Ever since I'm getting "random" FS corruption, usually with the indexes. Also, the forced MS updates (the ones that automatically restart the system) never do get to restarting the system. This is a rule - the procedure always hangs at restart. After these updates, the disk is *always* checked for errors and errors are always found. This is not the only reason for corruption, but it surely is the most repeatable one. It seems Intel Matrix storage drivers (ICH9R) do some write caching and when something gets stuck, the cache is never flushed. I on the other hand am left with an unreliable system for the first time in my life. This scares the s**t out of me (corruption I mean).

Is this a more picturesque description of pros for taskkill actually working?

Friday, February 13, 2009 7:00 AM

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Velis, disk and network drivers together with display drivers are the most complex part of the system, more complex than anything else in the system, their correct functioning is crucial for the stability and integrity of the OS, if a driver fails the system fails point.
Also, there are far more than network and disk kernel drivers, there are actually at least 140 driver modules loaded in a W7 OS. All devices need a device driver to function, and all device drivers are kernel mode! Start the Device manager and take a look at your devices and their respective drivers.
Vista and up can load user mode drivers, they run in user space, so they can't hurt the system integrity. However they are only meant to handle removable media devices like camera's.
Also what you call a "disk driver" consists of a bunch of driver modules that form a driver stack (upper, filter, and lower drivers). The disk driver stack consists of drivers coming from MS and third parties, MS only supplies (some) upper filter and lower device drivers as generic drivers, provided there are no vendor specific drivers found or available.
Device vendors can add their own drivers in the stack (Intel ICH9R is such an example). The same goes for network driver stacks, they consist of several stacked drivers, some supplied by MS (f.i ndis.sys) but most are coming from the network device ( chip set) vendor.
Another example is an Anti Virus product, all virus scanners rely on a filter driver that gets inserted in the "disk driver stack" , and in the network driver stack, a filter driver is a kernel mode driver. Note that the latter is the source of BSOD's currently related to most AV products on W7.

Another remark, if the explorer process or some of the other core system processes gets stuck in the kernel, than your system will mostly fail to shutdown (but not always). As for your disk corruption errors, you should open a case with Intel as they relate to the Matrix storage drivers.

Friday, February 13, 2009 1:01 PM

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marinebio72, I was replying to xicanonaztlance, you are not forced to read my replies.

Friday, February 13, 2009 1:03 PM

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I get the same problem, ESPECIALLY after I resume work after resuming from Sleep or Hibernate. If a program freezes, End Task doesn't do anything (on Vista and XP it mostly ALWAYS ended). My tasks mostly do end though if I haven't yet put the PC to Sleep mode. So I've had to resort to never going into sleep mode now - have to Shutdown instead.

Taskkill /f doesn't help either. And when the process fails to end (whatever the program), that's when I know that the PC won't logoff or shutdown at all. It just hangs there. I also know that if I open any Windows Explorer window now, it will be all white and empty. I have to reset the PC with the button. It is a definately Windows 7 issue.

Saturday, February 14, 2009 5:13 PM

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I had the same problem. I read this thread through and the poster who talked about the upper, filter, and lower drivers helped solve my problems. When s/he explained that antivirus software hooks in as a filter driver, it was obvious my problem was the AVG antivirus software installed on the computer. What was not clear with Microsoft's recommendation about antivirus software was that AVG Free is not windows 7 compatibile. Turning AVG off immediately solved all the problems I was having. (Including the inability to access external hard drives.) I am now switching to Kapersky.

Thanks all.

Sunday, February 15, 2009 8:58 AM

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Sparkinium, Actually I'm an he :))
Most, if not all, AV products suffer from the same issue, all of them install a filter driver in the disk and the network stack. And here it's the network filter that is the culprit, which doesn't necessarily means that the bug is in that filter. Other examples of a problematic drivers that hooks in the disk stack are the ISO File System drivers, these are the first cause of explorer hangs. Disk filter drivers are also the first cause of Sleep/Hibernate problems, some of them don't correctly handle power management request, the results are failing system state changes like: System running -> sleeping/hibernate or sleep -> System running, disk state changes (power save mode) for AHCI enabled drives etc... . That's why you as an end-user, should stay away from third party non WHQL drivers or (worse) non signed drivers, especially when running on a beta OS.

Sunday, February 15, 2009 9:39 AM

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For now a re-boot is the only way I can get around it. It seems to me to be a bug in Win7

Monday, February 16, 2009 6:49 PM

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I have this same EXACT problem, and it's been frustrating reading this threat, listening to people who have no clue about the problem, giving dumb suggestions... This is clearly a severe Windows 7 issue and needs to addressed. This OS is simply powerless when it comes to shutting down some hung processes, and that makes it like Windows 95, when u had to reboot, everytime an application was hung. I don't care if there are bad drivers involved or not, when you tell a modern OS to shut down a process, it should be powerful enough to do so, immediately!!!

Wednesday, February 25, 2009 10:18 PM

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well, i have determined conclusively (to the extent that is possible) that i was right about my hunch on it revolving around chipset and/or sata (hard drive) controllers. please confirm, if possible, that it seems to happen mostly when saving or accessing the drive.

Wednesday, February 25, 2009 10:47 PM

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Hi,

it's great (as in "great, I am not the only bothering with this) to find other people affected by that issue. I was already thinking about starting a thread, but luckily found that one now. Apart from experiencing a lot of explorer.exe-freezing (which might possibly be related to the current problem) I am experiencing pretty much the same thing described here. Some programs get stuck, show me the "not responding" message, but I am not able to kill them manually. If I try do so, the task happily ignores it and prevents my computer from shutting down, restarting or simply logging off. In addition, I have got its undead window hanging around. The last time this happened to me was when I was trying out Visual Studio C# Express. (I remember it, because it was pretty much guaranteed to freeze when I closed it)

I might say this because it is mentioned here, but I think the problem really mainly occurred when saving or/and closing specific programs. They would just freeze and become invincible for the task manager. The only common thing that I think I was able to find out, was that ProcessExplorer showed that the affected tasks had only one thread active (in that stack-thingy window of ProcessExplorer) which was in the state "wait:executive". The other ones seemed to have been killed properly. (If I remember things right)

Might be only coincidence or me talking nonsense, though, because I tested it with only two tasks or so. I'll try to look how other programs behave.

Friday, February 27, 2009 7:02 PM

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A thread who's state is wait:executive is a thread that is waiting in the kernel (named the "executive") on an object to become "signaled". The "process" to which this thread belongs cannot be removed by the OS for as long as the thread does not return (that is exit). A process is not an active component in Windows, it's just data structure describing the resources forming the "process". Threads are active components, threads are scheduled by the OS scheduler. The scheduler assigns "runable" threads to processors so they can continue to execute their code paths. Threads that are blocked waiting in the executive are NOT scheduled, they don't become runable, so they cannot execute any code, so they never exit and the process they belong to becomes a zombie.

Friday, February 27, 2009 8:34 PM

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I do appreciate the posts of Willy Denoyette shedding some light into the intrinsics of why programs do hang.
However, I do not believe that all apps and drivers will ever be bug free and so MS should offer a solution to get out of hangs - even if this means changes deep in old parts of the OS.

If there really are situations when only a hard reset helps, there should at least be an informational message instead of letting the user wait endlessly.
If canceling takes long, there should be some progress information.

I do experience less hangs with Win7 then with Vista and more of them can be solved without a hard reset. Many of them were related to Explorer extensions (especially from different ISO mounting tools). Maybe the extension mechanism can be made more robust.

MS seems to have worked on the hang problem:
Sometimes I see a "force shutdown" screen and often this works.
Hanging Explorer operations often can be canceled.
And the dreadful unpredictable shutdown times of Vista seem to be gone.

Saturday, March 7, 2009 4:58 PM

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pmeinl, Hmm, you are asking for a re-design of the Windows Kernel, Windows NT (and all OS versions based on it) is a general purpose design, made to run on general purpose HW, not a special purpose OS.
Bugs in critical drivers, like those in other parts of the executive (kernel), are not acceptable, these kind of bugs need to be corrected (preferably) before release. It's simply not acceptable that such drivers even exist, driver writers have all the tools needed to detect potential hangs/deadlocks, but some find it too cumbersome to use these tools.
A bug in kernel code (like drivers) that result in a process hang or a system hang, are the easiest to debug and correct, trying to recover and continue from such a hang is NO solution for the problem at hand, and for some type of driver classes (think disk/storage drivers) way too dangerous because the system cannot possibly restore the 'state' of the driver and it's associated device(s) state, in a way that it's safe to continue from there.

Note also that this (driver hangs/deadlocks) is not a Windows only issue, all general purpose OSses I know (Windows, U**ix, VMS) are acting the same, all implementors have done sufficient research on that matter and came to the conclusion that bugs that result in deadlocks/hangs must be corrected.

Some remarks:
-I never experienced hangs with Vista other than those I'd expected (I'm a driver writer too), and those I can expected from non WHQL logo'd drivers. I never trusted any public domain tools/drivers (don't get me started on ISO mount tools that insert a filter driver in the storage stack, most if not all of them are buggy), I don't want them on systems of mine unless they get their drivers qualified.
- "force shutdown" has nothing to do with driver deadlock/hangs. This is the result of an foreground application, that fails to return from the broadcast Windows message telling all applications that the system is about to shutdown, in a timely fashion. In this case the system will force the application to stop by issuing a 'TerminateProcess' API call (effectively a kill). Also this is nothing new, it exists on all Windows NT systems since NT4.

Saturday, March 7, 2009 9:30 PM

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This problem isn't restricted to Windows 7. For months now my copy of Vista Ultimate has had a systemic number of issues:

Programs will crash but won't shut down in Task Manager. Once this happens only resetting will solve it, and there's no guarantee something else won't do the same thing within seconds or hours;
Opening any folder ir application will cause the trackpad to permanently freeze, and then the whole system;
Ctrl-Alt-Del no longer works;
Shut down no longer works correctly (must physically hold down the power switch);
Logging in to administrator doesn't work - a black screen appears forever, meaning another account must be open before you can switch to Administrator without incident.

I'm not the only person with this problem, either. Since the news broke of a serious vulnerability back in Nov or Dec 2008 (where an update was released to resolve it), HUNDREDS of people have been experiencing this. Re-installation of the OS doesn't solve it. Checking the Ram for errors doesn't solve it...

Nearly all of the victims appear to be Dell users, but this is not a definite. I'm sorry to be so short with the company technicians here, but I understand that Windows 7 is built using Vista's code, and so if this patch of yours is embedded the Beta OS as well as mine, then that has to be the culprit.

The fact is you guys f***** up. I know this can happen sometimes, but until you sort it out many of us are at risk at losing valuable data because you haven't done your job properly. This problem with computers wasn't nearly as bad as this before the "critical patch" was released. I can't remember exactly which one it was, but it was all over the tv news - that you should give a good place to identify it

Wednesday, March 11, 2009 10:17 AM

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Taskkill did not always dissolve the problem of "hanging"
I would like to see the possibility of restarting in safe mode or reboot implemented in W7
before final release. A lot easier trouble shooting than a total reinstall.

Wednesday, March 11, 2009 12:54 PM

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I too experience periodic complete system hangs. Mine typically occurs when in AutoCAD 2009 and doing "File/Open" to access a new drawing. As soon as Windows Explorer opens to navigate the system hangs. No peripherals and no CTL+ALT+DEL. The started occurring immediately after the 02/24/2009 updates were applied, but as I said before does not happen consistently except for the fact that it is usually when I already have a drawing open and am XREF'ing or opening a new drawing. I have submitted several feedback messages.

As far as errors, I have almost no alerts or errors in event viewer and do not receive any onscreen notifications after the hard boot.

Michael

Thursday, March 12, 2009 5:02 PM

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Did you ever investigate Auto Cad's memory consumption before and after opening a new drawing? If not do so by running the 'Resource Monitor' from Task Manager (Performance tab), in ResMon select the Memory tab and watch your physical memory consumption and AutoCad's private byte consumption.

Thursday, March 12, 2009 5:44 PM

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willy, its great that you keep responding on this forum, but do you realize that there is a difference between over consumption of memory resources and system hangs which require a hard reboot to recover from? Your system frequently shows very low 0-6% cpu usage and standard memory usage (whatever it happens to be for your system) when this occurs. To continuously blame this on 3rd party software is missing the point, and is completely unhelpful. The OS needs to have a method for handling software and drivers that are causing it to hang. And sitting there nicely after asking it ever so gently to kill the process is NOT what needs to be done. the fact remains that you get a pop up warning you of system instability when you do try to ctrl-alt delete. that is great, but it should ALLOW you to destabilize the system as it suggests, and at least succeed in killing the offending task. you used to be able to, and it has only gotten worse with win7. and before you AGAIN say it is third party software, these hangs happen quite frequently while running only windows software.

Thursday, March 12, 2009 6:04 PM

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Thanks for the responses. I have monitored the memory usage of CAD and have the resource monitor running 99% of the time on my second screen as this is a beta test and understand that info is the key. However, even with the monitor running once the hangup takes place the monitor also freezes, so I cannot see another instance of explorer starting or anything of that nature. As I stated in the previous post the system ran flawlessly coincidentally?... before the updates. It also seems apparent to me that most of the people experiencing the issue are related to explorer.exe, but I do also agree with previous posters that it could totally be hard drive drivers. Below are my system specs which you will see are a little different than what a typical or home user would have.

Dell Precision Workstation T7400
Dual Quad-Core Intel Xeon E5420 @ 2.5ghz
8GB PC2-5300 RAM
Nvidia GeForce 8600 GT 512MB Video
Dual 73GB SAS in RAID 0

Also let me say that I am very happy with Windows 7 thus far and hope that they are able to bump up the release date. I am a Systems administrator with about 60 client machines and 6 servers which is not big by any means, but I bet I face 90% of the same challenges as larger businesses and a large portion of them could be alleviated by moving from XP to Windows 7.

And yes MarineBio the problem at this point is the inability to recover from the hangup or receive any error reports that could help us figure out why we are hanging up in the first place.

Michael

Edited by chascoadmin Thursday, March 12, 2009 7:36 PM added detail

Thursday, March 12, 2009 7:04 PM

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Michael, The reason I was asking about the memory consumption was because I assumed you were running a 64-bit version of W7, I see you have 8GB installed so I guess I'm right about this, right?
Now, it looks the system really hangs, which means the system doesn't handle interrupts any longer ( the mouse pointer is stucked and there is no keyboard input possible, right?). This is really hard to debug without a kernel debugger attached and running on a separate system.
Still I would love to see your total memory consumption, especially pay attention when it exceeds 4GB, important is the cache size, the cache grows when reading (non-yet cached) files, and on 64-bit it may grow above the size of virtual memory (RAM + pagefile size). There is a known issue with this in 7000!
Also, I would like to know what chipset driver you have installed? Older chipsets (and/or their drivers) failed to handle > 4GB RAM. What OS, and what chipset divers did the system came with? If it came with Vista, did you ever try to run AutoCad 2009 on it?

Thursday, March 12, 2009 8:03 PM

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I am running 32-Bit, and the only reason I have 8GB of RAM is because I ordered it that way at a discount so I would be ready when I did switch to 64. At this point we have too many other proprietary applications that are not 64-Bit compatible to do the switch. I may just have to order another system specially for 64-Bit graphics, CAD, etc.

You are correct on the "no mouse, no keyboard" question and I also lose sound.

The system came with Vista Business 32-Bit and AutoCAD performed well on that. The chipset is Intel 5400B Rev C0 and it came with the Dell 8.5.0.1009, A20 drivers so i am not sure how that relates to the OEM.

At this point I have W7 managing the page file, but have thought about setting it static lower for those exact reasons. I will try that later today and see if the problem still occurs.

Maybe also try to remove some of the memory down to 4GB?

I am not familiar with Kernel Debugging. Is it something I can download, read about and install on a laptop? Run over the network?

Thanks,
Michael

Thursday, March 12, 2009 8:37 PM

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Michael,

I see, if the system runs 32-bit Vista and 8GB RAM installed, it should also run with W7, of course you can always try with only 4GB installed. Question: did the system come with 8GB and 32-bit Vista? Guess not.
What I said about the FS cache on W7 is only valid for 64-bit, 32-bit limits the FS cache to 1GB, so this shouldn't be an issue here. Note that I'm talking about the size of the cache in RAM not about the pagefile!
So, the chipset drivers you are using with W7 are the one that came with the system and these are Vista qualified, right?
The (kernel) debugger tools and symbol files can be downloaded from Microsoft (http://www.microsoft.com/whdc/devtools/debugging/default.mspx), but you'll need a lot of experience before will be able to debug a system hang like this. You need to know the tools the OS internals and you need to have two system. One, the target system (the debugee - the one that fails) and another system that runs the debugger. Both need a dedicated inter-connect(serial port, Firewire or ethernet) and you need to specially set-up the target for this.
My guess is that you'd better try some simple things like removing the extra 4GB and check the chipset drivers, while waiting for the RC. You can always "send feedback" though.

Thursday, March 12, 2009 9:33 PM

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Willy,

Yes, I configured the system with Vista Business 32-Bit and 8GB. The chipset drivers were from Dell, but you know how that goes so i'm not sure about WHQL.

I just tried removing the ram about 30 minutes ago and the explorer crash still exists. Out of 5 tries it crashed twice. On top of that, I know Windows will not address more than 4GB but there was an obvious performance loss. I have now put the 8GB back in.

Thanks for the info on the debugging, no time like the present to learn. Right?

I can't wait for the RC!

Thursday, March 12, 2009 9:52 PM

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Dell's chipset drivers are Vista logo'd. Sure they need to get WHQL'd for W7 also, however this process is only starting at the RC milestone. It's beta time for all of us.
What's weird is that it works well with Vista, the same chipset drivers should work equally well on W7 , so the problem is likely due to something else. Any other device drivers (especially Disk/Raid and Video (less likely) ...) that did not come from Dell?

Thursday, March 12, 2009 11:08 PM

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Love a good zombie story

Agree the computers are bound to meet up with problems and we need a good end task button, but of course frozen computers only have the on / off. One time even that failed and I had to pull the battery out! But clearly the average user would not have half the knowlege to even ask the questions you guys are asking.

remember the three great traditions against zombies:
1. garlic (checkdisk checkmem and defrag)
2. wooden stakes (through the heart, Hit that off switch and hold it till the monster stops twitching)
3. fire (reinstall- even reformat and reinstall)

But I think it was clear, early in the thread, that people are appealing to the programmers of win7 for a silver bullet, no need to reboot if you can end the task that froze the interface.

"the problem at this point is the inability to recover from the hangup or receive any error reports that could help us figure out why we are hanging up in the first place."

Friday, March 13, 2009 1:23 AM

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I also have this problem, and before I get discounted as a nutter, what is being described here on Windows 7 B 7000 32-bit is happening to me. For the most part, explorer.exe just hangs, usually after browsing to an external drive or inserting an external drive. I have also had hangs with Windows Media Player when attempting to open it after I had played a video off a network share.

Trying to kill the task in task manager would kill the GUI of the task but the task would remain (again, typically explorer.exe) and a reboot, as mentioned here, does not work. After about 5 minutes I would get the "force quit" screen and then I would go to "Logging Out..." for an indefinate period of time (I didn't have the patience to wait 24 hours, but I did wait at least an hour).

Someone made a suggestion about Anti Virus Software. I have always been careful about my home computer and never had virus software on my installs before (though have run anti-malware software in the past). I installed Kaspersky. For now I have removed it and will see if things go better.

If it does go better, I will chalk it up to Driver/Virus Scanner interactions. But, all the people writing off the poster as a bit of a nutter, I would say this is akin to my "High Definition Audio AC-97" problem with Vista, which everyone on MS forums wrote it off as someone not knowing what they were doing, but turned out to be an actual issue.

Monday, April 13, 2009 8:26 AM

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I didn't notice anyone writing off the poster at all. be not so hasty to cast aspersions. the problem was seriously and carefully discussed. It was agreed that the task kill switch failed and someone even tried to explain exactly why.

(Willie Denoyette said-"A thread who's state is wait:executive is a thread that is waiting in the kernel (named the "executive") on an object to become "signaled". The "process" to which this thread belongs cannot be removed by the OS for as long as the thread does not return (that is exit). A process is not an active component in Windows, it's just data structure describing the resources forming the "process". Threads are active components, threads are scheduled by the OS scheduler. The scheduler assigns "runable" threads to processors so they can continue to execute their code paths. Threads that are blocked waiting in the executive are NOT scheduled, they don't become runable, so they cannot execute any code, so they never exit and the process they belong to becomes a zombie.)

Have you not had a zombie computer? (in fact I have heard of two completely different kinds: one is hung on a task waiting for something. One is basically being remotely controlled without your knowledge.) Please remember "everyone" would surely include you.

Tuesday, April 14, 2009 2:24 AM

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Has anyone made any progress concerning that problem so far?
I'm currently hoping that the RC might improve some things, but I have much doubt about that. The explanation given about the zombie processes was very enlightening, but didn't change a bit in the end. I am not requiring a kernel redesign or something to kill those zombies, but only that I don't have any zombies here. I understand that this is an issue that most modern OSs have, but there should be no faulty drivers causing it. Even if I were able to kill those processes, the issue would still exist and I would still be unable to use the applications affected.
I hope someone figures out which driver or whatever is causing that problem. As for my PC, I can definitely confirm that this always happens to me when a program accesses the drive or some copying is going on. Currently Win 7 is unusable when it comes to important work, which is okay for a beta, but somehow I doubt that things will improve in the final version. There are just to much guesses about what "might" "perhaps" be the issue, but no one has an idea about how to fix it.

Sunday, May 3, 2009 10:44 AM

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same problem here. but I think some incompatible device drivers cause this. but it is ridiculous that I cant end a program unless I reboot. Vista has the same problems. thats why I returned back to XP. BTW I know how to end a task very well. in every try seven says me I ended it. but no it doesnt. it is still there. firefox as example. I tried 7000, 7064, 7077, and now 7100. just the same. sorry, but you have to do something about this. ending a non-lethal task is not be that difficult. it is not doing it all the time. rarely. but it does.

Sunday, May 3, 2009 1:46 PM

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Same issue. Running win 7 7100 32bit. end process and end task on hung apps (explorer.exe and picasa3) do not kill the apps. I have to hold the power button in order to shutdown. In fact I have to hold the power button to shutdown every time. My shutdown, restart, sleep, extended sleep, and hibernate all do not work. I suspect that there is a hung process that I don't know about that is preventing any shutdown operations. This is a new laptop, satellite l305d with a fresh install of windows 7. If anyone has any ideas on how to gather some more debugging info I would be glad to do so. Is there something like strace for windows or some sort of kernel debugging options?

Monday, May 4, 2009 12:36 AM

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Yes, I am sure I read something about debugging on these forums, but I also read that only build 7000 is supported. I haven't had a lot of trouble with computer hangs, usually just give it time and it rights itself. Maybe some of the unofficial copies are virus affected or simply half finished bits as all the programmers work towards the future, finished version.

Monday, May 4, 2009 2:04 AM

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No, llynne, I don't think so. Of course, a virus could cause that, but here there are just too many people affected and it even happens with a clean install. After everything that has been said, I really think this is a faulty driver or some other software issue and that should be addressed. Not everyone is affected, of course, but perhaps only people with specific hardware or whatever. Again, whether or not I am able to kill those processes is not the issue for me. That would just address the symptoms of the problem, but not the problem itself. The erroneous software or driver should be found and fixed. If any information from the testers is needed, I'd be happy to give some provided it helps to get rid of the problem.

Monday, May 4, 2009 9:45 AM

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I want to keep this thread alive as I am having the same problem. While the system (HP G50-133US) shutdown/reboots sometimes, most of the time it simply hangs at the logging off section of the shutdown screen. Only using the power button to shut off works. I've been hoping that by this time it would be resolved via a windows update. The sound driver is not the problem.

Friday, May 22, 2009 2:03 PM

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SAME PROBLEM HERE.

A few months after I got my Vista laptop with Ultimate I started noticing that some processes would not end. End task in the Task Manager did nothing. End Process Tree? Nothing. Downloaded ProcessExplorer. Tried to kill the task through there. Nothing. Oh, and while the task remains active, I cannot start that particular program again. This has happened with Photoshop, VLC (media player), heck, even Solitaire. As other people have noticed, if I try to reboot it just hangs there for.ever. I tried adjusting a Registry setting I saw in another forum (heck, I can't even remember what it was) and didn't help any. After a reboot everything's fine again. If I wait long enough, I'll see the problem again. I ended up re-installing Vista but the problem creeped up again. Someone suggested I disable the Vista Malware Scanner. I did and that seemed to help for some reason. Went months without seeing the "issue". A couple of months ago I installed AVG Free. Haven't had any problems until about two weeks ago. Now I've been having to reboot every other day. It's infurating, frustrating, mind blowingly stupid and ridiculous. I'm back to the same ____. End Task, taskkill /f, end process tree, end process via ProcessExplorer (oh and btw, even processExplorer suffers of the phantom task issue). What the ffffuuuuuu is going on Microsoft? Windows 7 has the same issues? Should I roll back to XP?

Tuesday, May 26, 2009 1:16 AM

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hello guys
i loved w7 that was why i installed it, i liked it, it is more faster and nicer than xp, but one thing is annoying me, i can't kill tasks , i mean with task manager i can't end a task which is not responding, i have to logg off in order to cancel the task and log-on again, a problem must be in W7, micro soft should be aware of this and should make soultion b4 the release of last build of w7, or does any one have any idea why it happens that we can not kill process using the task manager,,,,,

Thursday, June 4, 2009 9:54 PM

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I wish to weigh in here on this subject. For the first time in years, I had the system completely hang up on me. My mouse wouldn't respond and there was no way to shell out of the website. I had linked to the website from Thunderbird and was reading the thread and was going to look at another and it went dormant. Mouse wouldn't move and I couldn't get out no matter what keys were tried. Only way was to hold down the on/off key on my Toshiba A215-S7437 laptop. Then it rebooted as it normally does. I haven't seen this problem since the days of Windows 98 and only infrequently on XP and NEVER on Vista which I have on three machines.

Friday, June 26, 2009 9:11 PM

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I have the same issue as pretty much everyone else. I have a custom built computer running 32-bit W7.

I have 2 HDDs, one running Ubuntu 9.0.2 and the other running W7.
I installed both OS's at the same time.
Both HDD are identical.
I installed the same drivers for my NIC and Graphics card for both OS's.
Windows 7 process' hang all the time. ALLL THE TIIIME. Its driving me insane and it reminds me why I switched to Linux to begin with. I have never forced a process closed in Ubuntu. Ubuntu is free, MS wants to charge me $300 bucks to buy this piece of garbage. If I cant use my computer because some error with drivers in W7, what good is it? I lose data ALL the time, in fact, that is what spurned me to finally figure out whats going on, but there is no resolution. I cannot use windows media player, Firefox, Internet explorer, Explorer hangs almost everytime I open a file. What is that? I cant even open up my files! I just access everything via my linux HDD. BS. I am just glad I didnt pay for this complete waste of HD space.

Monday, June 29, 2009 11:20 PM

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I've also noticed that tasks generally only freeze up after I resume from a suspend. If I restart the computer, tasks will not stop responding, but if I resume from a suspend, anything I click hangs up immediately.

Still angry, but might as well help some people by sharing my experience

Tuesday, June 30, 2009 3:56 AM

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I may be narrowing my problem down somewhat. The total freeze up seems now to be limited to computer inactivity. If I put my laptop aside and come back it works for a short time and then freezes. I do a hard reboot by holding down the start/stop key and it then boots up properly and works properly. It does not seem to be from the browser or e-mail client.

It would appear that a short term solution will simply be to shut down the computer when I am through and do a normal reboot like I do each morning. So long as I am working with it it seems to work fine. But it is this idle time that is doing something. I put the "sleep" mode on never for both the battery and plug-in power, that didn't help.

There is no set of key strokes that will bring it back. The cursor just freezes solid. Nothing works; not even a new mouse. It's the idle time. What that means I don't have a clue. Anyone have any ideas I would be pleased to give it a shot.

Tuesday, June 30, 2009 4:01 AM

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Just to add to the original problem.

I am running Windows 7 64-bit edition on an AMD 2.2Ghz Athlon Dual core processor, 8GB of RAM and a 120GB partition of a 320 GB SATA Hard drive. Windows 7 was done as a clean install to this partition. There seems to be no fixed pattern as to when freezes occur. I have had it happen after rapid typing or mouse movements, after USB removable drives have been used and removed and even during benign activity such as watching a movie on my PC. It is very frustrating as it sometimes recovers after about 3 minutes of inactivity or sometimes it never recovers and needs for the computer to be switched off and restarted. During the freeze the Clock gadget still shows the "seconds" hand moving some of the time, no appplication can be started during this freeze. During the freeze period some of the applications get a (Not Responding) message appended to the top of the Window.

The problem of Windows 7 freezing randomly for whatever reason, irrespectiive of whether it is caused by a faulty driver or whatever seems to point to some fundamental flaw at the heart of the operating system. Since this type of freezing does not happen on XP or Vista one can only assume it was inadvertently inroduced into Windows 7. Please forgive my ignorance, but my gut feel is that the multi-tasking sub-system has been "broken" in Windows 7 and it cannot resolve a deadlock or timeout. Microsoft needs to give this flaw the attention it deserves.

Wednesday, July 1, 2009 1:29 PM

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I've solved it in a way. I have found that if I merely just shut the computer off and restart it later when I need to use it the freezing has been eliminated. When I just left it and it went into sleep mode, even though I disabled it entirely, it still froze up solid and I had to do a complete reboot. Merely shutting the machine off seems to have fixed the problem. At least I don't have the frustration of having to reboot in the middle of some work. So long as I stay on the machine it works fine. What this means, I don't really know, but I never experienced it in Vista which I have successfully used on three machines for about two years. There is no possible way to get out of the freeze short of a total reboot. The keys do nothing and the mouse just quits working entirely. Only a reboot will work.

Friday, July 3, 2009 4:19 AM

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I am having this same problem. Stragely, I did not have the problem with the Windows 7 Beta.

However, with the Release Candidate, every program I use will freeze every once in a while with the "not responding" message. If I wait 5-10 minutes, the problem will eventually resolve itself, only to rear its ugly head again 30 minutes later. It's extrememly annoying, especially since the Beta seemed to work so much better.

Friday, July 3, 2009 8:53 PM

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I intended to turn the computer off today but forgot. Sure enough when I came back, it was froze up solid. Had to do a cold boot. But when it is rebooted it works just fine. There has to be a fix for this problem. Is anyone listening?

To repeat, if I use it and then shut the machine off, it works fine. If I leave it in idle and return, it is frozen up tight. No combination of keys will unfreeze it and only a cold reboot will fix it which then works fine. I don't have any solutions but surely this is fixable.

Monday, July 6, 2009 10:11 PM

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I re-arranged the memory modules in the memory slots on my computer (reversed the order of insertion) to see if this was perhaps caused by a physical memory error. This seems to have helped as I have not had the problem re-occur.

Thursday, July 9, 2009 6:33 PM

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Hi

I'm having this problem too, i nearly always have problems when trying to end Windows Media Player when that crashes, but i also have experienced it with other programs, where trying to end the process of the crashed application does nothing ... or takes maybe 20 minutes or so if i can be bothered to wait that long before restarting.

I have this is the Beta version a lot, the RC seems to have the same problem it's just my apps are not crashing so much now anyway so i don't need to end the process so often.

I am not gonna try fiddling with my hardware configuration - i did not have this problem on Vista or XP with this computer. If Microsoft can get it to work on them, then it can get it to work with Windows 7.

Monday, July 13, 2009 12:56 PM

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I thought the problem had gone away but it is still freezing randomly. This does not happen when I work in Vista.

Monday, July 13, 2009 5:48 PM

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Possibly another way:

download pskill and extract someplace

open a cmd prompt with admin rights

go to that directory where you extracted pskill

there is another fun file there called psexec

start taskmgr this way:

psexec -s -i -d taskmgr

This will start taskmgr with SYSTEM rights instead of your normal user or admin rights

I don't have a stuck process to try it on right now, but it might be another work around.

You can use this same method to elevate explorer or cmd or any program to SYSTEM rights

Friday, July 24, 2009 2:44 AM

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I'm also on the same boat as everyone else. I have Win 7 RC 64bit installed and lately right after I log in with my credentials, anything I click freezes the system. I also have to do a hard reboot to get out of it. The only time it doesnt freezes is when I boot up in Safe mode. So it has to be a driver, just cant pin it down. Hope theres a fix soon.

Tuesday, July 28, 2009 1:07 AM

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There is no simple answer to this problem, but I did find a fix. For some reason the issue partly has to do with your Graphics Card (or the GPU if it's a laptop), as well as the data structure of Windows Vista. In the end I used a program called ComboFix. The link below includes a place to download it and instructions:

http://www.bleepingcomputer.com/combofix/how-to-use-combofix

Basically this program performs about 60 or so tests on your computer's registry, core system folders and other critical areas of the O/S to try and find problems. One it's done, it then does a few things to address any bugs it finds on the system. Finally, it asks you to reboot to save changes. When it was all done, my problems disappeared and the system actually ran faster than it ever has - apparently some cumulative updates screw with your productivity.

Before you do anything, try and get into Safe Mode and just backup things like My Documents and anything else you've created that you want to keep. Don't bother with system files unless there is something really specific. Bear in mind this may only work with some systems. If hundreds of people are suffering from it there's probably a fatal flaw in how the O/S has been coded; meaning you'll probably have to wait until Windows 7 is released.

Tuesday, July 28, 2009 10:29 AM

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I'm going to wait for the final release and just tolerate the freezing. So long as I shut down my laptop where the software is installed, I simply reboot when I come back and it works fine. But this is really something that Microsoft needs to fix without being constantly reminded about it. If this goes out in the final release then they ought to rethink their marketing strategy because there are already plenty of Microsoft bashers who would jump right on this. Let's hope they have the foresight to fix the product before it is released. I'm sitting tight.

Tuesday, July 28, 2009 11:21 PM

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After searching around the web for people with similar problems I ran into a user who said that disabling Windows Media Player Network Sharing Services did the trick. I tried it and my PC is not freezing. It has been almost 30 minutes since I did that and no problems, when it only took maybe a minute for my system to freeze. Try it out people, good luck.

Will update incase it happens again.

Tuesday, July 28, 2009 11:45 PM

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Obviously I am running the RC at this time and although it does not happen near as often, my machine does still have a complete freeze occasionally. I have checked and the WMP network sharing service is manual and not running. I do notice that it happens most often now when the machine has been sitting idle for some time. It may be related to standby? I will try changing my BIOS suspend setting and report back.

Friday, August 28, 2009 6:50 PM

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ok have the same problem sometimes - can't kill processes with both methodes in taskmgr or anyway else than turn off the computer..
this is sometimes realy a problem..
in normal case the process will consume <1% CPU and normal memory.. so the memory is half free or more and the cpu over all at max. 6%..
i had the problem with an simple editor (juju edit), windows media player, the new trillian massenger, firefox..
sometimes this happens after comming back from standby or hibernate..
can't say that it mostly happens when there is a io on hdd with the programm hang after it.. (for trillian as example there is normaly nearly no io on hdd and it was even not connected at that time)..

however: it is very frustrating to restart or hard turn off pc for killing a process... killing processes worked very well in win xp!!

Tuesday, September 22, 2009 11:03 AM

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It's not exclusive to Vista/W7. Nor is it necessarily a "driver" issue as Willy described.

I'm using XP I just created a zombie somehow, using my own console application that I wrote, in which I was dealing with network sockets, and upon stopping the debugger altogether in Visual Studio (while a socket was open to my local IP) to make changes and rebuild the solution, the console app closed but the process continues to run, even as I type this (and the build failed because the files were "in use"). No matter how many times I chose "End Process" from Task Manager, the process refused to exit.

In my case, I got it to exit after exiting Visual Studio (while I was typing this). But the network port I was using is no longer available.

This tells me that there's more going on in the kernel than just waiting around for some third party driver. In my case it was a network stack issue--I had a TCP socket that was open when I quit the debugger and the network stack got hung up on that socket. It could've been anything else. Perhaps there is a circular reference that the kernel can't figure out. Perhaps there is an owner process (Visual Studio) in a state that the kernel is confused over. It doesn't matter--the point is that I just sat here and proved that this is not necessarily a driver issue.

Jon

Edited by Jon Davis Wednesday, September 30, 2009 5:05 AM

Wednesday, September 30, 2009 12:36 AM

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Hung tasks can be caused by many things. I have heaps of trouble with internet explorer and media centre. The way willie(

willy denoyette)explains it made it really clear for me. The Task finishes without finishing every process, things (like drivers) are waiting.................................................................................................................
...............................................and waiting.

But since the task stopped there are no "handles" to grab. Taskman will only help me if I know the name of the process. Maybe there is a way to IDENTIFY which are the orphaned processes.

Will someone be able to invent antifreeze?

Wednesday, September 30, 2009 1:54 AM

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"Hung tasks can be caused by many things....Taskman will only help me if I know the name of the process."

Ilynne we weren't speaking of merely "hung processes" but of "zombie processes". To create a hung process, you can create an infinite loop -- just write "while (true) { }" in any programming language of choice, and the only way it can be exited is by killing it with task manager. Zombie processes refuse to quit even from Task Manager, you are forced to perform a hardware reset (or in my case track down the parent process and kill that).

And "zombie processes" remains the context of my previous post. I bother to reply and make this correction only because your post has a dilution effect of the messages I and those before me are trying to say, which to clarify is that Microsoft needs to have or enforce some accountability and not just blame drivers, which is weak.

Jon

Wednesday, September 30, 2009 5:02 AM

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same issue, but with xp and ie 8. ie6 was working fine once sp3 with ie 8 is installed all problem occurred. ie8 hangs at open, tried few new windows same issue, task mgr shows 'not responding' for all windows, all iexplore.exe processes are not killable, even cannot end explore.exe. nothing rsepond at this stage, only switchoff works.

Some posts show that have to debug the core level things which is not a solution for normal end user!

solution should be like end process.

I wonder why MS is not taking this? end of MS era? (win 7 is realeased now)

marinebio72 did you got any solution atleast by now?

auser

Wednesday, October 28, 2009 5:42 PM

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Yup, having the same issue here. Clean, fresh, new install of Windows 7 on a 2.8MHz Core 2 Duo with 4GB ram. Went to install Office 2007 and after clicking on Setup.exe in the pop up window, it just sits there. Try killing the SETUP.EXE command and while it goes through the motions it is still there.

Screen shot www.tomax7.com/aplus/Cannot%20end%20Process%20in%20Windows%207.docx

Only way is to reboot. Even ejected the DVD from the drive.

Brand new install. Sheesh!

Oh yeah, taskkill (process is denied) didn't work either and sfc didn't report any problems.

Did a dump on it.

Thursday, October 29, 2009 8:07 PM

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After searching around the web for people with similar problems I ran into a user who said that disabling Windows Media Player Network Sharing Services did the trick. I tried it and my PC is not freezing. It has been almost 30 minutes since I did that and no problems, when it only took maybe a minute for my system to freeze. Try it out people, good luck.

Will update incase it happens again.

Hey thanks LML, but didn't help. Still have SETUP.EXE showing. Just ended up rebooting. *sigh*.

Thursday, October 29, 2009 8:18 PM

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Hi,

i am having adobe flash issues, i had rc & beta versions prior to install FULL VERSION and it worked fine. now flash does not work it just freezezs not responding.
downloaded new version from adobe as well no change

interestingly enough though once it enters this cycle MCE & WMP will not respond or open until the pc is rebooted

using and tried 32 & 64 ultimate

regards

luke

Wednesday, November 25, 2009 8:23 AM

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I am also facing the same issue. What i understand that most of the programs gets hang during the installaiton. We are not able to end the setup.exe by any way. And i want to say by Any Way. It does not end at this stage. This running program will not even let you Shutdown the computer. you need to do a manual shutdow by power button. I have learned onemore thing. If we run the same program in safe mode it works fine. it got installed successfully. it is running successfully. but in normal mode it wont. I tried doing Clean boot and was not able to solve it after that aswell. i have tried everything mentioned in this section and they wont work... still looking for a solution. :(

Wednesday, November 25, 2009 3:36 PM

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The only other thing I can think of is shutting down your Anti-Virus program and try again. See if that helps.

Wednesday, November 25, 2009 7:12 PM

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Looking at related forums regarding slow downs and hangs, someone always mentions anti-virus programs. Ive also seen the finger pointing to various windows services and suggestions to do safe boots. Ive seen various other pieces of software blamed and superfetch brought kicking and screaming forward. I have eliminated driver issues, as Ive installed Windows 7 Home Premium on a laptop and desktop, after checking Windows 7 compatability with Microsoft's wizard. Ive tested Windows 7 beta and it worked perfectly. Installing Home Premium, the OS found all the drivers itself. The problem affects local files and folders and files and folders on my NAS, so it isnt a network issue. Using an ethernet cable improves performance, so I can just about open itunes (instead of not at all), for example (and this is just an example), but performance remains intermitently slow (more slow and unresponsive than not). The problem exists as soon as windows update finishes updating the OS with the latest fixes and updates, before any software is loaded.

My desktop has a dual boot with windows XP. With the latest XP updates, Windows Explorer in XP has started showing some of the same slow performance opening folders, pausing in IE and so on.

The problem appears to affect new computers as well as ageing ones. The amount of memory does not seem to be a factor.

I can only conclude that a recent fix or security update from Microsoft, something after the Win 7 beta, has caused the problem. Like many users, I have found the slow down and freezes so bad that the system is virtually unusable. reinstalling from scratch twice on both the desktop and laptop has made no difference. I would roll back to XP tomorrow on the laptop if I could find the installation disk!

Sunday, November 29, 2009 9:25 PM

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As a counter-voice I'd like to say this: So far, in many months of using the Windows 7 RC and more recently the retail release (Ultimate), I simply haven't had a program hang.

Now, I use a Vista x64 workstation as my primary environment; my Windows 7 use is secondary and is used more for testing, though I have done some pretty significant things with it (e.g., development with Visual Studio 2010 beta, image editing, many file operations, lots of experimentation).

So those of you reading this, take heart: It IS possible to have a stable, clean-running Windows 7 system. Don't give up in trying find the component(s) that is/are causing the problems. Windows 7 will get nothing but more mature, with better and better driver and antivirus support.

-Noel

Sunday, November 29, 2009 10:21 PM

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You can add me to this list. I'm having identical problems. Mine seem to have started after installing the Windows Update recommended driver for my lan card, Realtek RTL8168C. But could have just been coincidental. One thing for sure, though, it seems that it gets worse after the system comes back from a sleep state. Everything seems to be less stable when it wakes back up. Especially if there were many problems running when it went back to sleep. IE8 seems to be the worse affected and hangs all the time. iTunes also hangs often. Had to use FF to make this post since everything's starting to hang and I can't kill them like I use to be able to with other OSes.

Using Win 7 ultimate installed 2 days ago, all updates and all latest win 7 drivers. i7 965 w/6GB RAM

RJ

Friday, December 4, 2009 6:56 AM

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I KNOW EXACTLY WHAT marinebio72 IS SAYING!!...I get the same thing i know all these people keep talking about kernal I/O blah blah about not letting it shut down or end a task, if that was the case wouldnt it happen every time? id say 30 percent of the time my computer will never shut down. I also have a huge problem with Windows media player...i go to play a movie, it plays, but the whole program itself doesnt respond, and when you go to end the process it takes a few tries and sometimes doesn't even work. bulllllllllllllllstuff. and my computer can handle it its not like its a hardware issue (i7 2.6 12 gb ddr3 1333 ram 64 bit win 7)..and its definetly not antivirus programs ive shut it down, reinstalled, did the whole shabang and nothing. Im using avast pro.

im thinking of just buying a mac...

HA YEAH RIGHT. LIKE I WOULD EVER DO SOMETHING THAT STUPID.

:)

Monday, December 7, 2009 7:10 AM

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Sometimes I wonder if you are just trying to keep this old thread alive.
same old villians, Media player and Internet explorer. Sometimes it is the settings, sometimes the drivers or devices.
But another thing which I haven't yet seen mentioned is the internet itself, what use is the best computer and software on the best OS if you are connecting with the "Great Unwashed" out there? What we need here is a clear demarcation between trying to solve issues and just letting off steam.
Don't get a mac, get an abacus

Saturday, December 12, 2009 12:02 PM

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That is encouraging to hear, Noel.

When installing XP Pro, which I've done on many computers around here, it is easy, even trivial, to establish a stable system. That is the baseline of my Windows experience. (My previous fav OS was 2000.) XP systems here run without a hitch sometimes for months without needing a reboot. (We have all our computers on manual updates since we cannot afford to have an unexpected reboot to happen.) We have servers and workstations all with a flurry of activity. ..without a hitch.

So far my experience with Windows 7 is dismal. Explorer hangs and cannot be killed via elevated prompt killtask -f or anything else. As others have experienced even with a clean install this can happen. We used new drives for our Windows 7 installations so all we have to do is to put the old drives with XP back in and we are back in business.

No matter what the "culprits" may be I would expect the OS to deal with rogue applications and, yes, even drivers. That's what I expect. An OS that can't deal with it isn't a robust OS.

Especially in light of these problems I don't see any benefit to Windows 7 over XP -- nothing at all. It isn't that much faster, it doesn't give me anything that I didn't already have which was useful to me. I do like the new taskbar -- that's about the only positive thing that I can think of -- but I can do without it.

All that said, I realize that XP won't be supported forever. I skipped Vista hoping that 7 would be the Linux-core MS OS that was rumored long ago. I guess I'll have to wait for Windows 8 -- unless these problems are corrected.

The responsibility is squarely on Microsoft. It is their OS and their OS should deal with these sort of things.

(I'm a retired engineer who learned about good OS behavior from the days of UNIX PWB licensed by Bell Labs through Western Electric.)

Saturday, December 12, 2009 1:26 PM

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Happy Anniversary to this thread. I'm now typing this a year after it started. Windows 7 has been officially released along with numerous updates.

I found this thread while searching to see if I could figure out why I can't get the explorer.exe process to end no matter how I try to end it....again. I figured rather than crashing my computer with a hard reset...again, I'd look to see if there's a solution.

I see that I'm having the same problem that people were having a year ago and Microsoft STILL hasn't fixed it. I never had this problem with XP. If a program or process locked up you could force it to end. With Win7 it's more of a request to please stop. There is no forcing available.

It's sad to see that Microsoft is only interested and thinks that we are only interested in a pretty OS instead of a better functioning one.

Windows 7's functioning; not my idea!

Tuesday, January 19, 2010 6:20 AM

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You can try End Process Tree instead of End Process.

You might also try opening PowerShell and using the command

get-process explorer | kill

Hope that helps,
Jon

Tuesday, January 19, 2010 6:26 AM

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Dont go getting all dramatic. It is a problem with explorer8. Have you been downloading updates? Just reset explorer to default settings, disable all accelerators and when you put them back you might see whats causing the problem. Read all the posts, the question got answered in several places. Good luck.

Tuesday, January 19, 2010 10:29 AM

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explorer 8 is not the only culprit. To be fair, I'm developing software - so there are times when things get a little unstable. My problem with this is when an executable I build gets into a state where it cannot be killed. When it's in this state, there is no way to fix the problem with Visual Studio, because the dlls are in use - so it won't allow a new build. Restarting the system seems to be the only solution.

While I understand about the driver issue - I agree with those who think this should be fixed. Specifically, in task manager, when one clicks on 'End Process' or 'End Process Tree' - or I'd even be OK with 'killtask' working from a DOS prompt - the OS should at least pop up a message saying what is going on rather than acting as if nothing happened.

Thursday, February 11, 2010 1:38 AM

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Founders Day, it is worth asking what you have installed that I don't have.

I say this because the above described problems simply do not occur on my systems. I develop and test software (Visual Studio, and unfortunately I don't always get the code perfect on the first shot) and do tons of other stuff for 12 to 16 hours a day. To say this machine is worked hard is an understatement. And yet it keeps on ticking.

Since my post above in November, I've gone to Windows 7 on my main development workstation, and I've been nothing but happy with that move. Not one blue screen or hang or anything but an install (e.g., Windows Update) that has required a reboot.

I don't know what I've done right, but I'm treasuring it.

What Antivirus/security software do you have?

Do you have a lot of Shell Extensions installed?

Lots of things in Autoruns?

Disk indexer enabled?

-Noel

Thursday, February 11, 2010 3:50 AM

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Just to note people...

4 days ago I installed retail Windows 7 Ultimate 32-bit, clean. Was previously running Windows 7 RC. When I was using RC version I never had this problem at all. After installing retail Windows 7 Ultimate, I am having this same problem with hanging process. I first only noticed it hung on shutdown but my beyondTV software on the next boot would not exit when I told it to. I noticed one of its processes was hung. Then on the next boot a different process was hung the same way from program mediaportal.

And yes, tasks manager and taskkill /F do not stop it. Its not a virus problem, malware problem, or driver problem. Did full scans, chkdsk, and everything

But the one thing I did notice which is very weird. The 2 hung processes have the same EXACT memory usage size = 38,632K

Now that can NOT be a coincedance.

Saturday, February 13, 2010 12:03 AM

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I just also tried with powershell and same problem. Wont force kill the task. This is definately not just an explorer problem, this is now happening with random processes now and on my pc, the process are always the same size in memory usage, 38,632K

Saturday, February 13, 2010 12:14 AM

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Machobi, please explain how you know "Its not a virus problem, malware problem, or driver problem." I don't see how you can say that with any confidence at all. I can see how you might believe you don't have a virus or malware, but the last of the three? You can't possibly know what might be wrong with the particular drivers on your system. It's all very new, still.

Can you please answer my questions from 3 posts up?

-Noel

Saturday, February 13, 2010 3:02 AM

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I have same and agree - taskmanager should be available if at all technically possible. Only action is to switch off then on again- not good for hardware.

Sunday, February 14, 2010 3:54 AM

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I don't know what I've done right, but I'm treasuring it.

I have had this same problem with at least 90% of our windows 7 computers. When they work they work very well but when they hang...control, alt & del will not even bring up task manager & the ring of death takes over the whole pc...no saving of other open apps is possible...it's generally not just the open window which hangs & it's never the same open window/program.

Very suprised this is still a problem for so many including myself after 12+ months! As a techy in a corporate environment who is still very happy with windows XP... I'm not happy with windows 7:(

Wednesday, February 24, 2010 10:09 AM

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I have also seen this problem and can repeatably cause it. I am doing an setUp.exe of an old program, which hangs during "copying files" and nothing will clear it. Task manager either refuses to start or won't stop the process. I have to do a hard reset by holding down the off button.

The installation was being done from a drive on another PC in my home network. When I moved the file to the local disc I got a proper error reported and the installation failed gracefully.

I have seen other references to external drives in this thread so perhaps this is a clue.

Wednesday, February 24, 2010 11:57 AM

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I have the same problem. I'll be honest. I only read about half the threads cause I got tired of reading the same suggestions that I've already tried. I hate to say this, but I started as a PC user, then went MAC and now I just went back to PC to save money (like 1/2 the price for a similar laptop) and now I'm totally regretting it. This thread here just goes to show that a group of fairly knowledgeable/ advance PC users can't fix an inherently problematic software program. I've just realize that the hours I'm gonna waste in my life trying to figure out to fix BS problems on my PC is soooooo not worth the amount of money I saved. WHY was I so cheap in going back to the PC?!?!? Why?!?!?!?!?

Everytime I see those commercials for Win7 I want to shoot the TV!

Thursday, February 25, 2010 2:50 AM

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I am having same problems, here is the taskkill result see it for yourself before talking ;)

C:\Windows\System32>taskkill /F /IM skype.exe /t
ERROR: The process with PID 4492 (child process of PID 4108) could not be termin
ated.
Reason: There is no running instance of the task.

there is a running instance of the task you know, because if there is not, there will be no PID of the task

and skype is the everyone knows ordinary skype.exe not a virus or anything else ;)
so dear microsoft work hard and resolve this.

Tuesday, March 2, 2010 2:04 PM

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This program http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/bb896683.aspx has been suggested about 7 months ago, and generally works fine where taskkill lets you down.

I don't have the above mentionned problems at all in the rtm, but had similar issues in the beta (build 7000). In my case I managed to pin them down to Apple software (ITunes). Somehow it blocked the timeouts.

Observations like "What I installed is irrelevant; it's Microsoft making crappy software" or something akin (I'm not going to reread the entire thread) are not going to help. One cannot expect Microsoft to anticipate crappy software from 3rd parties. That said, it would be useful to have "the killerapp" that really kills apps.

Regards

Rem

Tuesday, March 2, 2010 2:46 PM

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Im expereincing the same problems.

Nothing seesm to work - even CAD takes time
System just jangs

Is this another Microsoft Windows Wonder????

Vista was bad but W7 is no better.

And just what is Microsoft doing about this?
SFA as usual
Just con the user
Take the money yea

Saturday, March 13, 2010 4:51 AM

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Hey Karl: Vista was not bad. Windows 7 is better. Rock solid, reliable, quick. Some UI issues, but overall a really nice OS.

First stage of computer problems: Denial and blame.

Restorative stage of computer problems: Acceptance of responsibility that the stuff you've installed on/done to your computer is at fault, and learning to manage and use your computer adeptly is the key to making it work right.

Let's try to get past the denial, shall we? Please post your specific problems - instead of a silly rant - and folks who know what they're doing will be more than happy to help you.

-Noel

Saturday, March 13, 2010 7:14 PM

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Noel,

We can accept that Karl's message was too emotional, however I and several others on this thread have provided specific, reasoned descriptions of problems and got no response, so his reaction is understandable.

Mark

Saturday, March 13, 2010 9:41 PM

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I have had the very same problem since the last few automatic updates from MS were installed, as have several colleagues. I have had to completely shut down the machine to get a response after boot-up. I did not have this problem in my older 64-bit system. My initial encounter withthe problem was after the installation of the software. That turned out to be a driver problem (so I thought). But, after re-installing my critical programs it appears to be a fault of the operating system. The problem has been increasing over time.

You might want to check for overheating of your compnents, especially memory. I suspect there is an issue there.

Tuesday, March 16, 2010 5:39 PM

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this is serious, It is not brand against brand, but the old os that you are comfortable with versus the new (unpolished). I think that each instance of the computer not responding can have different causes. The commonest examples that I can create are overclicking and running conflicting programs. I really think you should run general maintainance like chkdisk and a memory check and try to replicate the crash to see what causes it and maybe you can avoid the actions that cause trouble. mostly has been a good operating system for me, but internet explorer and media player are both guilty of freezing the whole computer at times.
Good Luck

Thursday, March 18, 2010 7:02 AM

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This thread appears to have become a debate on the merits or demerits of Windows 7 and is completely missing the original point. The concern is not whether Windows 7 is stable, and furthermore the cause of any particular hang or how to cure it is irrelevant.

The point is that when a process does hang there are occasions when the whole machine freezes and you cannot use task manager to kill it. You then have to power off the machine to restart. I have a method of reproducing this problem by trying to install an old program from a network drive. It doesn't matter what this program is, the important thing is how the OS reacts to the problem.

Thursday, March 18, 2010 8:18 AM

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The point IS that adding incompatible software to Windows 7 causes most hangs, as well as this inability to terminate. I can say this with confidence becauase I have a number of Windows 7 systems on which things simply don't hang unexpectedly and while developing and testing software with known problems I can terminate the processes EVERY SINGLE TIME. These are not bare bones systems with virgin installs, but fully featured systems running complete security suites and lots of application software, often tens of Windows open and well over 100 processes.

Incompatible software can come in the form of:

- Immature drivers.
- Add-ons that were written for older Windows versions and installed by web pages.
- Old applications.
- Poor security suite / antivirus software that cuts deeply into the system.
- Upgrades to Vista yielding any/all of the above.

While most instability is literally the fault of the 3rd party software that may have chosen to modify the operating system to its own ends - specifically the incompatibility of that software, which the user can't always discern - the operating system has a special responsibility to be resilient and defensive, since it has to facilitate your work.

Windows 7 is CLEARLY not as defensive as it needs to be.

Taking the above as a given (until a future Windows update or service pack inevitably strengthens the system), it's up to YOU to figure out what you're running that sends Windows 7 into the badlands, and take steps to stop running it.

-Noel

Thursday, March 18, 2010 2:37 PM

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This first time here but I felt needed to post as the problem is a merely a symptom , of a larger trend. The fact of the matter is Administration rights you can not end a process that has System rights only.

that is to say if a register key was to have System rights only and was being affected by turned off a system process/program it will not allow it even if Explorer or Firefox or what ever was meant to be controlled by the user. Example would be a flash plugin. I find it annoying as Administrator was meant to be a super user with system rights but in it's arrogance MS has limited Administration powers to a point were there little more than a glorified User with just above normal access. Check the default on your registry security you will find many setting set to system(group) only. Now why you can change the security settings programs and plugins will still be able to install with default system(group)access only to read or and write only till you track em down and change them your self to include Administrator(group).

I personally go threw and change as many security settings as I can so Administrator has full power. Fixes 90% of my problems involving Killing a program or deleting a file or ending a stubborn process.

Again to summarize if taskmaster will not let you kill a process 90% of the time it's a security rights on a process that your not allowed to affect as you are not really a Administrator with Administrator full Administrator rights. In a normal OS like Linux a Super User will have ultimate power by default and should always have final say but in windos7 and Vista and to a lesser extent XP System will have full control and special permission by default. Hence all the head aches. Heck lot Virus makers count on this wonderful security.

Personally I alway felt MS OS's Should have a Guest who can not write to system drive , User(as we see it now), Administrator (as we see it now) and a Super Administrator (that strangely enough would have full control/permission. That is to say anything system can access a administrator should be able to access and be all inclusive like GOD.)

OK You Can All Flame me now and say it's nonsense or/and explain why a Administrator should not have as default full Administrator rights. Witch is supposed to be the point of being Administrator.

PS My eye sight sucks so there by dose my spelling live with it.

Edited by dragondeathlord Thursday, March 25, 2010 4:37 AM PS My eye sight sucks so there by dose my spelling live with it.

Thursday, March 25, 2010 4:16 AM

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The PS in the above post is a tad too much mate.

That said, you're right about the administrator in Windows (7) being merely a superuser, where the ordinary user has too much rights and the administrator not enough, especially when you use the enterprise, professional or ultimate version.

These version are mainly for professional use which implies (often) stupid endusers and administrators having a need for a godlike mode.

My tuppence of input

Cheers

Rem

Thursday, March 25, 2010 7:06 AM

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I have the same problem on Win7-64, and agree with the OP. Now, it's to the point in Win7 where even pskill says it killed the process, but doesn't. It's really lame for this OS to prevent the administrator from killing processes.

I am surprised that there are pro's here who argue for that; i think they do it just to debate.

The malware responses also seem funny to me. I think for most of us, the only malware are the undocumented, and half-baked features MS builds in, and releases on the world, just because they can...

With Apple eternally being way too elitist and greedy, and the Linux world constantly fragmented with petty, egotistical strife, who is going to stop MS from unloading whatever they feel like OS after OS...

Seems like a waste of time even to debate issues such as this one here...

Friday, March 26, 2010 6:35 PM

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It is not a waste of time to debate it here, as long as we strife to find a solution. I do agree that MS clearly missed an opportunity to do something good.
Administrators need a godlike mode. Men controls the machine and not the other way around.

I do not have the problems you have with PSKILL, so I cannot comment on that.

Having said that, the problem is not: "why can't I kill a process?" but "what the heck makes me need to kill a process?

Any suggestions on the kind of programme that makes 7 go berserk?

Cheers

Rem

Saturday, March 27, 2010 7:57 AM

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Zeus76 wrote:

Having said that, the problem is not: "why can't I kill a process?" but "what the heck makes me need to kill a process?

***************************

Philosophically you may be right that that is the more important topic, but this thread is about the practical problem of being able (or actually not being able) to kill a rogue thread, and we need an an answer!

Saturday, March 27, 2010 8:30 PM

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Normally one does not NEED to kill a process when the system is clean and healthy, nor does a process refuse to be killed if it comes to that. There is clearly something that has been done to (or added to) the systems exhibiting this behavior.

The trouble often comes when some piece(s) of software cut(s) deeply into the system and changes something Windows 7 expects not to be changed. This could be antivirus, or some other software that is quite possibly incompatible with Windows 7. In time these things will be discovered / updated. Usually each new Windows version gets more robust with the passage of time since the initial release. I suspect Windows 7 will be no different.

You could still say it's Windows' fault for not being defensive enough, but I'm kind of on the fence with that one... On the one hand an OS should protect itself. On the other, the normal way to "add value" to the system by many, many apps is to modify the operating system... A privileged program (e.g., one that you've given permission to run at administrator level) can change any data or setting on the system. It's kind of hard to defend against that.

Imagine how many hooks a security suite, for example, has to put into the system. It boggles the mind that the system can even work with these third party solutions present.

-Noel

Sunday, March 28, 2010 3:32 AM

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Mark, Maybe thousands are reporting this issue have a look at some other forums, they are all reporting the same issue of the taskkill failure. I experienced this with my Win7 64, mainly with Firefox but not exclussively so. I have even experienced it with the Internet Checkers and Internet Backgammon that come with Win7. So the problem is not restricted to third part applications.

I even went to the trouble to do a new clean install. still have the same problem.

Saturday, April 3, 2010 2:00 AM

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I'm having the same problem. Windows 7 64bit, fresh install yesterday, taskmgr doesn't appear to be able to kill any 32 bit process... any fixes for this? I read half way down the page here, please people, don't repeat the same basic or irrelevant questions... killing the process or process tree no workee. Why?

Tuesday, April 13, 2010 3:47 PM

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Instead of asking why you can't kill the process, let's examine what are you doing that you have to kill a process in the first place.

If your processes are locking up after 1 day of running the OS, then you have installed / configured / done something to it that has made it unstable. What is that?

-Noel

Tuesday, April 13, 2010 6:32 PM

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should we assume that you accepted all available updates, are certain that all hardware installed properly, and that you are not trying to make do with some incompatible 32 bit software? have you visited the troubleshooting options?

Why can we not kill the process? Only 600 possible reasons.

1) user error 2) damaged files/poor install. 3)incompatible software. 4)poor operating system design, 5)phantom electronic goo

best results obtained when 1)replicate the error and see what you think. 2)reformat & reinstall, 3)avoid certain software or certain functions in some programs, 4)see 3) work around the function which causes the crash (I can't use media player~ my hardware causes a problem) 5)my favourite and the most common culprit. Avoid static and thank the wisdom of the universe that switching a computer off and back on again works!

Thursday, April 15, 2010 2:52 PM

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I was suffering this problem a lot with Vuze and iTunes until I removed McAfee Virusscan and replaced it with Kaspersky Pure. Problem seems to have gone away. Only been three days now, but the Vuze process (azureus) used to keep running even when the Vuze GUI had closed, and that never happens now.

Saturday, May 1, 2010 9:24 PM

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Zombbie sounds the most accurate. in combo with microsoft tracking. i restart with the sure protector(not preferd)off and back on. sends a messure and allows for restart and running. not much i know but its a plauge i been dealing with too. a GA check helps too!

Thursday, May 6, 2010 6:36 PM

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Noel - I appreciate your loyalty to W7 but have trouble with the idea that the user somehow is causing the problem. I recently bought a brand new laptop from HP with W7 preloaded along with all the normal software. IE8 locks constantly with the Not Responding message. I have added various software packages, like MS-OP07, Skype, etc. but am running Norton 360 to protect the system.

That said, I contend I am not doing anything to cause IE to lockup (as well as other software) but, given this thread is now in its 17th month, it could be a Windows problem...how can I solve it without having an MS in EE?

Thursday, May 6, 2010 7:14 PM

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Dave - I'm with Noel here. Every OS may have some flaws, but on the whole this 7 is quite good.

That said, you are pointing yourself to something that may well be one of the reasons for an unsatisfactory user experience. Windows 7 came preinstalled (alongside with a lot of HP specific software (to make your computer run better)).

We all agree that although ie8 is an improvement over ie7 (not even talking about ie6), it is pretty slow compared to others.

Have you tried another antivirus programme? Just to make sure we rule out the obvious, could you uninstall (not deactivate) all Norton / Symantec stuff, and install a free antivirus software like Avast.
Some people may not agree with me on this one, but Norton and Mcafee are far to often to blame for erratic computer behaviour for it to be a coincidence.

Cheers

Rem

Friday, May 7, 2010 6:07 AM

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Fascinating thread. I have "the same" problem (meaning similar enough...)

I agree that it's a probably a driver somewhere. My Dell laptop was designed for XP, Vista Capable and Windows 7-Windows who? My problem did not happen under Vista and I expect something wasnt quite ready for Win7.

So can anybody suggest how to use a kernel debugger to find the bad driver causing my process hangs? Lucky the rest of my system remains responsive so I don't need extra attached systems or anything like that.

Saturday, June 12, 2010 10:58 PM

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I've got a recurring problem with this happening with uTorrent v2.0.3 (latest). If you exit the program while all torrents are active (i.e. everything is seeding, or downloading, and you don't have at least one torrent stopped), it will not exit properly.

Process explorer shows one thread in Wait:Executive state. I could deal with the zombie process hanging around (it's only taking about 20 meg of memory), but the problem is that uT refuses to restart if it detects that it's already running!

This is downright maddening. While I understand that this is a software problem and definitely not a Microsoft problem, I find myself asking why there isn't a way to forcibly clear out a process. A userland program shouldn't be able to lock itself up badly enough that the kernel can't put a bullet in its head.

Tuesday, June 29, 2010 1:12 AM

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Maybe, use Process Explorer to close the handles in the zombie process. That may cause the zombie to terminate, or may cause the new uT instance to not recognize the zombie, and thus permit it to run.

Tuesday, June 29, 2010 2:01 AM

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Hi,

You know you're using a beta version of utorrent do you? Whereas I agree that such behaviour is awkward, it should be flawless once it's retail. Do contact the dev team. My guess is that they'll be delighted to be made aware of "flaws" like this.

Regards

Rem

Tuesday, June 29, 2010 8:01 AM

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This issue was first raised in Jan 2009. I'm experiencing the same thing in July 2010.

Running Win7 Ultimate x64. Issue started after installing Office 2010(x64)

Is there at least some way of finding out if a driver is causing this issue and if so, which one?

Friday, July 2, 2010 10:10 AM

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Maybe, use Process Explorer to close the handles in the zombie process. That may cause the zombie to terminate, or may cause the new uT instance to not recognize the zombie, and thus permit it to run.

Doing this causes Process Explorer to hang and become a zombie process as well.

Wednesday, July 7, 2010 7:00 AM

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Hi,
You know you're using a beta version of utorrent do you? Whereas I agree that such behaviour is awkward, it should be flawless once it's retail. Do contact the dev team. My guess is that they'll be delighted to be made aware of "flaws" like this.

Regards

Rem

The problem occurs with other processes than uTorrent. To me it just occurred in Windows Media Player (From the release version of Windows 7 Ultimate x86).

The issue does indeed appear to be a problem with the Windows operating system, not with spyware, not with firewalls and not with corrupted files.

Wednesday, July 7, 2010 7:17 AM

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@Mr.Andersen
I cannot reproduce here the zombie problems we're talking about. I'm running a windows 7 x64 with a x64 Office. My machine is a homebuild / noname AMD Athlon based PC; The antivirus I use is Avast 5. The only things on my harddrive are the things I wrote to it myself. I have no preinstalled software or otherwise (OEM) altered install package.

Thing is: I do not have any problems. My guess, your setup is different. Like I already stated earlier, (and that is not a philosophical issue) the problem is not: "why can't I kill a process?" but "what the heck makes me need to kill a process?
Something is messing up data in the normal flow, so we'll have to find the items that are fundamentally different between our setups.

Regards

Rem

Wednesday, July 7, 2010 8:14 AM

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Look, I've read through this whole thread, and here I am, a year or more from the initial poster's message, and for months now have been having issues with my Windows XP and IE7, and Norton 360! It's NOT an IE8 issue, it's NOT a Vista or Windows 7 issue! I'm on a ~five-year-old Dell Inspiron E1505 laptop and had clear sailing for years. Now, most often I've had problems when two IE windows are open...freezing and then Task Manager will not end processes or tasks, so I must turn to the power button, which is absolutely ridiculous and not at all good for my system. I've run adaware and spybot and all the Norton and other bells and whistles and supposedly I'm clean. I even installed a larger cooling fan and placed the laptop on a fan-platform, wondering if heat was an issue.

I've ordered a new HP laptop that will run on Windows 7 and will install IE8 (i THINK) and am pretty certain I will have problems again, but I hope it isn't worse on the new computer. It got nasty after one of those automatic Windows updates, and a nagging feeling that AV program interoperability may play a part, but have not been able to work my way through to a solution. It was OK for a bit after a hard drive format, for a while (another story entirely), and then the Explorer window freezing started. I'm sorry, but at the root of all this is Microsoft. It's obvious they're not unaware of the issue but have not stepped up to the plate to try to solve it or even acknowledge it. For the first time in ages I'm thinking Linux...and even caught myself looking at Apple computers. (groan)

Wednesday, July 7, 2010 1:46 PM

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I love the way people just "know" the problem is Microsoft. On the one hand, well DUH! Without Microsoft we wouldn't have Windows.

On the other hand...

Like Rem above, I haven't seen any hung process nor had a problem stopping any process the few times I felt I needed to since installing Windows 7 in January.

If it's happening to you it's something wrong with your system - something you've installed or done, or a failure of some sort - not something wrong with Windows in general.

SMcSee, you'll get IE8 with Windows 7, there's no question of that. And don't assume you're going to have problems with Windows 7 unless you go out of your way to cause them. Some of us have rock solid, reliable, fast Windows 7 systems, that "just work".

-Noel

Thursday, July 8, 2010 12:07 AM

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Noel, to say that the problem appears to be a Windows problem, in opposed to a third party vendor problem, isn't the same as saying that everybody experience the problem. I experienced the problem one time since Windows 7 was released and I work with Windows 14 hours a day on three different computers. I probably couldn't reproduce the problem, even if I tried hard to, but that isn't to say that the problem doesn't occur.

Even if the problem would be caused by faulty third party drivers, the driver framework would be flawed for allowing the driver to prevent a process from being shut down. If the driver instead failed, generating a bluescreen or an event log entry, the user would be able to investigate which driver caused the problem and take corrective action. When the operating system continues to operate, without reporting the error, there is no way to determine the cause of the problem.

Microsoft has gone a long way towards improving the stability of Windows, but the cause of the zombie process problem remains to be identifier and corrected.

Thursday, July 8, 2010 5:51 AM

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If it's happening to you it's something wrong with your system - something you've installed or done, or a failure of some sort - not something wrong with Windows in general.

That isn't the point. My CPU cycles are mine. If I say something isn't getting any more and I'd like the Window removed from my desktop, that should be instantly doable and always possible. Otherwise how can we call this a multi-tasking OS with window management?

Just trying to get value-for-money for the $20,000 worth of your products I support...

Wednesday, July 28, 2010 4:26 AM

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Microsoft has gone a long way towards improving the stability of Windows, but the cause of the zombie process problem remains to be identifier and corrected.

And that's not likely to change when major pieces of the system have to come from 3rd parties (think hardware drivers and antivirus), who have to interface to the system using Microsoft's documentation.

I'm not saying it's impossible to make a product that's built on things from other vendors, but it takes special care with a system as complex as a modern operating system. Who's not giving it enough care? Microsoft? NVidia? ATI? Antivirus vendors? Intel? You can't even tell.

The very basis of Windows is that if you want to do anything truly useful you have to change the OS (i.e., by installing something that augments the OS). It's gotten better but there are still apps to this day that change files in the \WINDOWS folder and below. That's why there's SFC for example.

Are you wrong for wanting it to "just work"? Absolutely not. But don't be so naive as to think there's only one party at fault. Frankly it's a wonder it works at all.

-Noel

Wednesday, July 28, 2010 6:34 AM

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The unkillable process issue is poorly handled. Even if this causes instablity, then, for f***s sake, show a dialog box with a timeout or something.

The timeout hits? KILL, KILL, KILL.

A server OS... should do what has to be done without question. As opposed to dumb-user OS. Even if it means system BSOD/restart/driver death/don't care. Tech guys will sort it out. Just do what the code says the system to do.

Ideally, there has to be a setting somewhere. Controlling whether or not we want to crash it or let it hang indefinitely. Decision to always hang is short-sighted.

Wednesday, July 28, 2010 1:15 PM

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what I find in practice is that a lot of things sort themselves out over time. Grooming the computer seems to help a lot. Servers need to go offline regularly; checkdisk, check memory, defrag and scan for viruses.

It makes sense, as you say, to have a magic button which stops the stalled process. The task manager should help here, but where does it go when you really need it? I suspect that Microsoft would want to produce such a button very quickly.

Thursday, July 29, 2010 3:43 AM

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@ Noel - Okay and when this is Office 2010 doing this? Now whose fault is it, sure as ____ isn't mine.

Fresh Install Windows 7 32 bit, all verified drivers, Office Outlook 2010 crashes after a few seconds of use and than I am unable to kill the process from command prompt or task manager. WTH can I NOT kill a process.

If you spent as much time trying to help the people on here instead of pointing the finger this issue could be resolved.

Levi

Monday, August 9, 2010 6:14 PM

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@Levi,

Hi mate, I may accept the fact that you're a tad upset, but don't blame Noel; He's doing a fine job helping people, but more then once he is, as I am, confronted with a socalled PEBKAC.

You're having a problem with windows 7 and Office 2010. I have both and I don't have that problem, so obviously something else is at stake. That is the only reason people like Noel or myself are insisting on having things right. No thirf party stuff interfering with processes etc.

Do continue to reply, but do not flame people please. They are not paid for this at all, and spend their free time helping people.

Regards

Rem

Tuesday, August 10, 2010 8:11 AM

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@Levi,
You're having a problem with windows 7 and Office 2010. I have both and I don't have that problem, so obviously something else is at stake.

Zeus76, I'm afraid your logic is faulty.

To conclude that the problem does not exist, simply because you don't experience it, is making too many assumptions.
Obviously the problem exists, many people have reported it and it has also been stated that the problem doesn't occur always, it occurs sometimes. It has also been stated that the problem doesn't occur with a single program or with specific drivers, but with several different programs and in many cases with only the drivers built into the operating system.

Tuesday, August 10, 2010 8:21 AM

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Oups, my bad.

Sorry I didn't mean to say the problem doesn't exist.
Like you said, the problem has been reported and it has been stated etc... My point is that most of the people who stated "facts" did not supply their particular context, i.e. machine type, antivirus software etc. These facts (ommitting details like that) make troubleshooting a real pain and often troubleshooters have to discard failure reports because insufficient data may lead to wrong conclusions.

btw My machine: homebuild on a asas mobo, athlon64, crappy videocard, onboard sound, Windows 7 x64, Avast 5, Office 2010.
NOT on my machine: Firefox, picassa, norton or symantec software.

Regards

Rem

Tuesday, August 10, 2010 9:32 AM

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Ill put this in plain terms for you.

Fresh install of Windows 7 Pro 32 bit.

Fresh install of Office 2010 Home & Business 32 bit.

Same problem.

Clearly a third party is to blame.

Levi

Tuesday, August 10, 2010 12:41 PM

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Instead of flaming...

You want help? Try to be polite. Costs nothing.

What machine???? Read the posts carefully or go away.

Not so many regards anaymore

Rem

Tuesday, August 10, 2010 12:43 PM

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Instead of flaming...

You want help? Try to be polite. Costs nothing.

What machine???? Read the posts carefully or go away.

Not so many regards anaymore

Rem

I will put this as simply as I can, call it a flame call it what you want.

There is absolutely no reason in the world that as an Administrator I should NOT be able to end a hung process. This is a bug and needs fixed. I have tried everything listed in this thread. If you want to see funny go try this with pskill it will max out your system resources in a few seconds and than hang.

Levi

Tuesday, August 10, 2010 9:16 PM

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Folks, a malfunctioning machine is frustrating as ____. Everyone knows that. Everyone understands.

Some folks have Windows 7 systems that work perfectly. They never crash, they never have this "stuck process" problem, and they allow us to be quite productive.

Others have the problem. Those of you who do have it would like to believe it's a systemic problem that affects everyone, and that Windows is a POS, and that those of us in the first group must work for MS or be stupid or something.

Those of us with high quality computer systems that only get rebooted every week or two because of Microsoft updates would like to believe there's a specific combination of hardware and software and settings to blame, because there can be no other explanation for why our systems work so well and yours don't.

Your blood pressure will benefit from trying to work out the issues, one step at a time, rather than lashing out at others who are trying to help.

Levi, what antivirus software do you have? What video drivers? Is your computer a high quality system?

Something specific on your system - maybe hardware, maybe software, maybe settings, likely a combination - and yes, possibly even Office 2010 - is at fault.

-Noel

Tuesday, August 10, 2010 10:30 PM

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Oh, and thanks, Rem. :)

-Noel

Tuesday, August 10, 2010 10:43 PM

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On Tue, 10 Aug 2010 22:30:57 +0000, Noel Carboni wrote:

Folks, a malfunctioning machine is frustrating as __. Everyone knows that. Everyone understands.

Some folks have Windows 7 systems that work perfectly. They never crash, they never have this "stuck process" problem, and they allow us to be quite productive.

Others have the problem. Those of you who do have it would like to believe it's a systemic problem that affects everyone, and that Windows is a POS, and that those of us in the first group must work for MS or be stupid or something.

Those of us with high quality computer systems that only get rebooted every week or two because of Microsoft updates would like to believe there's a specific combination of hardware and software and settings to blame, because there can be no other explanation for why our systems work so well and yours don't.

Your blood pressure will benefit from trying to work out the issues, one step at a time, rather than lashing out at others who are trying to help.

Very well put! I strongly agree with all the above.

And just one additional point: Not only will someone's blood pressure
benefit from refraining from lashing out at those who are trying to
help, but he will be much more likely to get the help he needs. It's
common for people here to ignore the requests for help from those who
lash out.

Ken Blake

Tuesday, August 10, 2010 11:08 PM

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I wasn't lashing out, I was making a point that by simply denying that there is a problem and just defending the OS is not helping anyone. At no point above did you offer a viable solution that worked - instead you argued that it was a hardware issue or a third party application issue (at which point I pointed out my issue was with outlook a MSFT product).

I take it you both think I am in some way throwing out the good 'ole MSFT is ____ argument here, no I am not! I am saying that this is a bug with the os and it needs fixed. If i go to the command prompt and tell the OS to kill a process in my mind it should kill the process even if this just leads to a BSOD or something even worse. The idea that as an Administrator level user on a pc I can't kill a hung up makes me see red in ways I can't even describe.

@Ken
I am in no way lashing out, I was simply stating that someone should offer some useful insight into the idea rather than > its a hardware issue, its a third party OS, the bottom line is the issue is about being able to kill a hung process should work but does not. This is just like the T1 games of old with the phone company...its not us its them, nope its not us its them, etc. for eternity. The idea that Noel implies is that I want it to just work, well yes this is a base level administrative control not a third party software program of course I want it to work or clearly there is a bug in the OS.

You are all stuck on the fact that I am "lashing" out when I am merely trying to get someone's attention that this is an issue, MSFT will never look at this as an issue as long as people are preaching for them that it is a third party issue or a hardware issue. I will recount here the advice that has been given in resolving this solution (...next post)

Levi

Wednesday, August 11, 2010 12:28 AM

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Here we go:

From Noel -
Have you tried reinstalling the OS? In regards to programs not closign when pressing end task, have you tried going to processes from Ctrl+Alt+Delete and from there selecting the troublesome program then ending the process?
---Solid advice good things to try.

From Mark -
The first thing to try is SFC, which I would have expected you to say you had tried already. (sfc /scannow) Anyone who can use taskkill should be able to handle that without instruction. If the CBS.log reports failure on taskkill et. al., you are going to have to look for Malware damage to brought up from Vista.
---didn't even read the first few posts, it was on a clean install.

From Mark -
If the system is clean, you are left with the only remaining posibility. (It's not like thousands are reporting taskkill failure) The best drivers you can get are not good enough.
---Helpful not relevant but helpful(sarcasm).

From Marinebio -
you are clearly missing the importance of this bug. It is not an important issue that the drivers are causing hangs. That should be expected given that it is a beta, and better drivers will come along. the disturbing fact is that the operating system (or more accurately, the admin user) does not have the ability to kill hung processes. It is totally irrelevant what driver/program is causing the issue. when you do an taskkill /f or end process (or process tree), the program should be terminated, regardless of whether it wants to ignore the terminate request. this comes from the clean shutdown model that MS started working with for vista. but if a process (such as explorer.exe) cannot be killed without holding down the power button, this is a HUGE HUGE problem.
---Exactly my point.

From Willy -
A thread who's state is wait:executive is a thread that is waiting in the kernel (named the "executive") on an object to become "signaled". The "process" to which this thread belongs cannot be removed by the OS for as long as the thread does not return (that is exit). A process is not an active component in Windows, it's just data structure describing the resources forming the "process". Threads are active components, threads are scheduled by the OS scheduler. The scheduler assigns "runable" threads to processors so they can continue to execute their code paths. Threads that are blocked waiting in the executive are NOT scheduled, they don't become runable, so they cannot execute any code, so they never exit and the process they belong to becomes a zombie.
---I follow this line of reasoning(I admit a bit over my depth of understanding), however it still stands to reason I should be able to kill a process(or thread) if i so chose to.

From Willy -
Some remarks:
-I never experienced hangs with Vista other than those I'd expected (I'm a driver writer too), and those I can expected from non WHQL logo'd drivers. I never trusted any public domain tools/drivers (don't get me started on ISO mount tools that insert a filter driver in the storage stack, most if not all of them are buggy), I don't want them on systems of mine unless they get their drivers qualified.
- "force shutdown" has nothing to do with driver deadlock/hangs. This is the result of an foreground application, that fails to return from the broadcast Windows message telling all applications that the system is about to shutdown, in a timely fashion. In this case the system will force the application to stop by issuing a 'TerminateProcess' API call (effectively a kill). Also this is nothing new, it exists on all Windows NT systems since NT4.
---SOme personal opinion in here, but, the other point being made in this thread is that a /f shutdown will not even get the trick done.

From MedFlex -
Possibly another way:

download pskill and extract someplace

open a cmd prompt with admin rights

go to that directory where you extracted pskill

there is another fun file there called psexec

start taskmgr this way:

psexec -s -i -d taskmgr

This will start taskmgr with SYSTEM rights instead of your normal user or admin rights

I don't have a stuck process to try it on right now, but it might be another work around.

You can use this same method to elevate explorer or cmd or any program to SYSTEM rights
---This is the first work around offered in many, many responses: unfortunately it doesn't work.

From Noel -
As a counter-voice I'd like to say this: So far, in many months of using the Windows 7 RC and more recently the retail release (Ultimate), I simply haven't had a program hang.

Now, I use a Vista x64 workstation as my primary environment; my Windows 7 use is secondary and is used more for testing, though I have done some pretty significant things with it (e.g., development with Visual Studio 2010 beta, image editing, many file operations, lots of experimentation).

So those of you reading this, take heart: It IS possible to have a stable, clean-running Windows 7 system. Don't give up in trying find the component(s) that is/are causing the problems. Windows 7 will get nothing but more mature, with better and better driver and antivirus support.
---This post was not a ditch Windows plea from a nut job, it was asking for a work around to kill hung processes that you can't seem to kill in anyway.

From Noel -
Founders Day, it is worth asking what you have installed that I don't have.

I say this because the above described problems simply do not occur on my systems. I develop and test software (Visual Studio, and unfortunately I don't always get the code perfect on the first shot) and do tons of other stuff for 12 to 16 hours a day. To say this machine is worked hard is an understatement. And yet it keeps on ticking.

Since my post above in November, I've gone to Windows 7 on my main development workstation, and I've been nothing but happy with that move. Not one blue screen or hang or anything but an install (e.g., Windows Update) that has required a reboot.

I don't know what I've done right, but I'm treasuring it.

What Antivirus/security software do you have?

Do you have a lot of Shell Extensions installed?

Lots of things in Autoruns?

Disk indexer enabled?
---Again nothing to do with the issue of being able to kill a hung process.

From Noel -
Hey Karl: Vista was not bad. Windows 7 is better. Rock solid, reliable, quick. Some UI issues, but overall a really nice OS.

First stage of computer problems: Denial and blame.

Restorative stage of computer problems: Acceptance of responsibility that the stuff you've installed on/done to your computer is at fault, and learning to manage and use your computer adeptly is the key to making it work right.

Let's try to get past the denial, shall we? Please post your specific problems - instead of a silly rant - and folks who know what they're doing will be more than happy to help you.
---And you accuse me of flaming? Clean install from the first post says it all.

From Noel - (Paraphrashing because this is getting way to long)
Taking the above as a given (until a future Windows update or service pack inevitably strengthens the system), it's up to YOU to figure out what you're running that sends Windows 7 into the badlands, and take steps to stop running it.
---That is exactly why I would like to be able to kill the HUNG PROCESS.

I will stop here I think I have made my point.

Levi

Wednesday, August 11, 2010 12:44 AM

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The implication here, which I will spell out, is this:

Windows gets altered by other software, and that causes it to behave badly. Things like video drivers and antivirus software have bugs, are not system tested together with Windows by Microsoft (at least not as well as the pure Microsoft stuff). They cut deeply into the system, and can cause it to fail, hang, crash, break, or be unable to terminate a process.

Hardware fails too. Why do manufacturers make error correcting memory? Or redundant disk arrays? Yet the computer market sells mostly on price. These things are arch enemies. If your RAM were to deliver an instruction that said: "Jump to myself" instead of "Jump to the code that ends a process", there is nothing the software can do about it.

If you had someone trick out your Ford Mustang, adding all kinds of James Bond gadgets, electronics, and replacing parts of it, then one day it wouldn't start, would you say it's Ford's fault?

Should Windows allow itself to be corrupted? It would be an easy answer if Microsoft provided everything and Windows had no legacy. But those things are fantasy.

And let's not even start about all the crapware and malware people download. How many toolbars do you have? How many add-ons? Do you practice safe computing?

Plain and simple pragmatic advice in the real world: It is up to us to figure out how to work around whatever's wrong and how to use them best if we want these systems to be and remain useful.

-Noel

Wednesday, August 11, 2010 2:57 AM

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They cut deeply into the system, and can cause it to fail, hang, crash, break, or be unable to terminate a process.

I'd agree if this was 1988 and we were talking about my Amiga. In this day and age with complex memory management, virtualisation and DEP features on CPUs there really is no excuse for anything ever affecting the Kernel.

If the Kernel is ever in a state where its function is dependent on control being returned by a particular app or driver, then there is a design flaw in the Kernel. The whole reason Windows 95 was invented was to avoid this.

Just trying to get value-for-money for the $20,000 worth of your products I support...

Wednesday, August 11, 2010 4:42 AM

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If my wooden desk comes with two eyes and a mouth, then I return it.

*Tshht* Hey, we want to control this thing. *Tshhht* *Tshhht* Uhm... Over. *Tshhht*

Wednesday, August 11, 2010 10:56 AM

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@ Noel -

So let me get this clear just so I understand you. An administrative level user that has a hung process/application should have to physically/manually force a reboot by removing power from a machine? This is what it sounds like to me you are saying, according to you all is working as intended and those crappy other people are making the machine behave this way. The other thing that astonishes me is that you still refuse to see the topic that this thread was about: Processes hang on a CLEAN/NEW install of Windows 7. In the original users case I believe it was explorer.exe that was crashing out on him, in my case I had installed one read it "1" set of applications being Office 2010. I am not in any way saying in either of these cases that Windows 7 was causing the application to crash, HOWEVER, I am saying that when those things happen as an administrative user I should be able to kill the offending process/service/etc. EVEN IF THIS CAUSES DAMAGE TO THE HARDWARE AND SOFTWARE SUBSYSTEM - this is the point of being an administrator, aka. I can do things that can make the situation worse and/or better. If not what is the point of having an administrative level user?

As for your Ford Mustang example - this issue would be like having your brand new mustang and the accelerator sticks to the floor and the only way I can get it to stop is by getting out and pulling the battery off or gas life off. You fail to understand still that MOST of the people in this thread were talking about clean/new installs.

Levi

Wednesday, August 11, 2010 1:13 PM

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What kind of a retarded OS can't force closed a process? I had this problem in Vista and now Win7 too. It's a program running in USER SPACE too. I tried Sysinternals as well. What a waste of time.

It should AT LEAST tell you WHICH drivers are refusing to release the process. You can't even shut down the PC. willy denoyette, it's worthless people like you who are responsible for keeping the status quo... nothing worse than when a company screws up a product and refuses to acknowledge their problems.

Monday, August 16, 2010 3:58 AM

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Reporting in with the same issues.

I got Windows 7 on both my laptop and my main rig and so far it seems only the main rig is having issues.

I get all sorts of applications hanging at various intervals which is quite a pain since it forces me to cut the power every single time because i cant force kill the damn things and i really have tried a lot of things!

The worst apps to hang are battlefield: bad company 2 which uses all my RAM and im forced to remove power. The other one is my Cisco VPN client/agent that end up either not being able to connect or even disconnect the VPN because the its hanging in some sort of "middle" state. Again very big problem since i need the VPN often and i HAVE to remove the power.

I live with it because i cant do anything about it, but i hope that it is an issue that is being addressed by Microsoft either as a fix or in Windows 8. Im just sad to pay so much money for an OS that promises stability and cant live up to it :(

Tuesday, August 17, 2010 5:40 PM

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I seem to be getting flak because I am offering an understanding about what is going on...

Don't shoot me, I'm only the messenger.

PLAIN AND SIMPLE FACT: The state of the art of modern Windows operating systems is such that they are not impermeable to:

Poorly written software or malware.
Flaky hardware.
Hardware or software integration issues happening uniquely on a particular computer.
Ignorant users who do things they shouldn't.

Not everyone is seeing the problems listed in this thread, and some are getting excellent service out of Windows 7.

Should anyone have such problems? Of course not. But the world is NOT perfect and your only recourses are:

Complain bitterly, and lash out at someone just like you who's just trying to be helpful.
Try and figure out what you're doing that others are not which is causing the problem on your system.

Care to guess at which of these items is more likely to make your computing experience better?

-Noel

Tuesday, August 17, 2010 9:56 PM

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In that case.

Thanks, capt.

What would actually help is suggestions on how they can stop putting all eggs in baskets of 3rd partes and still charge as if it were their own product.

Tuesday, August 17, 2010 10:18 PM

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Sorry, substitute the following, then: "Impentetrable by"

-Noel

Tuesday, August 17, 2010 11:06 PM

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What would actually help is suggestions on how they can stop putting all eggs in baskets of 3rd partes and still charge as if it were their own product.

They put a price on Windows and people pay it. Lately they're discovering they don't even have to make it work perfectly, and they don't even have to fix it later when it doesn't and STILL people will pay, because the majority of people are too dumb to notice. They just have to put out some TV commercials, and even THEY aren't any good.

It seems no one can influence the lumbering giant. This is the ugliness of capitalism without integrity. Buyer beware.

Seems to me the only thing to do is become educated, make the best of what's available, and be thankful that because it's mainstream so many people are trying to improve it with this or that little gadget app, mostly for no charge.

-Noel

Tuesday, August 17, 2010 11:13 PM

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If the system is clean, you are left with the only remaining posibility. (It's not like thousands are reporting taskkill failure) The best drivers you can get are not good enough.

Rating posts helps other users
Mark L. Ferguson MS-MVP

What do you mean "It's not like thousands are reporting taskkill failure"? Is is very much like that. Microsoft should pay more attention to their users, and also learn something from other operating systems (though I'm not at all sure that Microsoft is aware that other operating systems exist, so to find out more, start by Googling for "Linux" or "Unix" or "MacOS" (Google is a search engine, somewhat analogous to Bing :) )).

Every software developer with whom I have discussed this has experienced it. Perhaps this is because a simple buffer overflow is often sufficient to render a process unkillable. Of course a buffer overflow is a bug, but the inability to kill a buggy process is also a bug. After all, why else would you want to kill a process other than because it is buggy?

The often repeated claim that the inability to kill a process is not a bug in Windows 7 is nonsense. It is an O/S bug. Yes, this bug also existed in NT, though actually occurred much less frequently. However, just because a bug existed in NT does not mean that the same bug in Windows 7 doesn't count as a bug.

Sure, one can blame the problem on a bug in a driver hanging on an I/O request or whatever, but nevertheless the inability to terminate a process under any condition whatsoever is a bug, plain an simple.

In general, Linux and Unix do not have this problem (as I mentioned, these are operating systems which Microsoft might not have heard of), even in the presence of buggy drivers (admittedly, buggy drivers are also available on Linux). In my experience, I have never failed to kill a process in Linux or Unix, even after writing many thousands of lines of buggy C++ code. However, it is a common experience in Windows operating systems, especially Windows 7.

Blaming the problem on drivers is like blaming a successful bank robbery on the robbers rather than on the bank's security system. Sure, in a sense the blame is not entirely misplaced, but such an position does not help improve the banks security.

Sunday, September 19, 2010 7:23 AM

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Yes I have it too. This is especially troublesome for developers, because we have to reboot every time we run buggy code. Perhaps this should encourage me to write correct code on the first try, kind of like my great grandfather had to do back in the days of punch cards.

It's usually necessary to reboot before I can recompile my code, since whatever I am developing can't be unloaded, and so can't be written (but that relates to a different pet peeve about Windows).

The inability of the Admin user to kill a process is an operating system bug no matter what, regardless of the circumstances, and regardless of buggy drivers.

Sunday, September 19, 2010 7:34 AM

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Exactly.

As I tried to suggest already, that we pay Microsoft for their OS and not for 3rd party drivers (for those we pay by buying the 3rd party products). So if Microsoft allows 3rd parties to hang their system for good, who and what are paying for, again?!

Sunday, September 19, 2010 10:20 AM

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Still no news on this problem? This is really a pain in the a**, Windows Vista and Windows 7 are in fact even worse than WinDOS 1.x-3.99, as long as you can not end hung tasks. It is even more of a problem when you got a RAID-Set, which needs checking whenever you have to power-off the computer, just because you can't shut it down cleanly because of a hung app. I wonder if Microsoft really hates their customers that much to be this stubborn in accepting a bug ... A task manager which is unable to end hung tasks IS a defect! I give a f*ck on claims that ending a hung task while driver calls or whatever are still in process would render the system unstable. Windows NT 3.x up to Windows XP could do it and were never unstable. Actually, Windows XP is still considered to be the best Windows ever by many users and if you ever had the problem of being forced to revive the old reset button way of restarting a "Windows Fistula" or "Windows 7 deadly sins" computer, you know why. To be honest, I'm already considerung UPGRADING to Windows XP ... but maybe I have even finally found the reason to switch to Linux. ALL development progress in Windows since Windows 1.0 thrown away, just because pot was too cheap in Seattle and some STONED IDIOT came up with the idea to ask a HUNG app, if it would like to close nicely on its own. Sorry, I can't comment this more friendly, because of the way this idiotic approach has been defended by Microsoft so far. Wake up, it's broken!

Friday, November 5, 2010 12:14 PM

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So I read most of this thread, and also have the same issue, and I've come to a conclusion.

It's the sound driver(s).

Think about it. Explorer.exe handles the windows sounds, iTunes.exe, and media center are both media oriented.

Earlier, someone mentioned kernel threads. I believe the sound driver is hanging the programs.

I have Conexant HD SmartAudio221

That is the problem I think I'm having. Hope this helps.

Friday, November 19, 2010 3:17 PM

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I've read a fair amount of this discussion, and I can say only that I've had the same problem with Vista-32/SP2, many times, and have had to revert to the unfortunate "power off button" sequence. Additionally, I understand that the kernel may not be able to release the I/O task if it has not completed.

The good news: booting normally typically recovers without issue (I try to wait for the disk to stop activity before pushing the panic button). The only thing I'd like to add to the discussion is that when this occurs, and I request the system either shutdown or reboot, that it occurs without question. This implies that the OS takes steps to avoid catastrophic results as best it can. Since the OS is shutting down, one would expect that I/O tasks (drivers, hopefully not the disk driver) being stopped should have little impact on a clean "as possible" shutdown (sure, there is ALOT to hope for here).

A recent example of this type of problem I'm having is running an install program from a properly configured NAS share (Samba controlled, with Win NT 4.9 Server - obvisously not a MS product) over a local private network. The "setup.exe" is run, and it starts, but then stalls, and you never hear/see from it again. The next "feature" you notice: Task Manager is also Hung, and starting a 2nd Task Manager also hangs. Finally, <ctrl+alt+del> to get to a place where you can activate the "shutdown", does get there, but the shutdown does not occur. Eventually, you're looking at the "power off button" as the only alternative.

Interestingly, during all of this, you "might" be able to do things with other applications (i.e. Windows Explorer might open/close/refresh etc). Eventually, Explorer.exe will be condemmed as well.

My question: Why can I not run executables from the NAS share? Is this not allowed?

If you pull the setup.exe over to a local drive and run, it works fine.

d3s1

Edited by d3s1 Friday, December 10, 2010 6:17 PM update

Friday, December 10, 2010 6:06 PM

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I heard that Microsoft had actually gone to the trouble of observing this problem in the wild and is now putting a developer to work looking at this problem.

Is that true?

</sarcasm>

What we need is for everyone who is aware of this thread to post an additional comment (like the one above) everytime you have to give your machine 'the finger' as a result of it.

Just trying to get value-for-money for the $20,000 worth of your products I support...

Thursday, December 23, 2010 1:41 AM

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I'm not going to pretend to know the answer, but offer an additional clue:

When you have a zombie process, look at it in Task Manager. Make sure you've added the Handles column. When it happens to me, I always have a Handle count of 1 (or rarely, less than 10) handles open on that process. In my particular case, it's usually a process that was started by another process. If I shutdown the parent process, that releases the handle on the child/zombie and it finally shuts down.

Doug

Thursday, December 23, 2010 4:50 AM

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Thanks Doug, that's a reasonable clue. I've added handles to my task manager page for when it happens again. Hopefully there are less than 2 parent processes when it occurs (although, it will only be a guess as to which parent process to kill, since there is no heirarchy shown in task manager, and there are 50-70 processes running at any given time). Obviously, killing the "wrong process" will also be detrimental, with "side effects". There used to be a more sophisticated process manager available from System Internals (back in the day), and it would be a handy item to have in these kind of situations.

d3s1

Thursday, December 23, 2010 1:03 PM

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I am having this same issue with Pidgin. If I leave it running while going into sleep mode, after a few cycles the process is hung and I have to restart.

Saturday, December 25, 2010 4:25 PM

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After 7 months using Windows 7, this same problem started for me [around 31 Dec. 2010]. A process would hang. If I tried to switch to another window that would hang. Nothing would close in task manager [end process not working, attempting to close other windows resulted in "process not responding"]. Trying to "kill" a process in task manager would "hang" task manager. And I couldn't shutdown [no access to task bar]. An alternative processkill utility to task manager couldn't work either.

After reading all the stuff on this year-long dialogue, I'm pretty sure it is a problem related to wmpnetwk.exe [a utility of Windows Media Player 12]. People are right to be against WMP 12. It is really hard to use, very not-intuitve. The table of contents doesn't even let you figure out how to turn off the above utility. Here is what I tried:

Firewall, blocking the process, didn't stop my problem though it seemed to stop the task running in task manager

Going into "Services" and "stopping" and "disabling" wmpnetwk. - this is what finally worked. After this, my computer stopped crashing.

Then I tried to go into Start -> Run -> optionalfeatures.exe in order to turn off Windows Media Player 12. It is tied to Windows Media Center so you have to turn off both. However, when I ran the utility, it gave me an error message, so I still haven't been able to completely remove WMP12. However, the above "fix" of turning off wmpnetwk.exe in Services does seem to have stopped my system from crashing.

My best diagnosis seems to be that it was crashing the physical memory. It wasn't a CPU problem as sometimes the crash would happen with only 15% CPU usage. However, all physical memory was in use with no "free" memory, and the physical memory would "flatline" i.e. stop fluctuating /changing.

Someone else mentioned checking "handles" but I got it fixed before finding out about adding that option to task manager.

Just FYI on specs. for my computer:

OS: Windows 7 Profession 32-bit

RAM: 2 GB

CPU: Intel Core Duo 1.4 GHz

Hard drive: only 1/3 in use

Preferred web browser: Mozilla Firefox

Programs that were locking for me: 1-4 programs were running. Had crashes even with only one program running. Programs involved Mozilla Firefox, Thunderbird, Calibre, Microsoft Word, task manager, etc. Again, the computer crashed even with only one program running.

Antivirus: NOD32 - got clean scan on full system scan twice

Also used: Malwarebytes, Spyware Blaster etc. and ran scans., also ran defrag utility, physical memory check utility, etc. all scans were clean.

Monday, January 10, 2011 10:37 AM

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I have the application/process hanging frosty zombie described here, but it only happens infrequently (1-2x/wk)...BUT: I can still open and close other files or folders while end task /end process hangs, navigate my desktop and such, and use the start menu button/taskbar to reach the shutdown from within windows...hope this can help in the quest for killability

most of my unkillable hangs occur in windows media player and in powerdesk..

hp laptop windows 7 home premium; amd vision(?)processor; 3gigRAM..a very basic ssetup...new in the box late november, manufacturer, there are preinstalled by mfr. as late as october of 2010...

here was a behavior that i didn't notice reading this thread: when i have multiple applications open and WHILE one is hanging, any others will usually respond to end process or end task, about 80% of the time for me....

Wednesday, January 19, 2011 12:00 AM

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I experience exactly the same problems described by everybody... through RC up to Retail 7x64.

My current installation (7x64 Ultimate) is only 1 day old. The 2 exe's that constantly lock and become unresponsive to taskkills are wmplayer.exe and explorer.exe

I have to admit, recently (like in the past two months) this has become even more frequent triggering 3 or 4 reinstallations over the same period.

In addition to the other problem i was having with MSE x64 completely freezing the pc, refusing to update definitions, telling me the service isnt installed and my pc isnt protected etc... i had to remove this garbage off my pc. With explorer, i dont get that choice.

I dont know what is going on in terms of QA at MS these days, but it seems that 2 of the most used softwares built into windows 7 explorer and wmp (plus their MSE) seem to cause behaviors that prevent the pc from shutting down and require the Power off method.

A lot of people whined and bitched about Vista, for me, when i ended a process in vista, it ended... same as XP (most of the time with xp).. but with 7, wmplayer.exe and explorer.exe just dont die.

Have to end my post now as my pc needs another power off due to explorer hang.

Sunday, January 23, 2011 1:21 PM

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Official update on this: The largest software company in the world has decided this is '2HARD', a classification common in programming circles.

Forget everything you know folks - that there are no other OSes that do this, that this is bleeding edge software from the brightest minds in the industry, or that you gave your hard earned cash for an OS that can't act in the most basic capacity of the definition of its function - namely to Operate your System.

Microsoft is announcing a new product called BASKET, which will act as a wrapper for products with bugs that have been classified as 2HARD. Other features you may have heard of which fall into this category include correctly placing paragraph breaks in MS Word, managing security attributes on multiple locations, and having a colour for selecting things in Explorer that is actually visible to a human eye.

By use of this 2HARD BASKET, Microsoft can get back to focussing on more important things like the background colours for Windows 8, rearranging the icons in Control Panel, and stealing other people's search results.

Working in C++ reminds me that some things are almost as illogical as Microsoft

Monday, February 7, 2011 2:54 AM

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I believe that marinebio72 has abandoned this thread as it is now TWO years on and still we have the same problem in the released version of Windows 7 (the one you have to pay a considerable amount of money for) and still the same problem. I am not sure if this has now become a saritical thread. But should Microsoft Outlook 2010 be behaving in Microsoft Windows 7 in the same manner.

I have clean builds of Windows 7 and clean installs of Office 2010. Outlook hangs (fades to white) and the only way out - after trying to kill the process is to press the big button on the front of the machine. There are 20 plus machines all identical hardware all using the same drivers installed along with the OS at the build time. The driver availability was tested using the microsoft upgrade tool.

All but three of the machines work fine. I know that these for some reason have a problem with either the account or data files, which I am working on on - BUT it does not help that when Outlook locks up the only way to open it again for testing is a hard reboot. On a couple of occasions the disks have failed to boot first time! Very worrying.

IT WORKED IN XP! Or was I dreaming?

Thanks for reading my rant. I don't want any comments - espicially from "willy denoyette or noel carboni" - If your machine is working fine I am very happy for you. I have 17 also working fine - The problem is terminating process' (which is the reason why the thread was started for in the first place two years ago) that have given up the ghost. End of story! Bye Bye.

If my English is bad or you do not understand any of this I apologise. And unless you can supply a fix, resolution please, I ask politely, don't reply to me.

Tuesday, February 8, 2011 12:19 PM

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Don't let this thread die - it's the perfect example of hundreds of people having major issues, a few MS fanboi's claiming the issue doesn't exist, and MS itself completely ignoring the issue.

IT WORKED IN XP! Or was I dreaming?

I have to keep asking myself that, and it's another reason to keep this thread alive. I mean, I don't remember the Windows 7 box having a huge disclaimer on the front...

Warning: Should not be considered an upgrade to Windows XP.

Working in C++ reminds me that some things are almost as illogical as Microsoft

Tuesday, February 22, 2011 6:05 AM

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I am also experiencing similar problems with this "hung process" situation. I just recently upgraded my Vista home premium to Windows 7 Ultimate and I use a x64 platform. I didn't reformat, just an upgrade.. I've never encountered any thing like this until just recently when I made the upgrade. I was initially happy because I got one of my gaming controllers to work which was previously made obsolete from something that was caused by Vista x64, I know because it now works again and it worked on the XP as well...now everything is good EXCEPT when ever an application I'm using crashes it just stays in the processes. I try to kill the process repeatedly, I've been all over the internet searching for solutions and tried many but nothing seems to work. This is a nightmare and Microsoft definitely needs to address this issue because I can't find a single solution and today is the first day I've ever heard of this problem..I can't believe it's been going on for so long with no solution yet.

Wednesday, February 23, 2011 8:45 PM

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I last reported my opinion of this issue over two months ago. I refer to both the KILL issue, and the NAS issue.

Recently (last weekend), I upgraded two of my machines to Windows 7 (notebook workstation to 32-bit, and new i7 machine to 64-bit). The remaining machine (which was my former main workstation central running Vista 32-bit and Vista 64-bit), which was the central target of my complaints, is still running the same Vista OS.

A couple of new observations:

Observation A, 3 parts:

1. The NAS problem went away for both Windows 7 machines. No changes at all or in the least were made to the NAS hardware or software. NADA.

2. The problem still exists on the Vista machine.

3. All three machines are using the same AV tools and version (I have 3 seats).

So, Vista, in this regard (NAS) is still broken, and by self indictment, Vista is the root cause of the problem. No solution has been found.

Observation B:

1. Had trouble with the 32-bit Windows 7 machine on my notebook workstation (Dell M50). The problem was somewhat self inflicted, as I knew the graphics driver I installed was from XP Pro vintage, but I knew that the display had better resolution than what Windows 7 drivers provide (standard VGA) and wanted to see if the XP driver could still hold water. It basically worked, but could not hang in there enough to keep the system stable. This is where the things got messy.

2. During the "mess", I knew I had to clean up the driver and revert back to the "low end VGA" version, as I was unable to obtain an update from anywhere (Dell no longer supporting this fine M50 notebook, which still runs like a champ, and includes a processor upgrade...etc). Long story short, the machine starting misbehaving, and many an occaision came up where the "KILL" function would be needed, and handy. would KILL disobey a driect order? Yes many times - ;^)

3. It reached the point where Windows 7 also caved in, and decided it would no longer boot. Further, running the "Recover/fix" option from the boot menu was unsuccessful. In fact, Windows decided it could NOT recover/fix the problem (which was basically to replace the XP graphics driver), and to my astonishment - spewed that message out to my display, and asked me to send more info to Microsoft such that they could have a peek. I of course was happy to send it along. I reverted to rebooting the Win-7 install DVD expecting to do a complete re-install. Funny thing: The install DVD Repair mode was smarter, and able to recover (and remove the culprit driver). I able to watch the entire golf round on Sunday afternoon from 3-6pm while waiting for the repair to complete. ;^)

Today, right now, the 3 machines are running, the Vista machine still has the NAS problem, I've managed to get the standard VGA driver to increase the display resolution (some how, by just luck), and I'm back to dealing with day to day "normal" user issues.

Notable performance observations:

1. New i7-965 with Win_7-64 boots in < 30 secs, similar for shutdown. Why? It doesn't have much software installed yet.

2. But, since Vista takes almost 3 minutes in either direction, I'm happy to wait for it and log in remotely later from my i7 machine.

3. More interesting, the much older and weaker performer (but still worthwhile) notebook M50, boots in less than 2 mins. Why? It also has no working tools installed yet either.

END OF BITCH & MOAN... well, maybe not,

I still want KILL fixed!

d3s1

Edited by d3s1 Wednesday, February 23, 2011 11:23 PM missing word

Wednesday, February 23, 2011 11:22 PM

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1. New i7-965 with Win_7-64 boots in < 30 secs, similar for shutdown. Why? It doesn't have much installed yet.

Are you including log-in time in that? If so, do you have a solid color background defined?

I hadn't checked yet to see if Microsoft rolled the "solid background login delay fix" into SP1...

-Noel

Thursday, February 24, 2011 8:18 PM

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I have found a fix by updating the BIOS then updating any drivers. This has now solved this problem on 2 PCs with different systemboards.

Wednesday, March 16, 2011 9:45 AM

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I also have seen this problem from time to time under Windows7-x64. I don't completely accept MS excuse that "its the bad driver's fault and we can't do anything about it!" because it is their OS and failing to design a driver interface that allows for recovery from various situations is definitely their problem. In particular, their driver architecture apparently requires too much of the driver stack to run privileged, providing more opportunity for driver bugs to become system-wide catastrophes. I have found this to be true even with the factory wireless ethernet stack on my Dell M6500, which should be very well tested. I have seen numerous times when hung processes will terminate only after disconnecting all network, then killing works.

John Lilley CTO DataLever Corporation

Monday, April 4, 2011 11:07 AM

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HELP! I am having this problem everyday. A new laptop from a clean image. Mostly in IE8. the program hangs. I can not end task, I can not shut down even if I'm begging on my knees. I am forced to hold down the power button so I can continue my work several times a day. Once a program hangs, regardless of the program, I can not launch IE8. Nothing happens. IE8 shows up in the task list, but that is the only place. And I CAN NOT end task. At least in XP I could end the task and restart it. I will probably go back to XP if I do not get this issue resolved. It happes wiht SP1 and without it. It happens with AV disabled. I have check for malware. Why can't I end task under windows 7?

Monday, April 11, 2011 11:49 PM

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>>> Why can't I end task under windows 7?

Because Task Manager is weak, and no longer able to take control of zombies.

Recommend you upgrade to IE9. If it still crashes, you're toast. Go back to XP.

Sorry, but Microsoft has left us all stranded in this regard, and appears not to care.

d3s1

Tuesday, April 12, 2011 12:01 AM

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will terminate only after disconnecting all network

[forehead smack]

I can't believe I didn't think of that. I knew Windows was a stupid frig about network access - you can stop ALL processes on Windows Server 2008 by unplugging the network cable and doing something that would (normally) bring up a UAC prompt.

john.e.lilley you are a legend!

Working in C++ reminds me that some things are almost as illogical as Microsoft

Tuesday, April 12, 2011 5:27 AM

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I have this issue with unkillable process, and I noticed that when some process hangs, all process protected by DEP (Data Execution Prevention) gets unkillable. But I can kill unprotected ones.

for example, 2 process: mpc-hc.exe (the one that hangs in my computer), and KeyConfig.exe (proocess to config some keys of my keyboard).

when the DEP is set to "just system and essentials", and mpc-hc.exe hangs, I can kill KeyConfig.exe normaly, but not firefox, that is protected with DEP.

when DEP is set to "always on", I can not kill KeyConfig.exe.

It make me think that it's a problem with the implementation of DEP.

The interesting thing is that I always used the "always on" option for DEP, and never have any problem.

never until tree days ago, when i installed some updates from windows update.

I don't know is some of you guys have already discussed about it, because i don't have the time to read all that thread.

But I do searched by words in the page, and have no matches.

for the KILL question, I think that task manager have to prevent user from causing problems to the system.

BUT it MUST have some way to kill a process by brute force as an obscure option in command line, somethink like "TASKKILL /F /F /N /V /D /PID #pid# #admin_password#"

ok, maybe without the admin_password... the point is, that this command MUST kill all parts of the process.

---------------------------------------------------------------

You always have an option: install LINUX! Or buy a Mac.

Tuesday, April 19, 2011 5:42 AM

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I updated my bios, and all my drivers, video, audio, nic, and anything else I could find. I am now able to kill every process that has hung since the update. The shutdown is also working. My only problem now is IE8 will not launch sometimes. It shows up in Task manger but that is all. I can kill it and retry, but same results. At least I can kill processes now.

Monday, April 25, 2011 5:47 PM

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I would just like to add to the many people who responded to the initial topic - that task manager has no power to terminate processes/programs that really don't want to be terminated. This is still an issue, and has been since 2009. If you take the time to read this whole thread you will come to the realisation (perhaps you had already) that windows 7 is just very disappointing, simply because the dev team doesn't care enough to figure this out. 2009 - 2011, can't terminate processes, power button required. unbelievable and tragic.

Tuesday, May 3, 2011 2:42 AM

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This thread is incredible!!! The first message was posted here on January 2009! We are now more than two years later and I don't see a solution to this problem, and still people experiencing the same problem are posting more new comments.

Is there a Microsoft Rep monitoring this thread? Is this problem acknowledged by Microsoft as a known issue?

When is a solution expected to be available?

This is the Microsoft Technet Forums isn't it?

OS Lesson 101 - When the OS tells a process to die, it should be gone! No ifs and no buts.

--- Adar Wesley

Tuesday, May 3, 2011 8:03 PM

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Some people pointed to drivers, which is not wrong.

A good article is to be fond here; It's fairly old, but nevertheless still worth reading. http://blogs.technet.com/b/markrussinovich/archive/2005/08/17/unkillable-processes.aspx

That said, similar problems can be found on UNIX and Linux systems, so people stating that Windows 7 is disappointing...

Good reading, and have a nice day.

Rem

Wednesday, May 4, 2011 8:40 AM

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MS, please fix this issue or provide some official work around. It's a real productivity sink for windows development.

If I pay $400 AUD for a "professional" operating system, I expect prompt responses to these kinds of issues. At least get the interns on it or something.

Monday, May 23, 2011 2:45 AM

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Hmm I have seen several reasons for these issues:

Came from a blown or interrupted install of a key component of a Visual Studio 2005 redistributable install (by some software product).

A corruption of the .NET framework (usualy 2.0).

You get odd hangs when coming in and out of standby or hibernate caused by a 'confused' protocol stack on the wireless card.

Occasionally a BIOS bug or bad drivers, 32-bit VIsta is notoriously bad, Windows 7 is at least an improvement over that.

BTW, Im I the only one that hates transparent windows, aargh!! or the shift tab feature in 7 now shows a small representation of the Windows (who th hell can read those!).

ANyway will respect to this forum it's usually hopeless use experts-exchange or bleepingcomputer etc if you want to get better responses.

:-)

Martyn

Thursday, May 26, 2011 8:22 PM

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ANyway will respect to this forum it's usually hopeless use experts-exchange or bleepingcomputer etc if you want to get better responses.

Though I agree that some issues aren't answered on this forum, it is often because the problems are real ones; not the RTFM kind of problems.

I know experts-exchange (got the t-shirt some ten years ago). EE can be good. You've got less whiners and moaners there. That said, you've got what you paid for. This site is free, and with that in mind, the quality of the information here is amazingly good.

Cheers

Rem

Friday, May 27, 2011 8:22 AM

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That said, you've got what you paid for. This site is free

Funny, but the OS wasn't. It should have been, since it was a cut down version of XP, but it wasn't. And here we are, with well over 1000 people in ONE THREAD complaining about an issue, and is anything going to get done?

The reason there are so many bitching people here? Because it is the only place remotely connected to MS where we can all come to bitch about how we can't get our money back, in the vain hope that someone at MS will read it and perhaps feel the slightest twinge of guilt.

Working in C++ reminds me that some things are almost as illogical as Microsoft

Wednesday, June 15, 2011 6:16 AM

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I have faced such issue with many processes - firefox, IE, editplus, ...

Very frustrating that only resolve is hard reboot. In many cases I can't even get another instance of hung application started.

Wednesday, July 20, 2011 7:41 PM

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in the vain hope that someone at MS will read it and perhaps feel the slightest twinge of guilt.

Doesn't seem very likely.

It IS actually possible to run a solid Windows 7 system that just runs and runs without errors, without the inability to terminate processes, and with virtually no NEED to even try. I know this because I have such a system.

Given that I could do it, you can be sure the Microsoft people have the ability to set a Windows system up to work that way too.

So guilt? No. Probably they just look down upon people with computer trouble, thinking that all people seem to do is mess up their computers.

-Noel

Wednesday, July 20, 2011 11:07 PM

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I remember reading this forum a year back, with the same original issue, after which i gave up on getting a solution to it. But im glad to see its been more than 2 years and this forum is still active, kudos to windows!!! anyway, i got a temporary solution, the system has been normal for over a month now. I have bitdefender installed with default settings. By an amazing stroke of chance, i turned off Antivirus Control (AVC) and Intrusion Detection System (IDS), from the advanced settings tab, and viola....im finally free off this horror. Im currently corresponding with the bitdefender technical team, but so far, there is nothing worthwhile to mention here. So i suggest, if you dont have bitdefender, then play around with your Anti-virus settings, and when the issue is 'solved,' join me in cursing! hope this helps.

Thursday, July 21, 2011 8:31 AM

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What brand antivirus software is that (AVC, IDS)? Edit: Oops, I see that "BitDefender" IS the brand.

Such software has to cut deeply into the system, and if you have chosen a brand/model of such software that's just not made very well, it's not hard to imagine it could cause lockups.

Since you have to disable it to get your system to work, you should seek a refund with them (if possible) and consider a different package. I use Avast Pro and have nothing but good things to say about it. It keeps itself up to date and it's very non-intrusive.

-Noel

Thursday, July 21, 2011 2:32 PM

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Keeping aside the incompetencies of the Anti-virus, the point is that it solved the issue. I can now end processes whenever i want, logging off or shutting down does not take 10 minutes. It is finally behaving like the way it should. And more than anything, im just glad its done with. PS : IF this is the actual cause, then blame should be on Micrsoft as well. Why the F*** do they have beta versions of softwares? Precisely to avoid such nuisance. I was told by the BitDefender technical team to add all "exe" files to the exclusions list, the enable AVC and IDS, and see if the issue persists. Lousy idea! I have not tested it yet and demanded a solution from them, not a walk-around. I am waiting on a reply now.

Friday, July 22, 2011 8:05 AM

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It IS actually possible to run a solid Windows 7 system that just runs and runs without errors

It is if you don't plan on testing any new software EVER.

Let alone if you are a developer trying to add some value to this effing retarded platform.

Working in C++ reminds me that some things are almost as illogical as Microsoft

Friday, August 5, 2011 5:32 AM

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I develop plenty of software with Visual Studio 2010 and other tools, along with using Windows for 1000 other things. I run a software company.

I suggest you investigate using Virtual Machines to test things on, so that you don't chance screwing up your workstation.

I'm reminded of the scene in Jurassic Park...

Ian Malcolm: [banging phone on car...]
Eddie Carr: "Whoa, whoa, you've got to love it for it to work."
Ian Malcolm: "I'll love it when it works."

While Ian has a good point, Eddie is the one who gets things done. Of course, he also gets eaten saving Ian's ass. :)

-Noel

Friday, August 5, 2011 12:21 PM

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Hello, you said.. "I recognize that it could be a driver malfunctioning or something, but the operating system NEEDS to allow you to kill unresponsive processes. explorer.exe has now been stalled and hung for 48 minutes without doing ANYTHING." among other things. :)

Well, if any software behaves and disrupts the proper function of explorer.exe and your desktop - and worse it won't go away so you can correct the problem, if find the first option to try is simply logging off and then logging back onto Windows again. Sometimes the problem is fixed immediately.

If the problem recurrs afterwards you'll need to look for software incompatibility and try to correct the problem using the rick-click menu of the shortcut - into Properties - Compatibility menu and select ' Run this program in compatibility mode for' selecting the appropriate option for your OS and the software in question.

This may help you, pkn

If my post was helpful - give it a Vote. If it helps solve your problem - propose it as Answer. ;-)

Friday, August 5, 2011 3:29 PM

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Well I having been using Win 7 for more than a year but never have this problem.

My habit of using pcs are:

1. Defrag regularly, depending on hdd usage, this might mean daily defragging. I use Piriform Defraggler, remember to defrag freespace before full defrag. I would also clean up system restore points regularly before defragging and then manully create a restore point (as sometimes the restore points create GBs of fragments).

2. Run Ccleaner and Glary Utillites daily. At least I would run the Registry part of Ccleaner daily, u don't need to run the "cleaner" part daily!

3. Think carefully before you install anything. For programs where portable versions are availble, I would use that instead of installing.

4. Use Revo-uninstaller Free edition (instead of the Uninstall option in the Control Panel) to uninstall all programs that u dont need anymore, esp the crapwares that came with the pc.

5. If you know what u are doing, go to Regedit and delete keys related to obsolete softwares.

6. Go to Start - System Configuration, go to the start up tab, uncheck all programs that u dont need to start when booting. In addition to the OS itself, typically I would only allow the Antivirus and firewall programs to start at boot. Also, go to task manager, click on the services tab, click on Services. Look through the list, for all services that u dont need to automaically start, double click and select "manual" or even "disabled" (for those u dont need at all).

7. Before it hangs, check in task manager to see how many processes are running. Typically I have only 60 - 80 processes and 50 - 60 % of RAM usage. If there are lots of running processes, perhaps u should examine what are running.

8. If you have opened a program or window, close it immediatey when u are no longer using it.

9. Download and run Ainvo Registry Defrag. IMPORTANT, make sure you have enough power before running this, best to keep the pc plugged in.

These are what I often do and my pc never has problems. Also when others have a crashy pc, I also fix it for them using these method.

Hope this helps.

Friday, August 5, 2011 5:54 PM

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A fix really would be nice...

Saturday, September 17, 2011 3:09 PM