Ask MetaFilter questions tagged with hangs

Windows Update borked my Vista laptop

AstroGuy — Thu, 06 Mar 2008 12:05:41 -0800

Vista hangs while switching to/from Secure Desktop after Windows Update installed a new sound driver. Please help me fix it. HP Pavillion dv6449 laptop with pre-installed Vista Home Premium.

Recent Windows Update attempted to update Conexant sound driver. Install failed. Upon reboot, no sound. Went into device manager, removed driver, Window reloaded it, sound fixed.

Ever since then, the PC hangs 5-20 seconds coming back from secure desktop. I've disabled UAC eliminate some of the lags. I have the system configured to require a password on wake-up from standby. Laptop wakes up instantly, login screen appears instantly. Type in password, screen goes blank, hear the "da-dink" sound effect, then screen stays blank for 20 seconds or more before desktop appears.

Actions that would invoke the secure desktop (UAC, ctrl-alt-del) act the same way, but delay is only 5 to 10 seconds of blank screen.

This definitely did not do this before the borked driver update. Secure Desktop activations/UAC prompts flickered and appeared instantly. Now these delays are driving my nuts. I hope the pending release of SP1 on Windows Update might fix this, but if there's anything I can do in the meantime to troubleshoot and fix this please let me know.

I'm quite technically experienced on older versions of Windows, but my technical knowledge and troubleshooting skills are limited on Vista.

iPod and iTunes are no longer on speaking terms.

grabbingsand — Wed, 17 Oct 2007 17:20:01 -0800

My iPod and iTunes are no longer cooperating. Every attempt to sync maxes out my memory use and hangs the iTunes app. I seem to have offended iTunes.

I have a 30GB iPod Video. At the moment, it has about 27GB of content, all music. Until the other day, I had my iTunes library (PC) sync'd with my iPod via iTunes. Just seemed simpler that way. Well, retail interest got the better of me and I made a music purchase through Lala.com's new direct-to-iPod venture. How that works is you download a piece of Lala branded software, a plug-in basically, that not only allows their website to see the contents of your iPod, but allows the customer to "sync" songs purchased from Lala directly onto the iPod, circumventing iTunes.

This did not work initially, because (as stated) iTunes would start when the iPod was connected and would immediately sync. The Lala track would be copied over, but the disconnect clean-up part of the iTunes sync would spot the interloping files and nix them. Annoying. Lala's support page says that one should switch from sync to manually manage in iTunes. So I did so. As advised, a second attempt to "sync" with Lala was a success. My purchased Lala music was on my iPod.

This morning, I plugged in my iPod to add another set of ripped mp3s from a new CD. Though I had set iPod to manual, it gave the standard "Syncing iPod, do not disconnect" message atop iTunes. iTunes then commenced to hanging, but not before my LastFM scrobbler told me that it had found over 2,000 songs dating back to 2005. Something was wrong. I killed iTunes through Task Manager (it was "Not Responding" and memory use was at 100%). My iPod was still giving the "Do Not Disconnect" screen, so I rebooted it to disconnect.

I'd no time to mess with it further this morning. I backed up my iTunes library folder to an external drive and went to work.

This evening, I uninstalled iTunes according to Apple's instructions, then re-installed with the latest download. iTunes found my existing music library. Connecting the iPod gave the same results as before. Sync commenced immediately, then hung.

Additionally, I uninstalled all of the little iTunes monitoring apps like LastFM, MOG and Audioscrobbler. As well as the Lala plug-in.

I reopened iTunes (after killing the process, rebooting the iPod, etc) and deleted all of the media in the library. It is backed up, after all. Connecting the iPod gave the same results as before. Sync commenced immediately, then hung.

So I went into my Application Data and deleted the preference files for iTunes. This time, when I started iTunes, I was prompted with the EULA, then the find my music dialogue. I told iTunes not to search, so now my library was truly empty and fresh. But yet ... Connecting the iPod gave the same results as before. Sync commenced immediately, then hung. (Why yes, I am copying/pasting this last bit.)

Next, I tried a new trick. If you hold down Shift-Ctrl while plugging in the iPod, sync will not commence immediately. This looked like a win, as I thought I'd be able to change my settings back to auto-sync, select Apply and go. But one more time ... hitting Apply gave the "Syncing iPod, do not disconnect" message, but it wasn't syncing. It was hung.

I tried the Shift-Click again. This time, I hit Restore. And .... iTunes hung.

So ... I have an empty iTunes. I have an almost full iPod. But I'm unable to put new songs on the iPod or take existing songs off. What to do now? Re-install again? Is there a way to Restore without iTunes? Might this be an effect of the most recent iTunes software update? If so, can I roll it back? Or wait out the next update?

Windows XP Home: Turn Off hangs.

prodevel — Thu, 12 Oct 2006 02:24:15 -0800

How do I get Windows XP Home to shut down properly? I'ts hanging and I have to power cycle. I'm a fairly computer literate person (Unix admin/proggie.) I hate windows of course. I'm not sure of where to find what's hanging my system during shutdown/"turn off" (XP Home.) I have to push the power button to kill it.

Nothing stands out in eventvwr; I power it off manually so it doesn't have a chance to report problems w/apps hanging I guess... Somehow I suspect MS's recent IE 'fix' is farking it up although I've been using FireFox for a while now.

Please let me know steps you'd take to try to discern what could hang shut down and how to fix it, please.

Thanks muchly :)

Outlook 2003 hangs when saving

keep it tight — Mon, 17 Apr 2006 04:31:45 -0800

I have a user in my org that is having trouble saving off her emails as html items. She routienly saves project related emails as html items in her project folder, however, last week she began having issues. When she attemts to save the mail, the app hangs. The processor isn't being taxed and there is no major spike in memory. She just gets an annoying MS hourglass. She is using Outlook 2003 BTW....

Any ideas?