This happens especially in Outlook in creating new emails, but can happen with any combination of windows, where a new window is created but comes up “in back” where we expect it in front. Steps:
ForegroundLockTimeout .
There are a number of great tools which will show you what your SVCHOST.EXE processes are really doing. Here is one of them:
http://www.howtogeek.com/80082/svchost-viewer-shows-exactly-what-each-svchost-exe-instance-is-doing/
Yet something newer than the below, the Windows Update Automated Troubleshooter:
https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/gp/windows-update-issues/en-us
Microsoft is now providing an interesting toolset for Windows Update issues on current operating systems:
http://support.microsoft.com/common/survey.aspx?scid=sw;en;3779&showpage=1
And another Fix-It:
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/968002
And something to install, the SDK, which contains Windows Installer 4.5 and possibly 5.0 too:
The below are our previous methods, from the indefatigable Mike Hunsinger. It is best to try level 1, see if that fixes, go to level 2. Both of these are done in administrative command prompts.
Level 1.
net stop bitsnet stop wuauservnet stop appidsvcnet stop cryptsvcren %systemroot%\SoftwareDistribution SoftwareDistribution.bakren %systemroot%\system32\catroot2 catroot2.baknet start bitsnet start wuauservnet start appidsvcnet start cryptsvcbitsadmin /reset /allusersLevel 2.
net stop bitsnet stop wuauservnet stop appidsvcnet stop cryptsvcDel "%ALLUSERSPROFILE%\Application Data\Microsoft\Network\Downloader\qmgr*.dat"cd /d %windir%\system32regsvr32.exe atl.dllregsvr32.exe urlmon.dllregsvr32.exe mshtml.dllregsvr32.exe shdocvw.dllregsvr32.exe browseui.dllregsvr32.exe jscript.dllregsvr32.exe vbscript.dllregsvr32.exe scrrun.dllregsvr32.exe msxml.dllregsvr32.exe msxml3.dllregsvr32.exe msxml6.dllregsvr32.exe actxprxy.dllregsvr32.exe softpub.dllregsvr32.exe wintrust.dllregsvr32.exe dssenh.dllregsvr32.exe rsaenh.dllregsvr32.exe gpkcsp.dllregsvr32.exe sccbase.dllregsvr32.exe slbcsp.dllregsvr32.exe cryptdlg.dllregsvr32.exe oleaut32.dllregsvr32.exe ole32.dllregsvr32.exe shell32.dllregsvr32.exe initpki.dllregsvr32.exe wuapi.dllregsvr32.exe wuaueng.dllregsvr32.exe wuaueng1.dllregsvr32.exe wucltui.dllregsvr32.exe wups.dllregsvr32.exe wups2.dllregsvr32.exe wuweb.dllregsvr32.exe qmgr.dllregsvr32.exe qmgrprxy.dllregsvr32.exe wucltux.dllregsvr32.exe muweb.dllregsvr32.exe wuwebv.dllnetsh winsock resetproxycfg.exe -dnetsh winhttp reset proxynet start bitsnet start wuauservnet start appidsvcnet start cryptsvcbitsadmin /reset /allusersModern Windows machines, when running for a while, often accumulate many gigabytes of log files, and they are often extremely fragmented over time. Recently I have found a log file of just ~110 megabytes with more than nine thousand (9,000!) fragments, and several multigigabyte files with four and five thousand fragments.
Below is a globular list of satisfactory purges so far found. Do be aware that you should only do this when you know that you do not need their contents!
C:\Program Files\Windows Small Business Server\Logs\MonitoringServiceLogs\*.log C:\ProgramData\Microsoft\Windows\WER\ReportQueue\AppCrash*\*.tmp.* C:\Program Files (x86)\StorageCraft\ImageManager\Logs\*.log C:\Program Files (x86)\StorageCraft\ShadowProtect\Logs\*.log C:\Program Files (x86)\StorageCraft\ShadowProtect\Logs\*.txt C:\Program Files\Update Services\LogFiles\*.old C:\Program Files\Update Services\LogFiles\*.log C:\Windows\inf\setupapi.dev.log C:\Windows\Logs\CBS\CBS.log C:\Windows\Microsoft.NET\Framework*\*\*.log C:\Windows\Microsoft.NET\Framework*\*\*.old
Apparently, corruption in Windows filesystem transaction support will cause many different kinds of errors, ranging from IIS not starting to scheduled task creation failing to Windows updates failing. To fix this, one can do the following in an administrative command prompt:
fsutil resource setautoreset true c:\
In some circumstances it is reportedly helpful to repeat the above for E:\ and any other NTFS drive in production.
If you get “permission denied” trying to delete printers, delete everything relevant in all of these places (leaving the folders of course):
HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Printers\Connections HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Devices HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\PrinterPorts HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Policies\Microsoft\Windows NT\Printers\PushedPrinterConnectionStore\* HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Print\Connections HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Print\Printers
restart the spooler, refresh the Devices and Printers window, and you may be done, the involved printers will probably vanish. If they don’t they will be deletable at this point. If there are multiple user profiles on the PC, you will have to delete them in the other profiles. On some machines, some of the folders won’t exist, and this is perfectly fine.
Currently a third-party app does it well:
https://helgeklein.com/free-tools/delprof2-user-profile-deletion-tool/
DELPROF was part of the Server 2003 Resource Kit, also here:
Something new:
There is a group policy available which can do this:
The page says disable, but an option within the GP is to simply prefer IPv4, which can solve a lot of problems straightforwardly.