Task Host Is Stopping Background Tasks

There is a message you may get when you are restarting or shutting down Windows that is preventing the computer from automatically restarting. It might also prevent the computer from booting too. It will say:

Task Host Window
Task Host is stopping background tasks. (\Microsoft\Windows\Plug and Play\Device Install Reboot Required )

This is the result of some hardware that is either defective or not fully compatible with Windows. You need to isolate which one is the problem. Try the USB devices one at a time first. And if that doesn’t work, try the internal hardware. Once you find isolate the defective or incompatible device, leave it disconnected. If it is a USB device, you may still be able to use it, but you can only connect it when you need too and disconnect when you are done. If you are using Windows 10, the device may be compatible with an earlier version of it.

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Windows Recovery Drive Does Not Work With NVMe drives

This is a bug that is affecting the most recent versions of Windows 10. I don’t know which versions, except that I can confirm it affects 2004 and 20H2 versions. If you create a recovery drive within Windows, you cannot use it to recover to M.2 NVMe drive. When you boot to the USB recovery drive, the option “Recover from a drive” is missing. This is a bug Microsoft is aware of.

If you buy a computer with a traditional hard drive (for a discount) and want to re-install Windows on a 5-year warranty NVMe drive, your only option right now is a fresh install. That actually might be a good thing so that you can avoid all the bloat pre-installed on a computer.

When I get a chance, I will try to downgrade the Windows 10 version to see if this will fix the problem.

Windows Freezes For Half-Second

Here is a problem that happened to a customer. Windows would freeze for a half-second then unfreeze for a few seconds, and repeat forever. It would not freeze in safe mode. Disabling or uninstalling the video card driver fixed the problem, but that caused other problems. This was a HP all-in-one. The fix was to update the BIOS (actually the UEFI). After a BIOS update, the problem was fixed. I would also disconnect the internet and do a clean install of the video card driver. You have to disconnect the internet because Microsoft thinks they know better than you and will try to reinstall the video card driver.

Some other websites mentioned that you need to update the video card driver to fix this problem. I actually did that first. But it didn’t fix the problem. On a hunch, I tried updating the BIOS. Since this computer came with Windows 8.1, on HP’s website I had to select Windows 8.1 as the OS before the BIOS updates appeared. (P.S. I do realize it really is an UEFI, but the HP website still calls it the BIOS.)

0xc0000001 Blue Screen in Windows

The 0xc0000001 blue screen in Windows is related to the hard drive controller. If you ever get this blue screen, the first thing to check is if the drive standard was changed in the BIOS or UEFI. If it was AHCI but you changed it to ATA (or IDE), change it back and see if the blue screen goes away. This blue screen can also appear after you clone a hard drive. Some computers do not support SSD’s even if it using the SATA cable. And if you clone a hard drive to one using the M.2 interface, this problem can appear.

By the way, if you accidentally bricked your CD/DVD/Blu-Ray drive with a firmware upgrade, you will need to use ATA/IDE mode to unbrick it.

Fortunately, in Windows 10 there is an easy way to change your hard drive controller type. There isn’t much to like about Windows 10, but this is one thing it does make easier. Before you make the change in your BIOS, use the MSCONFIG program to boot into safe mode the next time. Change the setting in the BIOS, boot once in safe mode and use MSCONFIG to undo the safe mode setting, and then you should be able to boot as normal. However, if you cannot get into Windows or the BIOS, hopefully you can get into the Windows recovery environment. (I still say that the absolute dumbest thing Microsoft ever did was disable the pre-boot F8 button.) In the recovery environment, look for the startup settings in the menu options. When the computer boots, choose safe mode in the blue screen of menu options.

If 0xc0000001 persists, then you will have to try the SFC command, system restore, registry backups, and the other usual generic repairs.

100% Disk Usage In Windows 10

Here is a problem that still affects every version of Windows 10, including the most recent March 2019 (1903) update. It only affects Windows 10 and solid state drives. And I think it only affects Intel computers, although it is not an Intel flaw. I am not convinced it is a Microsoft flaw either. Microsoft has an advisory this flaw about dated July 29, 2015. So the flaw is now over 4 years old. The flaw is in the storahci.sys file. Here is the fix.

Windows Resolution Resets to 1024×768 After Reboot

Here is a problem that has plagued some copies of Windows 10 after the problematic 1809 (Fall 2018) update. After every reboot, your display resets to 1024×768. This problem may affect other versions of Windows too, but this happened to multiple customers after the 1809 update. All were using Intel CPU’s and HP laptops, but it is not a HP or Intel issue. Here are steps you should take to fix it.

1. Try the obvious first. Make sure the video card itself is not bad or someone accidentally lowered the resolution or the monitor is not bad. Increase the resolution to the maximum and reboot to test. If you have trouble with the monitor’s known resolution, try another monitor if possible.
2. Run msconfig command. Under the Boot tab you will a section that says Boot Options. You want to make sure Base video is not checked. If it is, uncheck it. Click OK and test by rebooting.
3. Update the video card driver. If there is no update, roll back your driver. Very very important: When you are asked for the reason you are rolling back, check the box “For another reason” and put “NONE OF YOUR BUSINESS!” in the text box. I am not joking when I say this is very important. Test by rebooting.
4. Open regedit and navigate to the registry key HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\GraphicsDrivers\Configuration. There will be several subkeys that may begin with GSM, NOEDID, or SIMULATED. These will be followed by a long hexadecimal number. Each one of these will contain one of more subkeys; always a 00 and sometimes a 01, 02, or higher. For every possible subkey, look for PrimSurfSize.cx, PrimSurfSize.cy, ActiveSize.cx, and ActiveSize.cy. All the .cx entries are for horizontal resolution and all the .cy entries are for vertical. You want to modify every single one of these to your monitor’s maximum resolution. The entries are in hexadecimal, not decimal, so you have to convert. Once you modify every one, test by rebooting. Below are common hexadecimal resolutions:
   • f00 (3840) by 870 (2160) – standard 4K HDTV
   • 780 (1920) by 438 (1080) – standard HDTV
   • 780 (1920) by 4b0 (1200) – high quality HD computer monitors
   • 556 (1366) by 300 (768) – standard laptop

STOP 0xc0000225 After Cloned Drive

Here are the symptoms: You clone a hard drive in any number of ways, but the cloned drive will not boot. This problem may manifest itself if you are cloning a larger drive to a smaller one. This, of course, requires you to shrink the partition with your files from the original boot drive. If the original boot drive is connected to the computer with a USB adapter, it will boot just fine. Otherwise you will get a blue screen with the stop error code 0xc0000225. If this is Windows 10, you will get the message “Your PC/Device needs to be repaired”.

Webcam and Microphone Does Not Work in Windows 10

Here is a simple problem that confused me for a little bit. I had a customer with a webcam who could not get it to work. I reinstalled the drivers several times without success. Eventually I narrowed it down to a Windows 10 setting. If you using O&O ShutUp 10 (and you very much should!) then you will have to change two settings. Under the Privacy settings page, go the Camera and Microphone settings and turn them both on. Be sure to turn off app access to the camera and microphone except for any one specifically need. This will allow programs to access the camera just fine. (And remember: the purpose of Windows 10 is to make money off you after the first day; making your life easier is not part of that purpose.)

New Hard Drive With KERNEL_DATA_INPAGE_ERROR Blue Screen

I had an older but still good computer with two internal hard drives: an old Western Digital Green hard drive and a newer WD Black hard drive. The Green drive had the page file and important backup files. This being Windows 7, it had a full system backup on the WD Green and a Quickbooks backup. The computer kept giving the blue screen error 0x0000007a KERNEL_DATA_INPAGE_ERROR, which according to Microsoft is caused by bad hardware or bad RAM. So my first thought was the WD Green drive was bad because, again from Microsoft, the blue screen “indicates that the requested page of kernel data from the paging file could not be read into memory.” Since the page file was on the old WD Green drive and since Windows had trouble reading the page file, it must be that drive or bad RAM.

Turns out, there were 3 causes of this blue screen. The WD Green drive was, in fact, bad. I put it in my computer and tested it to be sure, and it was bad. So I bought a SSD, shrank and cloned the WD Black drive to it, and repurposed the WD Black drive into what the WD Green drive was being used for. Except I put the page file on the SSD. After doing this, the same blue screen still appeared. So the second guess was bad memory. Which also, in fact, was defective as a memory test discovered. So I fixed that problem as well.

But the same blue screen kept appearing. I finally figured out the hard drive cable was bad. I replaced that cable and the machine hasn’t had a blue screen since. At the end of the day I concluded that while all the bad memory and bad hard drive did not help, it was not the root cause of the blue screen.

Cannot Install a Windows 10 Feature Update

I had a customer who had trouble installing Windows 10 Fall Creator’s Update (Feature Update 1709) and who had Trend Micro antivirus. For some reason, Windows said it wouldn’t install because Trend Micro 2009 was installed. Some people have noted that Windows balks about other older versions. This link was a good start. But the problem remained.

What fixed it for me was to go to the registry key HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\AppCompatFlags\UpgradeMigration, delete the file or folder listed, and then delete the registry key data. Most likely the update still won’t install normally. So I took a chance and choose the option to restart and update. That worked. So if you have an old program possibly causing issues, go to that registry key and then reboot and update instead of using the normal update way.