0

The stalling phase can go on for almost one hour until Task Manager finally opens (after having issued Ctrl Shift Esc while it was stalling).

After the stalling phase all looks fine in Task Manager and the logs show nothing special.

How can I determine what's going on during the stalling phase? I would like to know if it is a specific process eating up all resources or similar.

BTW: Disks are not spinning (more than normal) during the stalling phase.

Edits:

  • I managed to open Resource Monitor before the next stalling phase, but Resource Monitor doesn't refresh while the machine is stalling.
  • HW is physical (not virtualized) with 16GB RAM
  • During regular phases there's plenty of RAM available, when stalling I can't tell (yet)
Mutual Exception
  • 101
  • 1
  • Do you have access to a second monitor (a tv would do too)? I usually open up [Process Explorer](https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/processexplorer.aspx) on another monitor so that when the stall occurs I can see data on the running processes. I've had this problem before myself, I ended up doing a system refresh which did solve the issue, but I didn't put much time into tracking down the issue in that instance unfortunately. – Unencoded Mar 18 '17 at 15:35
  • Thanks, see my edit above: Running apps don't refresh during stalling phase. That goes for Task Manager & Resource Monitor too. – Mutual Exception Mar 18 '17 at 15:41
  • This happened to me once. Turned out I had left a damaged disc into DVD drive. Since it was a single-core machine, the disc completely stalled the system. –  Mar 18 '17 at 15:44
  • Ah that does throw a spanner in the works, and I think Fleet Command exemplified how difficult this can be to troubleshoot - depending on your situation a system refresh might actually be your fastest way forward. If you still want to go down the troubleshooting route I think seeing if the problem still occurs in Safe Mode would be the next logical step. – Unencoded Mar 18 '17 at 15:47
  • DON'T run Process MONITOR while diagnosing. You are trying to figure out was IS happening, not what WAS happening--at least right now. Proc Explorer -- Look at INTERRUPTS -- which is not a process per se, but will show hardware faults. ADD another column to ProcExp by RT-Click on any column heading, then "Select Column". Tab to "Process Performance" and Add "CPU Time". Now click and sort by that, and you can see not only interrupts, but all other processes that add up to 100% of the time since you started the PC. – DaaBoss Mar 18 '17 at 16:06
  • It sounds like you have a hung services. I would do two things. First, as suggested above, see if the problems happens in Safe Mode. If it doesn't then you could work your way backwards with msconfig and re-enable services one at a time until the problems starts again. I would also try opening Task Manager and sorting by CPU Usage high to low. Then wait for it to happen. It might not refresh but it might catch it the first time and throw it to the top. – ZiggyStardust Mar 18 '17 at 16:18
  • May seem trivial but no one has mentioned it yet. It could be a OOM Memkill situation. @OP how much ram is this instance using and is it real hardware or virtualized? – linuxdev2013 Mar 18 '17 at 16:25
  • Thank you all! Going to try @DaaBoss 's suggestion first, before moving on to the more time consuming ones. Also added some HW info in an edit. – Mutual Exception Mar 19 '17 at 07:33
  • OK @linuxdev2013 what's an "OMM Memkill" situation?? I did a search and came up with nothing. – DaaBoss Mar 20 '17 at 14:11
  • Out Of Memory memory kill – linuxdev2013 Mar 20 '17 at 17:30

0 Answers0