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.

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.

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.

Determing Errors With the svchost.exe File

Another old problem I had noted. I cleaned a computer that was infected with two rootkits, one in the Master Boot Record (MBR) and the other that dread UAC rootkit. These rootkits were modifying files as they were executed or when the file performed some action it did not like. For example, on this person’s computer, the rootkits corrupted McAfee files and would corrupt anti-malware scanners like HijackThis when it tried to scan. The MBR rootkit was very nasty. When you have a rootkit that corrupts anti-malware files, you will need to change the file name to something random (provided your file is not corrupted) or use the Windows disc to rebuild the MBR and manually remove the files or both.

The Mystery of the STOP 0x8E Blue Screen

This is an old problem I noted a long time ago. While working on a computer, I encountered a computer that would exhibit the STOP 0x0000008E blue screen but only just after I told Windows to restart. A quick Google search revealed that STOP 0x0000008E is a very common problem. In fact, Microsoft had three articles about this very STOP code. Most blue screens of death also have some text in all capital letters which is very helpful when cross-referencing this STOP code. STOP 0x0000008E is supposed to have the text KERNEL_MODE_EXCEPTION_NOT_HANDLED.

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.

Corrupted Start Menu in Windows XP

Here is an interesting problem in Windows XP. When you click the start button, the entire start menu was corrupted. You click on the All Programs link and nothing happens. You click on the My Computer link and nothing happens. In fact, the icons on the control panel were corrupted. When you go to the Control Panel and attempt to edit user accounts, you get a message “The specified module could not be found”. You couldn’t modify the services. And a whole lot of other weirdness was going on.

Do yourself a favor. If a lot of weird things are going on, go ahead and do an in-place upgrade, aka a repair installation. I spent several hours trying to fix these problems one at a time and could not. The only thing that worked was an in-place upgrade.

So what did I did. Well naturally I wanted to start with the System File Checker. That did not fix anything. I tried using Dial-a-Fix to repair Windows. Even the advanced options it had did not fix the problem. I didn’t want to do an in-place upgrade because of the slight risk of failure. Although to be fair, I’ve only seen a failed in-place upgrade on Windows Vista, which it recovered from. The way the Windows XP in-place upgrade works sometimes it will not let you. After much frustration, I finally went ahead with the in-place upgrade. Which worked, although it had its share of problems.

After the installation process prompts the user for the last time, it copies several more files. The problem was it kept prompting me to find a file that it could not find, except that it did find it but never copied the file. I tried a different CD drive, same thing. I tried a different disc, same thing. After a while I began to examine the files the program would not copy and the files it was attempting to replace where the same size but a date a few days in the future. I decided to manually attempt to expand these files from the CD to Windows. But after about 20 with no end in sight, I stopped. I was using the Dell XP Home SP2 CD anyway (it was a Dell laptop) so I figured between installing SP3 and all the Windows updates I would be okay. And I was. Windows installed properly, the updates and service pack installed properly. All the problems were fixed.

So, as another note, if Windows is not expanding a file from the CD or DVD and if the file exists, ignore the problem. Chances are good a security update will overwrite the file anyway.

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.