My entertainment pc, running Vista, would not update. I finally got it to error and the fix was to go into command line and force the process to stop then start. Updated without issue after that. net stop wuauserv then net start wuauserv
Good luck.
Access denied.
So I tried again as administrator. That makes it hang, not stop. I don't know if Windows has a kill -9, so I rebooted and it was gone.
I tried rebooting, and it stayed gone. Then net start wuauserv as you said and no longer is svchost.exe eating up a CPU core. Instead, it's TrustedInstaller.exe, but that might be okay, since I'm trying to get Windows to patch.
This is definitely a virus. They usually come from a software installation for something to fix the computer. Probably came from any of those registry fix software or an adblocker. Could even come from the antivirus program depending on what one you are using.
Viruses won't stop a computer from posting unless they mess with firmware, or more to the point, the BIOS. And even if a virus does flash the BIOS, it shouldn't have access to the alternate BIOS.
There is a piece of tracking software on your system that keeps on telling Windows to reboot even when you are telling it to shutdown. I had this problem as well. Run a full system scan with your AV software, then delete ALL of your Windows temp files. Reboot, and it should be fixed.
Can't load Windows. It's pretty bad tracking software if it makes it impossible to load itself.
I don't know if this will actually help or not, but it's related. This happened over the course of several months.
I have a 4790K build as well, it's a bit older, but it had been running pretty well for about a year. I did the Win10 Update early on, some wierdness with that, but overall it worked.
Starting around Christmas, I started to get a random reboot. It wasn't very frequent, maybe once or twice a week. But it kept up. And it slowly started to get more frequent. I figured it was just more Win10 wierdness.
By around April, it was up to about once per day. I figured at this point, it wasn't getting better, but worse. So I started looking at hardware. I took apart and rebuilt the entire rig - usually my first step in intermittent problems before I start throwing equipment or money at it.
I tried another PSU, it was used. No improvement. I tried a brand new PSU, No improvement.
Swapping RAM, removing RAM, even tried completely different RAM. No improvement.
Tried a clean install of Win8 on a different HDD. No improvement. Went back to a clean install of Win10, still no improvement.
By May, it's multiple times a day it's rebooting. No error code, no warning, just like someone hit the reset button and walks away.
Checked BIOS revision, it's most current. PLayed with all the BIOS settings. I got it a bit more stable if I overvolted the RAM, but would still occur. RMA'ed the motherboard. Asus sent it back, no improvement. I bought a new motherboard, a Gigabyte. No improvement.
I swapped GPUs with my Wife's - no improvement. I tried Intel iGPU, no improvement.
I tried seeing if it was related to graphics load, or CPU load, or power draw. It did seem to be more frequent when the computer was heavily loaded, and for a while I could get it to repeat pretty regularly with a particular Prime95 test, so i thought - ah ha, must be the CPU.
Bought a i5 4690, put it in the Gigabyte board. No improvement.
At this point, I just hit the WTF button. I pretty much had an entirely different computer at this point. All I was missing was a case, PSU, and another SSD. So why not - went ahead and build the second rig out of parts, using Intel iGPU for now, and starting running both of them at the same time.
Computer A - with the all original parts - works fine. I'm typing on it now. No idea.
Computer B - with completely different parts - it had the issue now. I swapped out the heat sink for the Intel Stock piece of crap - that seems to have fixed it for the moment.
I still have no freaking clue. Gave the second PC to my son, it's running now. I'm not touching anything on either computer for a while now.
Bios code 10 means it is a memory problem (if the motherboard is working of course, I wouldn't trust it if it is dead). I don't think it is the ram that is broken but the motherboard.
It is of course possible that it is the seasonic PSU that for some reason ain't giving enough power but that sounds pretty unlikely to me.
I assume you already removed and re-attached all powercords?
The problem is of course that it is hard to prove that the motherboard is broken without any special (expensive) tools. Removing all things you don't need (including the GFX card if it have a crap onboard backup and all memory slots besides one and trying to boot would be my first try in any case, everything you remove while it still doesn't work means we can strike them off the list of things that is broken (unless a spike messed up a lot of things which is very unlikely).
After that if it still doesn't work I would change the ram chip for one of the other and try again. If it still doesn't reboot you can be it is either the motherboard or the PSU. If you do have an older PSU lying around you could try that one as well but that sadly is pretty unlikely.
Well, that is how I would try to find the problem (unless I had access to a secondary desktop computer, then you could try to run different components from the one messing in the other to clear them from suspicion. It is 95% chance that it is the motherboard but that are not good enough odds to just buy a new without proof, at least not if you have the possibility to clear the other parts.
To tell you the truth, the computers have never frozen on me once either.
By the way, the buyer would also need to have some knowledge of which components go well with each other.
For example, even though their ordering system lets me pick the 240mm liquid cooling for my case, I do my own research online to see if that case fits the 240mm liquid cooling well.
If it doesn't, I don't want the installer to force it in.
He ordered an ASUS board for the fastest Intel C2D available at the time. He got the EVGA GTX265 FTW video card, and a 600W gamer PSU. They put the wrong power supply in, and it pushed the heatsink off of the CPU. Now, I have assembled about 300 desktops over the last 20 or so years. If I had to force the PSU in, I would want to know why. And, since it was having to be jammed in hard enough to lever off the heat sink, they should have noticed.
And, like I said, their customer service was abysmal, and that is why I cannot recommend Cyberpower. They treated my friend like he was some kind of jerk because he wanted a working computer, and my friend even did the troubleshooting for them. If you bring that company into a conversation, trust me, to this day the language he would use would make a sailor blush.
Since then I built the next of his computers, and he has not had one bit of problem with it, even though it was shipped over 2000 miles. Now he has a friend that builds computers in the area, so for his next desktop he doesn't need to invest the shipping costs.
I could safely say that it would be a cold day in hell before he bought another Cyberpower PC, and after seeing what they did to him, I feel the same.
The world is going to the dogs, which is just how I planned it!
If it was me I would try to boot from a linux cd. I would also try swapping hard drives and run the hard drive through a virus/trojan checker from usb or cd or pull the drive, hook it up externally to another pc and run a checkdisk utility program after running the virus/trojan programs. Sounds like a trojan or just a corrupted hard drive or now both as the more you run the more corrupted it becomes. I rarely see a bios problem unless people have been fooling around with it. I didn't read every post so apologies if I missed something. I always tell everyone to check your connections because a loose connection can corrupt a system also.
"We all do the best we can based on life experience, point of view, and our ability to believe in ourselves." - Naropa "We don't see things as they are, we see them as we are." SR Covey
To tell you the truth, the computers have never frozen on me once either.
By the way, the buyer would also need to have some knowledge of which components go well with each other.
For example, even though their ordering system lets me pick the 240mm liquid cooling for my case, I do my own research online to see if that case fits the 240mm liquid cooling well.
If it doesn't, I don't want the installer to force it in.
He ordered an ASUS board for the fastest Intel C2D available at the time. He got the EVGA GTX265 FTW video card, and a 600W gamer PSU. They put the wrong power supply in, and it pushed the heatsink off of the CPU. Now, I have assembled about 300 desktops over the last 20 or so years. If I had to force the PSU in, I would want to know why. And, since it was having to be jammed in hard enough to lever off the heat sink, they should have noticed.
And, like I said, their customer service was abysmal, and that is why I cannot recommend Cyberpower. They treated my friend like he was some kind of jerk because he wanted a working computer, and my friend even did the troubleshooting for them. If you bring that company into a conversation, trust me, to this day the language he would use would make a sailor blush.
Since then I built the next of his computers, and he has not had one bit of problem with it, even though it was shipped over 2000 miles. Now he has a friend that builds computers in the area, so for his next desktop he doesn't need to invest the shipping costs.
I could safely say that it would be a cold day in hell before he bought another Cyberpower PC, and after seeing what they did to him, I feel the same.
I bought a Cyberpowerpc once. Returned it three days later, terrible.
"We all do the best we can based on life experience, point of view, and our ability to believe in ourselves." - Naropa "We don't see things as they are, we see them as we are." SR Covey
If it was me I would try to boot from a linux cd. I would also try swapping hard drives and run the hard drive through a virus/trojan checker from usb or cd or pull the drive, hook it up externally to another pc and run a checkdisk utility program after running the virus/trojan programs. Sounds like a trojan or just a corrupted hard drive or now both as the more you run the more corrupted it becomes. I rarely see a bios problem unless people have been fooling around with it. I didn't read every post so apologies if I missed something. I always tell everyone to check your connections because a loose connection can corrupt a system also.
If it wont go to POST it wont boot on anything. This is a hardware error that happens before it tries to boot from the OS.
Hardrives can't have anything to do with it and neither can any software or drivers.
As for the win7 not updating, taxing the core, that's just the windows update screwing around ( i confirmed it with some 3rd party task manager programs, your symptoms are the same as mine).
You can try manually downloading patches ( the pre-requisite for the "SP2", and the actual convenience rollup ). Worked for me to get win10 for some old machines that wouldn't update.
The pre-reqs for SP1 are : KB2454826, KB2534366, and KB2533552 and the the SP1 standalone is : windows6.1-KB976932-X64.
The pre-req for SP2(convenience rollup) is : Windows6.1-KB3020369-x64, and the the SP2 itself is : windows6.1-kb3125574-v4-x64_2dafb1d203c8964239af3048b5dd4b1264cd93b9.
I'll see if i can dig up the links they were a pain to find the first time around.
But after installing all of this, the win7 should update the rest fine.
This is definitely a virus. They usually come from a software installation for something to fix the computer. Probably came from any of those registry fix software or an adblocker. Could even come from the antivirus program depending on what one you are using.
Viruses won't stop a computer from posting unless they mess with firmware, or more to the point, the BIOS. And even if a virus does flash the BIOS, it shouldn't have access to the alternate BIOS.
But a virus will disable the f2 key so you cannot get into the bios. Not exactly sure how to check that part but it somehow disables the key during bootup then enables it once windows loads so you don't know its happening.
But yea replace the hdd and that will tell you if virus or software related.
There is a lot of stuff left for me to try, including some good suggestions in this thread. I was hoping it was memory, as that would be an easy fix: pull out the bad module and run with just the good one while waiting for new memory to be delivered. Once it became clear that that wasn't the issue, I was more focused on getting my old computer up and running so I'd at least have a working computer, as I knew that that shouldn't take very long. Hence the focus on getting Windows to update, as my old computer otherwise still works.
This is definitely a virus. They usually come from a software installation for something to fix the computer. Probably came from any of those registry fix software or an adblocker. Could even come from the antivirus program depending on what one you are using.
Viruses won't stop a computer from posting unless they mess with firmware, or more to the point, the BIOS. And even if a virus does flash the BIOS, it shouldn't have access to the alternate BIOS.
But a virus will disable the f2 key so you cannot get into the bios. Not exactly sure how to check that part but it somehow disables the key during bootup then enables it once windows loads so you don't know its happening.
But yea replace the hdd and that will tell you if virus or software related.
Keyboard input at that point is handled by BIOS. Even if a virus were to completely mess up keyboard settings on Windows, it would not affect the keyboard at that point of booting.
With some keyboards it's possible that a virus might affect they keyboard's firmware or settings stored on keyboard's own memory, but I doubt anyone would bother writing that kind of code just to disable F2 key on some specific keyboard model(s).
There is a piece of tracking software on your system that keeps on telling Windows to reboot even when you are telling it to shutdown. I had this problem as well. Run a full system scan with your AV software, then delete ALL of your Windows temp files. Reboot, and it should be fixed.
Can't load Windows. It's pretty bad tracking software if it makes it impossible to load itself.
I thought the problem was you could not get it to shut down...
All viruses/ trojans /trackers are hacks and could easily cause instability. It sounds like you have a bad (as in poorly written) one, since you can't get into Windows. If your stuff is backed up, maybe consider format/reinstall. You will get a quicker system out of it no matter what the cause. Yeah, its a pain and takes a few hours to finish, but the results are worth it IMO. I wipe/ reinstall every year, and not only is your system faster and more stable, that old game or six you haven't played in 3 years is no longer taking up space.
The world is going to the dogs, which is just how I planned it!
I would never recommend Cyberpower to anyone. My friend bought one, it would run for 10 minutes then shut down. Over and over. Finally he hooked up his old PC and I took a look at it using his webcam. Those IDIOTS at Cyberpower put the wrong damn power supply in. It was so big it levered the heat sink off of the CPU, causing major overheating. Yes, that was a bonehead move. But the problem was how they handled the repair. They weren't going to fix it at first because he took off the case door. Then after threat to tell his story to some local businesses that bought CP PCs (he lives near CP HQ, which is why he bought from them), they agreed to consider the complaint. SIX WEEKS later, after my friend called them at least a dozen times, they sent him a PSU. I told my friend to send the computer back and get a new one, there was no telling how much damage was done to the CPU. They agreed to do so, and he sent it back. Two weeks later he got his replacement. It was the same unit, but they did replace the CPU and the PSU. Included with the computer was a note voiding any further warrantee.
NFW will I EVER recommend that company to anyone.
He's just unlucky I guess....I've bought 2 computers from them (all top of them line ~$2300 machines), and they all work perfectly.
And I'm not trying to advertise for them or anything, but they have never crashed once.
I live in West Los Angeles (about 1 hour drive from their HQ). So what I do is, when I order I pick all the brand-name parts (like EVGA, Corsair, ETC).
Even though I personally go to pick it up, I still pay $30 for the foam padding that goes inside the case, so the parts don't become lose while they are in my car.
Op likely would not buy a prebuilt system. For obvious reasons he has mentioned in most help me build threads over thr years. Discussion , arguement seems pointless.
Bios code 10 means it is a memory problem (if the motherboard is working of course, I wouldn't trust it if it is dead). I don't think it is the ram that is broken but the motherboard.
It is of course possible that it is the seasonic PSU that for some reason ain't giving enough power but that sounds pretty unlikely to me.
I assume you already removed and re-attached all powercords?
The problem is of course that it is hard to prove that the motherboard is broken without any special (expensive) tools. Removing all things you don't need (including the GFX card if it have a crap onboard backup and all memory slots besides one and trying to boot would be my first try in any case, everything you remove while it still doesn't work means we can strike them off the list of things that is broken (unless a spike messed up a lot of things which is very unlikely).
After that if it still doesn't work I would change the ram chip for one of the other and try again. If it still doesn't reboot you can be it is either the motherboard or the PSU. If you do have an older PSU lying around you could try that one as well but that sadly is pretty unlikely.
Well, that is how I would try to find the problem (unless I had access to a secondary desktop computer, then you could try to run different components from the one messing in the other to clear them from suspicion. It is 95% chance that it is the motherboard but that are not good enough odds to just buy a new without proof, at least not if you have the possibility to clear the other parts.
The meanings of various codes varies by BIOS. Your own link says that, too. According to the list in MSI's manual for my particular motherboard, 10 doesn't mean anything.
As for the win7 not updating, taxing the core, that's just the windows update screwing around ( i confirmed it with some 3rd party task manager programs, your symptoms are the same as mine).
You can try manually downloading patches ( the pre-requisite for the "SP2", and the actual convenience rollup ). Worked for me to get win10 for some old machines that wouldn't update.
The pre-reqs for SP1 are : KB2454826, KB2534366, and KB2533552 and the the SP1 standalone is : windows6.1-KB976932-X64.
The pre-req for SP2(convenience rollup) is : Windows6.1-KB3020369-x64, and the the SP2 itself is : windows6.1-kb3125574-v4-x64_2dafb1d203c8964239af3048b5dd4b1264cd93b9.
I'll see if i can dig up the links they were a pain to find the first time around.
But after installing all of this, the win7 should update the rest fine.
The basic problem is that newer updates to Windows don't always play nicely with older versions of Windows Update. With an OS that is nearly seven years old, Microsoft doesn't want to check every single possible combination of updates installed to make sure that everything works. New updates generally work with recent versions of Windows Update, but my version was about a year old, as the computer had been unplugged for nearly that long.
So I downloaded the latest version of Windows Update, killed the previous version of the process as Lugal said, and installed the latest version of Windows Update. Run that as normal and it found 71 important updates. They're installing now on my new desktop, and my laptop will be next.
There is a piece of tracking software on your system that keeps on telling Windows to reboot even when you are telling it to shutdown. I had this problem as well. Run a full system scan with your AV software, then delete ALL of your Windows temp files. Reboot, and it should be fixed.
Can't load Windows. It's pretty bad tracking software if it makes it impossible to load itself.
I thought the problem was you could not get it to shut down...
All viruses/ trojans /trackers are hacks and could easily cause instability. It sounds like you have a bad (as in poorly written) one, since you can't get into Windows. If your stuff is backed up, maybe consider format/reinstall. You will get a quicker system out of it no matter what the cause. Yeah, its a pain and takes a few hours to finish, but the results are worth it IMO. I wipe/ reinstall every year, and not only is your system faster and more stable, that old game or six you haven't played in 3 years is no longer taking up space.
The computer not shutting down was the first indication that something was wrong, but not being able to start it back up again is much worse. Read the rest of the original post for details.
Comments
So I tried again as administrator. That makes it hang, not stop. I don't know if Windows has a kill -9, so I rebooted and it was gone.
I tried rebooting, and it stayed gone. Then net start wuauserv as you said and no longer is svchost.exe eating up a CPU core. Instead, it's TrustedInstaller.exe, but that might be okay, since I'm trying to get Windows to patch.
I have a 4790K build as well, it's a bit older, but it had been running pretty well for about a year. I did the Win10 Update early on, some wierdness with that, but overall it worked.
Starting around Christmas, I started to get a random reboot. It wasn't very frequent, maybe once or twice a week. But it kept up. And it slowly started to get more frequent. I figured it was just more Win10 wierdness.
By around April, it was up to about once per day. I figured at this point, it wasn't getting better, but worse. So I started looking at hardware. I took apart and rebuilt the entire rig - usually my first step in intermittent problems before I start throwing equipment or money at it.
I tried another PSU, it was used. No improvement. I tried a brand new PSU, No improvement.
Swapping RAM, removing RAM, even tried completely different RAM. No improvement.
Tried a clean install of Win8 on a different HDD. No improvement. Went back to a clean install of Win10, still no improvement.
By May, it's multiple times a day it's rebooting. No error code, no warning, just like someone hit the reset button and walks away.
Checked BIOS revision, it's most current. PLayed with all the BIOS settings. I got it a bit more stable if I overvolted the RAM, but would still occur. RMA'ed the motherboard. Asus sent it back, no improvement. I bought a new motherboard, a Gigabyte. No improvement.
I swapped GPUs with my Wife's - no improvement. I tried Intel iGPU, no improvement.
I tried seeing if it was related to graphics load, or CPU load, or power draw. It did seem to be more frequent when the computer was heavily loaded, and for a while I could get it to repeat pretty regularly with a particular Prime95 test, so i thought - ah ha, must be the CPU.
Bought a i5 4690, put it in the Gigabyte board. No improvement.
At this point, I just hit the WTF button. I pretty much had an entirely different computer at this point. All I was missing was a case, PSU, and another SSD. So why not - went ahead and build the second rig out of parts, using Intel iGPU for now, and starting running both of them at the same time.
Computer A - with the all original parts - works fine. I'm typing on it now. No idea.
Computer B - with completely different parts - it had the issue now. I swapped out the heat sink for the Intel Stock piece of crap - that seems to have fixed it for the moment.
I still have no freaking clue. Gave the second PC to my son, it's running now. I'm not touching anything on either computer for a while now.
Anyway, thanks for the advice. There are some more things that I'll try tomorrow.
For what it's worth, my SSD on my old desktop is about half full, on my laptop is about 2/3 full, and on my new desktop is maybe 1/4 full.
Having another rig on hand it's at least something you can rule out
"Be water my friend" - Bruce Lee
It is of course possible that it is the seasonic PSU that for some reason ain't giving enough power but that sounds pretty unlikely to me.
I assume you already removed and re-attached all powercords?
The problem is of course that it is hard to prove that the motherboard is broken without any special (expensive) tools. Removing all things you don't need (including the GFX card if it have a crap onboard backup and all memory slots besides one and trying to boot would be my first try in any case, everything you remove while it still doesn't work means we can strike them off the list of things that is broken (unless a spike messed up a lot of things which is very unlikely).
After that if it still doesn't work I would change the ram chip for one of the other and try again. If it still doesn't reboot you can be it is either the motherboard or the PSU. If you do have an older PSU lying around you could try that one as well but that sadly is pretty unlikely.
Well, that is how I would try to find the problem (unless I had access to a secondary desktop computer, then you could try to run different components from the one messing in the other to clear them from suspicion. It is 95% chance that it is the motherboard but that are not good enough odds to just buy a new without proof, at least not if you have the possibility to clear the other parts.
And, like I said, their customer service was abysmal, and that is why I cannot recommend Cyberpower. They treated my friend like he was some kind of jerk because he wanted a working computer, and my friend even did the troubleshooting for them. If you bring that company into a conversation, trust me, to this day the language he would use would make a sailor blush.
Since then I built the next of his computers, and he has not had one bit of problem with it, even though it was shipped over 2000 miles. Now he has a friend that builds computers in the area, so for his next desktop he doesn't need to invest the shipping costs.
I could safely say that it would be a cold day in hell before he bought another Cyberpower PC, and after seeing what they did to him, I feel the same.
The world is going to the dogs, which is just how I planned it!
"We all do the best we can based on life experience, point of view, and our ability to believe in ourselves." - Naropa "We don't see things as they are, we see them as we are." SR Covey
"We all do the best we can based on life experience, point of view, and our ability to believe in ourselves." - Naropa "We don't see things as they are, we see them as we are." SR Covey
Hardrives can't have anything to do with it and neither can any software or drivers.
You can try manually downloading patches ( the pre-requisite for the "SP2", and the actual convenience rollup ). Worked for me to get win10 for some old machines that wouldn't update.
The pre-reqs for SP1 are : KB2454826, KB2534366, and KB2533552 and the the SP1 standalone is : windows6.1-KB976932-X64.
The pre-req for SP2(convenience rollup) is : Windows6.1-KB3020369-x64, and the the SP2 itself is : windows6.1-kb3125574-v4-x64_2dafb1d203c8964239af3048b5dd4b1264cd93b9.
I'll see if i can dig up the links they were a pain to find the first time around.
But after installing all of this, the win7 should update the rest fine.
This guide is good :
http://www.howtogeek.com/255435/how-to-update-windows-7-all-at-once-with-microsofts-convenience-rollup/
But yea replace the hdd and that will tell you if virus or software related.
With some keyboards it's possible that a virus might affect they keyboard's firmware or settings stored on keyboard's own memory, but I doubt anyone would bother writing that kind of code just to disable F2 key on some specific keyboard model(s).
CPU you should get the dreaded beeeeeeep from the MB
Pretty confident it's either the MB or PSU
I once had a similar issue around 6 or 7 years back, was worried it was my MB, ended up being my PSU.
"Be water my friend" - Bruce Lee
All viruses/ trojans /trackers are hacks and could easily cause instability. It sounds like you have a bad (as in poorly written) one, since you can't get into Windows. If your stuff is backed up, maybe consider format/reinstall. You will get a quicker system out of it no matter what the cause. Yeah, its a pain and takes a few hours to finish, but the results are worth it IMO. I wipe/ reinstall every year, and not only is your system faster and more stable, that old game or six you haven't played in 3 years is no longer taking up space.
The world is going to the dogs, which is just how I planned it!
https://blog.krissmilne.tech/windows/windows-7/windows-7-stuck-on-checking-for-updates
The basic problem is that newer updates to Windows don't always play nicely with older versions of Windows Update. With an OS that is nearly seven years old, Microsoft doesn't want to check every single possible combination of updates installed to make sure that everything works. New updates generally work with recent versions of Windows Update, but my version was about a year old, as the computer had been unplugged for nearly that long.
So I downloaded the latest version of Windows Update, killed the previous version of the process as Lugal said, and installed the latest version of Windows Update. Run that as normal and it found 71 important updates. They're installing now on my new desktop, and my laptop will be next.