The Lemon Fool

My laptop has come to a complete standstill. Having finally managed to get Task Manager started I can see that System Interrupts are taking 98.5% CPU. What would cause so many interrupts?

I can see from status bar that Windows wants me to schedule a restart for updates.

This is absolutely no use.

Thanks
C

Do the restart and see if the problem persists. The pending update may have discombobulated the system. (A reasonably frequent issue with Windows OS updates).

Clariman wrote:I can see from status bar that Windows wants me to schedule a restart for updates.

In the words of Bobby Gillespie
"don't fight it, feel it"

Do the restart; I find that often stuff slows down/stops if it is needing to install updates

-sd

Some apps I started trying to load as it slowed down are still loading. Not sure whether safer to leave for 10 minutes rather than restart and close apps that are loading??

Also Macrium backup is running just now

Clariman wrote:Some apps I started trying to load as it slowed down are still loading. Not sure whether safer to leave for 10 minutes rather than restart and close apps that are loading??

If they're only loading it will be fine
- you can terminate them from task manager if it makes it easier to restart but you'll probably be offered the option to kill them when you give the restart command

-sd

Yep, shut down as much as you don't need

Clariman wrote:Also Macrium backup is running just now

Well that will be contributing to the treacle like performance then in combination with any pending updates!

Let it complete and then try a restart - you'll get an alert probably that it is busy and to wait or force a shutdown - your choice but whenever I'm impatient and have chosen shut down I've never had an issue on reboot (famous last words...).

Clariman wrote:Also Macrium backup is running just now

Ok
If there's only a single backup saved (i.e. each new one replaces the old) I'd kill everything else and let that finish
If there's no chance of losing a good backup - kill it as well
Then reboot for updates

-sd

Updates and MR backups will actually start/complete without signing in, so if you know there's going to be a bun fight at boot just switch on earlier, walk away and let it sort itself out - come back later, sign in and do the restart if needed.

In process of restarting now. However, more importantly, is there a way to prevent these system update freezes where the PC becomes completely unusable?

For example a week ago I was presenting via zoom at a formal conference to over 100 people. If it had happened then I couldn't have done the presentation.

C

Clariman wrote:is there a way to prevent these system update freezes where the PC becomes completely unusable?

Aren't automatic "upgrades" a feature of "Home" versions of Windows 10?

Possible solutions then are to upgrade to the "Professional" version or find a hack that disables auto updates? One possible method is to fib to Windows and tell it it's on a metered connection to the Internet.

Alaric wrote:

Clariman wrote:is there a way to prevent these system update freezes where the PC becomes completely unusable?

Aren't automatic "upgrades" a feature of "Home" versions of Windows 10?

W10Home, 21H1 at least, lets you pause updates for up to 7 days.

Clariman wrote:In process of restarting now. However, more importantly, is there a way to prevent these system update freezes where the PC becomes completely unusable?

For example a week ago I was presenting via zoom at a formal conference to over 100 people. If it had happened then I couldn't have done the presentation.

C

As suggested you can pause auto updates and apply updates manually when more convenient from...https://www.catalog.update.microsoft.com/Home.aspx

It's not particularly intuitive via the above link so you'll need to do a bit of homework researching the best ways of getting to the updates you need. It's years since I last used it so I've forgotten what exactly I did!

Clariman wrote:In process of restarting now. However, more importantly, is there a way to prevent these system update freezes where the PC becomes completely unusable?

For example a week ago I was presenting via zoom at a formal conference to over 100 people. If it had happened then I couldn't have done the presentation.

C

I know that linux is fairly unpopular in some quarters. However have you considered a dedicated zoom machine running linux? If you are using Powerpoint that might be out of the question, though LibraOffice does have an alternative that you could use on either Windows or linux.

Alternatively have you got a second windows machine that you could use zoom from? That way you could swap to the second machine if it did happen.

I should say that my work PC often suffers from this on a Monday morning.

If I had any sense I'd shutdown the machine on Friday and boot it up on Sunday checking for updates. Possibly you should get into the habit of doing so the day before any such conference.

I find updates rarely cause treacle likes symptoms if you have a solid state hard drive. If you don't id highly advise you get one . It's like night and day.

Also check if you have updates failing to install. This can cause an endless loop of installing, failing, uninstall, and repeat ad nauseam.

Alaric wrote:

Clariman wrote:is there a way to prevent these system update freezes where the PC becomes completely unusable?

Aren't automatic "upgrades" a feature of "Home" versions of Windows 10?

Possible solutions then are to upgrade to the "Professional" version or find a hack that disables auto updates? One possible method is to fib to Windows and tell it it's on a metered connection to the Internet.

I have my laptops set to Metered Connection on my wifi connection: https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/win ... e95a87c408

This prevents updates being automatically downloaded. I also set my active hours to prevent automatic restarts during the day.
I set a calendar reminder to email me once a week to remind me to manually download and install updates. This has worked fine for me over the past 2-3 years.

--kiloran

Midsmartin wrote:I find updates rarely cause treacle likes symptoms if you have a solid state hard drive. If you don't id highly advise you get one . It's like night and day.

Also check if you have updates failing to install. This can cause an endless loop of installing, failing, uninstall, and repeat ad nauseam.

An SSD made a world of difference to our Dell laptops. I found that the persistent problem of a hard disc spinning at 100% constantly and the treacle like performance has been eliminated. Use task manager to check on disk usage (note, not cpu usage).

kiloran wrote:I have my laptops set to Metered Connection on my wifi connection: https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/win ... e95a87c408

This prevents updates being automatically downloaded. I also set my active hours to prevent automatic restarts during the day.
I set a calendar reminder to email me once a week to remind me to manually download and install updates. This has worked fine for me over the past 2-3 years.

--kiloran

Good call on metered connection I'd forgotten about that - I used to use it when I had a 12GB limit on my 3 4G Wi-Fi hotspot.
It used to limit the MS telemetry quite nicely too, so should speed a slow PC up a bit if background network chatter is an issue.

My system (Dell i5 processor, 8 gb ram, loads of disk space, Windows 10 version 2004) ground almost to a complete halt on Tuesday, for no reason that it was prepared to discuss with me. Task Manager had Google Chrome soaking up 800 mb of my memory, even though I had only one window open. Disk was reported as 0% usage, which of course means 100%. Things still worked, but dead slow.

Nothing for it but to wait it out, then. And after four or five hours the horrors subsided and things were back to normal. That evening, the screen told me that it wanted to update my bios and my screen management system (or something like that), and after about 400 mb of downloads a reboot was required. It's definitely been quicker on bootup since then. So maybe something good came of it?

BJ