How’s Your Computer Today? by GF Willmetts
An odd thing happened the morning after my W10 update of 23 May 2016 (I’m citing the date for longevity of this piece) in that it seemed to be locked in a logic loop with the circle icon whirling around endlessly and no noise from the CPU indicating it was doing further installation. I should point out that the previous evening’s installation was completed and fully booted before turning it off. I never leave that last stage to the next day, more so as it can also take some time.
A couple reboots did not change this status, so I had a thought and this might get you of a similar jam, more so if you’re about to get an update and likely to experience this.
Where all else fails with a Windows crash, we use Ctrl, Alt, Del so I did that. This time, you then get a different blue screen. The one with a door slight ajar. In the bottom left hand corner, you get several options that you can find with your mouse. Select ‘Restart’. The other screen will come back with the whirly but also with the slogan ‘Restarting’. This time it completed the restart and things look back to normal.
If nothing else, it’ll save a needless run to a computer shop or finding some other way to get your computer working. Of course, it could just have been my computer but I’m concerned enough to put this on-line as quickly as possible and save some needless hair-pulling.
GF Willmetts
24 May 2016
I didn’t get that after a Win10 update. I have gotten a couple of others.
Moving from Win7 Pro to Win10 Pro was an exercise in hair-pulling here. I”d previously update an older travel laptop and a friend’s newer Win8.1 Home laptop with no issues, and my SO upgraded her Win7 Pro laptop to Win10 without problems. (She simply said no to all of MS’s recomm4ended actions.
My Win7 Pro desktop was another matter. I’d help off upgrading because I dual boot Windows and Ubuntu Linux, and wasn’t certain of the effect on the dual-boot. I finally pulled the trigger. Dual-boot was unaffected. Things went to Hell in a bucket when I rebooted into Win10.
The problems were an inability to shutdown or restart, and system hangs, both of which required power cycles. After a day of power cycles and bad language, I rebooted into Ubuntu to Look Stuff Up.
The problems had simple fixes, once I knew what they were.
The shutdown/restart issue was cured by turning *off* “Hybrid shutdown”. This is a new feature form Microsoft, aimed at the mobile user where battery power is the scarce resource. It’s a means of shutting down while preserving system state, and rebooting back into whatever you were doing before. It’s apparently a lot faster than the previous “Hibernation” option. But on a desktop connected to an outlet and on 24/7, it’s a problem, and results in a machine that can’t be shutdown/restarted normally. Turning off hybrid shutdown cured the problem.
System hangs were a side effect of booting and running from an SSD. I had to go into Properties for the SSD device, and turn *off* Windows write-cache buffer flushing. This cured the system hangs and the system was fast and stable.
I’ve gotten an occasional new BSOD, where I get told the system encountered a problem and needs to restart. Fortunately, it does so without requiring a power cycle. One cause is a DCP protection error, that I’ve only seen when in my browser (Firefox). The other is a device power error that seems to be a consequence of having half a dozen USB thumbdrives plugged into a USB hub and connected.
They’ve only happened a few times, and are at worst an annoyance, but were never seen under Win7, so an under-the-hood change in Win10 is responsible.
Over all, I’m pleased with Win10, but could have lived without the hiccups.
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Dennis
Hello Dennis
The piece wasn’t about hybrid systems but what to do if W10 appears locked.
Geoff
I didn’t say it was about hybrid systems. I simply commented on a couple of issues that bit me.
Win10 seems to be sensitive to conditions that Win7 didn’t care about.
The good part is that it will initiate restart and recover on its own instead of requiring a power cycle.
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Dennis
Hello Dennis
Er, the price was about a problem that appeared in W10 on Tuesday.
I agree on the effectiveness with W7 but no Windows has ever been perfect.
What looks like happened with the latest update was a logic loop which it couldn’t jump out of. If nothing happens after 10 minutes, then the first thing people tend to do is panic, then reboot the computer, if a laptop even pull the battery than consider the action I did. Any recent Windows will try an alternative method to get around it now but that’s programmed in.
It would be interesting to hear if such a situation has happened with tablets or other hardware that uses W10.
Geoff