30s to 1m long hangs when installing or uninstalling software.

criticalt3 · 05-27-2011, 10:00 AM

Alright, this has been an ongoing issue for awhile now, maybe around a month or possibly two. As the title states, I get anywhere from 30 seconds to 1 whole minute system hangs during an installation of either a game or software, but only with certain ones. It doesn't do this with every install, only some. This will either happen once or multiple times during the installation. Example: I just installed nHancer and it hung about 6 times, making the entire install take about 15 minutes, with brief moments that I could use my computer. It should be noted that I'm a gamer and these ONLY happen during installs. Games, benchmarks, file transfers, and anything else operates completely normal. It's ONLY installs (or uninstalls) that makes these lockups happen. So it's not my hard drive, it should also be noted this is happening to a friend as well, same OS, Windows Ultimate x64, but he does not have SP1 installed, and I do. When the hangs occur, my system will look completely normal, and the start bar still animates when you move your cursor over it. Programs will look like they're fine until you click on them, this includes the start bar. Once you click, anything that looks like it's operating normally will completely freeze. Example: Firefox could be displaying a .gif, and as soon as I click, the application freezes, all buttons are unresponsive and the image is stuck. This is only per app, so to actually have the freeze happen I need to click on the program, or use a shortcut i.e. alt+tab menu will appear then freeze. alt+ctrl+delete won't even show up until after the hang stops. Neither will task manager. I've done a chkdsk with no problems, I use Avast w/ Internet Security, it reports no viruses, I use Spybot: Search and Destroy, reports no spyware. I've ran Malwarebytes, no viruses, also ran Hitman Pro, no viruses. System is 100% clean according to all of these programs. And of course, I have not run these simultaneously. Only separately. So no virus program conflicting is going on. When the hang happens, after I click on something, the windows loading cursor will appear for the duration of the hang when hovering over the specified object. I've googled for days and can't find a solution, so I've come here for help. Please tell me something that could rid me of this plague. I can't stand this, and I'm not exactly feeling up to an OS wipe. Thanks for reading and for any follow support I'll receive.

**VirGnarus** · 06-01-2011, 07:17 AM

Have you tried turning off Avast's realtime protection temporarily and see if that is impeding on things? You also are not having any other anti-spyware/malware software enabled at the same time, are you? This can cause unnecessary instability with your PC as they will fight over each other on trying to scan items that are read or loaded.

For a more thorough investigation, we'll need to isolate the scenario and determine background operations that are occurring while the hang pops up. You can help us with this by doing the following:

1. Grab Process Explorer. It is essentially a very beefed up version of Task Manager. Run it and then sort columns by CPU or CSwitch Delta. Watch it during the hangs and see if there's any unusual behavior that pops up. Also note any spikes in the graphs. You can double click any of the graphs to bring up its own window where you can hover your mouse pointer over spots in the graph and it will give you details on what is causing what in the graphs.

2. If that is doesn't show up much, then close Process Explorer and grab Process Monitor. Don't run it yet. Instead, start closing stuff down until only the bare minimum is running that will be needed to cause the hanging. The less stuff running in foreground or background, the less cluttered the log will be from Process Monitor, and it'll be more streamlined for me to pinpoint cause.

Once that is accomplished, you'll want to start running Process Monitor then click the magnifying glass "Capture" to stop the capturing (since it starts immediately). Click the erase to clear everything, then start up installation or whatnot. You want to start and stop Process Monitor capturing to capture the time when the installation hangs. You may want to snap a capture of when it isn't hanging as well, for a 'control group' to get context for what I should and should not be seeing. After all that's completed, you can save each capture (File > Save As; don't worry about the options). Zip em up (cuz they can get big) and send them our way for analysis.

Understand that these log files can get big quickly. You want to only capture a few seconds per file.

criticalt3 · 06-01-2011, 10:24 AM

Okay thanks, I'll try these and get back to you, thanks for the reply! Edit: And I have disabled Avast's shield while running them and it changes nothing, no other realtime protection running either.

criticalt3 · 06-01-2011, 10:37 AM

Okay, it froze process explorer a few times during installation too, but it seemed that svchost and msiexec were taking 25% (equal to full usage of one core) during the installation, on and off. They'd be 0.01% then all of a sudden go to 25% and trade off and go back down. :\

**VirGnarus** · 06-01-2011, 10:55 AM

Dbl-click the svchost that it's blaming and then click on the Threads tab if you're not already there. Sort by CSwitch Delta and watch for another hang and see what thread listed pops up with a high number. If you find one, dbl click it to bring up the stack window. Select the whole stack by holding shift and using your arrow keys to move up/down the stack. When everything is selected, press copy and then paste it over here. Also mention to us what services are listed in the Services tab.

You may continue to do the Process Monitor step after this.

criticalt3 · 06-01-2011, 02:03 PM

I think 3,165,594 counts as a high number, right? Heh, /sarcasm. Yeah. Here's the info from the stack window. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------- ntoskrnl.exe!memset+0x64a ntoskrnl.exe!KeWaitForMultipleObjects+0xd52 ntoskrnl.exe!KeWaitForMutexObject+0x19f ntoskrnl.exe!_misaligned_access+0xba4 ntoskrnl.exe!_misaligned_access+0x1821 ntoskrnl.exe!KeWaitForMultipleObjects+0xf5d ntoskrnl.exe!KeRemoveQueueEx+0x323 ntoskrnl.exe!ExQueryAttributeInformation+0x189f ntoskrnl.exe!KeDetachProcess+0x4d2 ntoskrnl.exe!KeSynchronizeExecution+0x3a43 ntdll.dll!ZwWaitForWorkViaWorkerFactory+0xa ntdll.dll!RtlValidateHeap+0x3bb kernel32.dll!BaseThreadInitThunk+0xd ntdll.dll!RtlUserThreadStart+0x21

criticalt3 · 06-01-2011, 06:47 PM

I think I discovered the problem. I went to services under administrative tools to find that Windows Installer was not started and it was set to manual startup. I set it to automatic and started it. Installed a program that always hangs the system when installing, nHancer. It didn't hang once and installed in under a minute. I ended the process msiexec, which caused the service to stop, and watched Process Explorer as I reinstalled it. But this time, the service automatically started and it still installed fine with no hangs. But every time before now that I've installed nHancer it hung many times. I had even reinstalled it today before I had tested any of that and it hung. Then I did this test, and viola.

**VirGnarus** · 06-02-2011, 06:14 AM

I figured that was kinda what was happening. What services were listed in the Services tab in Process Explorer for that svchost? I assume Windows Installer was prolly one of em.

What I'm interested in understanding is how your installations managed to complete without the Windows Installer service running at all. Of course, I'd need the Process Monitor log to figure this one out. However, if what you did got it all fixed up, I see no problem continuing to work on this.

Tell me if you're sure things are working normally now. If so, we can consider this solved.

criticalt3 · 06-02-2011, 04:46 PM

I am pretty sure everything is okay now. I can't be 100% sure until I start installing more things, but I think it's alright. What I think was happening was, since the service was stopped, the programs were manually trying to start it, and there were huge conflict issues going on, causing the system to hang. Who knows though, I'm not entirely sure. Crazy though. Thanks for the responses! I really appreciate it. I'll let you know if there's anything else that happens. Otherwise I do believe it's fixed.

**VirGnarus** · 06-02-2011, 05:22 PM

They shouldn't have been able to continue though, but should've just bugged out and crashed. I guess the service itself isn't really mandatory but the installers didn't know how to handle without access to it. Anyways, all speculation, wanted to understand further but that's cool. Glad to help. Please make sure to mark this thread as solved once after testing it some more and considering everything ok.