Windows 10: File Explorer slow and Start menu icons not highlighting after update

Thanks to both of you. I've run the tool, but won't be restarting until I knock off work later. Not worth doing it now, as it usually behaves for a while after a restart anyway.

As for the event log, there are a few VSS errors in the Application log, but not many. They all seem to be of the form...

Volume Shadow Copy Service error: Error calling a routine on the Shadow Copy Provider {b5946137-7b9f-4925-af80-51abd60b20d5}. Routine returned E_INVALIDARG. Routine details GetSnapshot({00000000-0000-0000-0000-000000000000},00000240983EB260). Operation: Get Shadow Copy PropertiesContext: Execution Context: Coordinator

There are generally two or three such errors together, but only once or twice a day, whereas the problem seems to be pretty much all the time.

On Monday there were 26 such events within about 20 minutes, but that seems to be a one-off.

The only other VSS-related events are ones that say "The VSS service is shutting down due to idle timeout" which come around once per hour.

Are we still sure that VSS is the problem? Does that last log I posted show the same thing? Don't want to waste your time barking up the wrong tree!

Thanks again for all the help. I'll see what happens after a restart.

 

To be sure that the problem comes from VSS, disable it for a day and see how your system behave.

I think the problem is not VSS in it self but another process or application using VSS. this why I asked you to disable all non MS services and application from auto-starting.

You can also filter on all VSS events in the event log, save the filtered log and share it with us, maybe we can identify the process trggering VSS !

 

I'm going to wait and see what happens when I restart after running the VSS fix program that Ed linked. I have disabled most[*] non-MS services, but didn't realise that I needed to restart the machine for it to have an effect.

I'll see how it behaves after all that, and try disabling VSS for a day afterwards. Don't want to try too much in one go, as I'd like to know what's causing it.

As I mentioned before, the only VSS events I could see were the two I mentioned, however, I have exported the filtered Application log, which you can see here. Be interested to know if you see anything in there.

Thanks again
[*] I didn't disable all non-MS services, as some are needed the whole time. I'm a software developer, and can't work without SQL Server for example. I disabled all the ones that aren't really essential, and I'll see if that helps. If I disable the essential ones, I won't be able to do enough with the machine to see if there is a problem.

 

Was just wondering whether it was worth posting or not yet. I switched on the machine earlier today for the first time since disabling those services, and it's not doing badly. It's had moments of grinding along, but is generally behaving itself.

However, as I said before, it often doesn't start misbehaving straight away, so I won't necessarily know for a day or two.

The only services I have left ticked in the msconfig box are K9 (an Internet filter, which shouldn't use VSS as far as I can see), ESET (anti-virus, ditto previous comment), JetBrains ETW Collector (which I'm sure I disabled), Macrium service (not sure why there is a service running for this, but it wouldn't surprise me if this used VSS), RealTek Audio service and Cicsco AnyConnect VPN service (neither of which are likely to use VSS).

I will probably disable Macrium and see if that helps. I use it for taking nightly disk images, but can survive for a day without it.

I'll keep you posted.

 

OK, I disabled Macrium and restarted, and it's still doing it. The only non-MS services left in msconfig are K9, ESET and VisualSVN which I forgot to disable, but seems very unlikely to be the cause. Can't see how any of these three would use VSS, but I could well be wrong.

Any ideas? What do I do now?

Thanks again

 

Disable one by one and see which is causing the issue...

 

Culprit found or not yet ?

 

Nope, depressing lack of anything concrete. I have tried disabling all services except for ESET (anti-virus), which I don't dare being without for long enough to find out if that's the problem.

Don't really know what to do from here.

To make things worse, the secondary problem I reported in my first thread seems to have come back, in that when I open the Start menu, and hover my mouse over an icon, it doesn't get highlighted. It seems like Windows is picking up the wrong mouse location, as sometimes it will highlight the icon below where my mouse is, sometimes not.

All is temporarily cured by rebooting, but this is really inconvenient.

Any more suggestions? Thanks again.

 

Any ideas? Thanks again.

 

I realise that this is not the best time of year to be asking for help, but my machine is really suffering. I just had it freeze on me, and the culprit this time was File Explorer, not NT Kernel as before. Interaction with File Explorer was pretty impossible, as it kept stopping responding.

I did another recording, which can be downloaded here. Anyone able to take a look and see if there's anything obvious? As I said before, I'm down to the very basic services, none of which seem to be the problem, and today's issue was related to File Explorer, not VSS.

Thanks for any help you can have.

 

Hi,
Explorer is not the culprit, it suffer the effects of high disk I/O caused by VSS service. And VSS it triggered by another process.

I've adopted another approach to find out the culprit. I've used the CPU Precise graph to see which process readyed the most VSS (big chances are that this process is calling VSS to do job on behalf it).

The result is: Crashplanservice.exe > lsass > VSSVC.exe. Stop running the crash service plan backup software and see if there is any improvement.

There is a newer version of this software on the code42.com website.

 

Hmm, that's interesting. I disabled CrashPlan, and still had the problem. You said that there is a newer version, but I just went to their web site, and was offered version 4.8.3.15, which is what I'm running. Where did you see a newer version? Just to be sure, I downloaded the installer again and ran it, and it still shows I have version 4.8.3.15.

I went to code42.com, and clicked the link right at the top for Crashplan for small businesses (which is what I'm using), and it took me to CrashPlan | Business Data Backup Secure Storage. The download link there was the one I took.

Anyway, as I've only just rebooted my machine, it will probably behave for a few hours. If/when it starts again, I'll disable the crashplan service and see if it helps.

Thanks again.

 

you should disable crashplan service and restart the computer. Then see if it still behave the same ...

 

You did have Macrium backup software installed. I don't see it in the recent trace file, I guess you unstalled it !I'd suggest you uninstall temporarly any third party backup software.

I'm prety sure one of them is causing your issue. Backup software uses shadow copy to make backups.You can use Windows file history to backup your file, while we investigate this issue.

 

I didn't uninstall it, I just disabled the scheduled backup. However, I must have re-enabled it, as I can see in the log that it tried to run and failed. Macrium gives an option to show VSS errors, of which there are many. The latest is...

Date 24/12/2017 20:03:23

Type Error

Event 12294

Source VSS

Volume Shadow Copy Service error: Error calling a routine on the Shadow Copy Provider {b5946137-7b9f-4925-af80-51abd60b20d5}. Routine returned E_INVALIDARG. Routine details GetSnapshot({00000000-0000-0000-0000-000000000000},0000025C9B6C9E90).

Operation: Get Shadow Copy Properties

Context: Execution Context: Coordinator

Does that mean anything to you?

I use file history as well, but have just noticed that it hasn't run for about a month. The event log for file history contains loads of entries like this...

Unable to scan user libraries for changes and perform backup of modified files for configuration C:\Users\MYUSER\AppData\Local\Microsoft\Windows\FileHistory\Configuration\Config

Looking in the folder, there isn't a file called Config. I have the following though...





So, right now I'm in trouble. Macrium isn't running, File History isn't running, and I'm having to disable CrashPlan because of the issues its causing. Not really a very stable position.

Any thoughts?

Thanks again