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 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.

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”.

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.

How to Make a Cloned Drive Bootable if the Original Was Bad

These are the instructions to make a cloned drive bootable again if the original had bad sectors. These instructions are only applicable for any Windows that uses the BCD, which is Vista and beyond, and has a MBR. You will need a Windows 7 or later DVD or equivalent USB stick; a Windows Vista disc will be harder. This assumes that the OS files were cloned successfully.

• Run chkdsk on all the partitions.
• Identify which partition has the BCD files. If there is a recovery partition, chances are good the BCD is stored on that drive.
• Use the following commands in the diskpart program:
  • LIST DISK (use this command to identify the cloned hard drive number)
  • SELECT DISK # (where # is the cloned hard drive number)
  • LIST PARTITION (use this command to identify the partition with the BCD files)
  • SELECT PARTITION # (where # is the partition with the BCD files)
  • ACTIVE
  • EXIT
• Now run the following commands: (Of course, some are redundant!)
  • bootsect /nt60 sys /force
  • bootrec /fixboot
  • bootrec /fixmbr
  • bcdboot d:\windows /s c: (where d:\ is the drive letter with all your Windows files and c: is the system partition from above)
    • NOTE: Usually but not always the system partition is given the driver letter c:. If it was not given any drive letter, you will have to use the diskpart commands to assign it a drive letter. But it some cases it may not be c:, in some cases it may be on the same drive as your Windows files.
• Reboot.
• If problems still persist, run startup repair.

Windows Boots to Black Screen With Mouse Cursor Only

I encountered a Windows 7 computer that would only boot to a black screen. The only thing I saw was a mouse arrow. At first I suspected the hard drive was corrupt, so I cloned the hard drive. But the problem still existed. With this computer I still had reason to believe the hard drive was bad. Next I scanned for a virus in Windows directory and the only that was discovered was one of those junk free programs that deliver pop-up ads.

It was at this point that I decided to try an easy solution. Since this was Windows 7 there would a good copy of the registry files at %windir%\system32\config\RegBack\. So after making a backup of the current registry files, I copied the good registry over the current ones. With this computer, some of the current registry files were twice as big as the good copies, which is why I think something was wrong with the old hard drive. After I did this, the computer booted fine.

Some other suggestions included running System Restore. I was lazy in this instance and didn’t try that. But I did increase the System Restore capacity once I got back into Windows. If you are still using Windows XP, you can always find the registry files under the \System Volume Information\ folder. Some other suggestions are that certain key folders have been corrupted or have corrupt permissions. Check the Windows folder, the Program Files folders, and the Recycle Bin folder.

Steps to Fix Windows Update

This is a guide to fix Windows Update for Windows Vista and later. It is a guide for when Windows Update just does not work. The steps below assume there are no malware, viruses, or rootkits on the computer.

1. If using an Intel processor, update the Rapid Storage Technology (RST) driver. Try downloading it from Intel’s website first, but if a compatible one is not found, you can download a know good copy here. Try Windows Update after restarting.
2. If Windows Update still does not work, download the Tweaking.com Windows All In One repair. Make all the necessary backups. The repairs you want to make sure are done are to (1) Reset Registry Permissions; (2) Reset File Permissions on the Windows drive, usually c:; (3) Repair WMI; (4) Repair Windows Firewall; (5) Repair Internet Explorer; (6) Repair HOSTS File; (7) Remove Policies Set by  Infections; (8) Repair Winsock & DNS Cach; (9) Repair Proxy Settings; (10) Repair Windows Update; (11) Repair MSI; (12) Restore Important Services; and (13) Set Windows Services to Default Settings. Reboot after complete and try Windows Update again.
3. If Windows Update still does not work, try an in-place upgrade.
4. If the in-place upgrade fails, then start using Google to search for the error code given by Windows Update. If no code is given, then search for Windows Update problems without an error code.

Windows Cannot Load the User’s Profile

Sometimes in Windows when you log in, you will get this message: “Windows cannot load the user’s profile but has logged you on with the default profile for the system”. The cause of this message is one of the user specific files has become corrupted. Chances are good that user’s registry hive is corrupted. There are several hidden files in the folder c:\users\[username]\ folder (Windows Vista and later) or c:\documents and settings\[username]\ folder (Windows XP and earlier). Hereafter in this blog post we will call these directories [old user].

Chances are good you won’t be able to fix this problem.

• Try System Restore first, but be sure to choose a restore point several days before the problem occurred.
• If that does not work, try your backup next, if you have one.
• If that does not work, then you will need to create a new user. Below are the steps you need to take to migrate to a new user.

1. Create a new user and log in to that new user. Do not open any programs just yet. And do not delete your old profile until you are absolutely sure everything has been copied.
2. Browse to the new user’s folders, c:\users\[new user]\ or c:\documents and settings\[new user]\, hereafter called just [new user].
3. Copy all the non-hidden files and folders from [old user] to [new user].
4. After that finishes, browse to [old user]\appdata\local\ (Windows Vista or later) or [old user]\local settings (Windows XP or earlier). If you want, you can copy everything from this folder to the corresponding folder in your new user profile. It probably is a good idea only to copy folders from Microsoft or programs you currently have installed.
5. Next browse to [old user]\appdata\roaming\ or [old user]\local settings\application data\ and copy those folders to the corresponding folder in your new profile.
6. Log off and then log back in.
7. See if your settings transferred. You might have to set up your email again. And that means you will might need to Google the location of the old email files and how to import them.

Steps to Fix an Unbootable Windows

If the Master Boot Record (MBR) or partition information has been damaged by a virus, Windows will not boot. Variants of the TDSS rootkit, for instance, will infect the MBR and remove the system and active flags on all partitions. The purpose of that is to make sure the boot process must active the TDSS rootkit. You’ll know this has happened when all you get is a flashing cursor when attempting to boot from the primary hard drive. It can be easily fixed with the Windows 7 DVD. This process is easier with the Windows 7 DVD than with the Windows 8 or Windows Vista DVD. This solution only works if the hard drive has a MBR. The MBR replacement, GUID Partition Table (GPT), requires a computer with the UEFI instead of the BIOS. GPT is more secure than the MBR.

UPDATE: Please note that newer CPU’s are incompatible with Windows 7, and thus incompatible with the Windows 7 disc. So you may have to use the Windows 10 disc instead. The process is still the same, just not as easy.

1. Boot into the Windows 7 DVD and choose Repair Your Computer.
2. Startup Repair may run, if it does, let it fix the problem. If it doesn’t, then run startup repair immediately. Then immediately reboot back into the Windows 7 DVD.
3. Open a command prompt.
4. If using Windows Vista or later, run the following commands:
   chkdsk c: /f /x (NOTE: The Windows DVD may have the Windows partition another drive letter. Make sure you use that drive letter.)
   bootsect /nt60 sys /force /mbr
   bcdboot c:\windows /s c: (NOTE: The Windows DVD may have assigned the Windows partition another letter. Use the drive letter Windows assigned for c:\windows.)
   diskpart
   select disk # (use the list disk command to get a list of drives and use the # of the boot drive.)
   select partition # (use the list partition command to get a list of partitions on this drive and choose the partition with Windows on it, likely the largest.)
   active
   exit
5. If using Windows XP or earlier, use the same commands except replace /nt60 with /nt52 in the bootsect command and do not use bcdboot.
6. Reboot and run TDSSKiller.