Win10 Pro Hangs – Possible Security Intelligence Update Issue

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Hello

Have a HP Z230 workstation running latest version of Win 10 Pro on a SSD.

The machine randomly hangs a couple of times a day.  By this I mean I am working

in Word, with various browser or other open windows active on 2nd screen.  Everything

locks and while you can “click” on the close window, or use keyboard there is no response – have to hard power off the machine and then power it up again.

This behavior seems to have started in November sometime as the machine was running rock solid with no problems.  Replaced both SSD and graphics card, ran usual memory tests etc and everything seem to work fine.

Looked at the reliability history monitor and started to notice a pattern – prior to every hang there was a security intelligence update for MS Defender antivirus KB2267602 – hang usually occurred with 3 – 30 minutes after every update.

Ideas on how to resolve this “problem” very much appreciated – it a real puzzler – seems to be inherent in my version of Win 10 Pro on my boot drive as I swapped the boot drive from  another Z230 workstation and the machine worked flawlessly.

I can only conclude that their is something on the operating system that is causing the hang.

Advice appreciated  – Happy Hols,

Colin

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I’d disable Defender for a while to test.

Note: you can’t disable Defender, you have to replace it. See this thread.

cheers, Paul

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Is defender set to run a full disk scan after each update ?

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No as far I can see – will check settings

Thanks

 

Colin

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Does it hang regardless of your activity?

Can you have Task Manager running to see what is using the resources?

--Joe

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Seems to hang when I have Firefox or Opera open and maybe Thunderbird- a few windows open and they are on my second monitor.  Start using Word and Excel and bam at some unknown interval everything just sits there – can get to task manager (cntrl alt del) but you cannot get anything to open – you just have frozen screens/windows.  I can see HD light working away.  I have waited up to 5 minutes (let the HD catchup !!!) but still frozen screens.  On someones advice, I turned off hardware acceleration in Firefox (thought it could be graphics card – but put a new card in and it still happens).

After I reboot and view reliability history – the hang seems to occur after windows “inteligence” updates.  Disabling windows defender as per suggestions and will see what happens.

Maddening for a previously rock stable machine.

Will see what happens when I try suggestions,

Best

Colin

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Set your network to “metered” and the Defender updates will stop downloading – at least that is what is does on my machine. You can turn metered off after a day or two.

cheers, Paul

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Thanks Paul – have done that etc. and replaced it with Avast to see what happens.

I am checking to see if Firefox ver 94 and Thunderbird mail are the culprits – something is going on with the Firefox browser when you open several windows/tabs with other programs running that seems to cause the “hang” – after a few minutes.  Video is not a problem as I can still see the screens and all open windows but cannot really use keyboard and mouse and have to cold start the machine from the Task Manager screen (but cannot get into TM).  Trying to find crash logs etc that might help but nothing seems to register anyway.

Have rolled back Firefox to an earlier version and will see what goes on.

Have a Happy New Year

Colin

 

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Just re-tested Defender updates with a metered network. Updates sit in the queue and are not installed. I have the following Scheduled Task to update Defender.

Schedule: 5am every day
Action: Start a program
Program/Script: %comspec%
Arguments: /c start “” /min “C:\Program Files\Windows Defender\MpCmdRun.exe” -SignatureUpdate
Settings: Run the task as soon as possible after a scheduled start is missed

cheers, Paul

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I am having the same problem after changing to Firefox.

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What problem, we have a couple in here? Full details please.

cheers, Paul

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