I have been going through hell and back with my everyday laptop in the last few weeks.
First, it started to cook all the time with CPU maxed out. I would bring out task manager and the process going crazy was "Microsoft Content." If you google everyone says it is related to Microsoft downloading an update or something. Yet checking Windows update showed nothing.
Then the search indexer started to go at it at the same time. Now I had two cores running like mad, laptop heating up, and so slow it was hard to get anything done.
Tried everything under the sun. Nothing would fix it. Temporarily halted search indexer but then could not search folders. Worse yet, could not search for anything in my Outlook inbox. Are you kidding me? Of course it would not say so in Outlook. At least I had control of the machine back and it wasn't burning a hole on my legs due to running so hot.
Analyzing background processes I noticed adobe tasks running a bit here and there. Tried to stopping them but they would start right back up. I swear there were at least a dozen apps between my Creative Suite and Adobe Reader constantly attacking this poor PC trying to light themselves back up. I finally put the hammer down and stopped all the services and killed every setting I could find related to Adobe software. Bam! The problem with "Microsoft Content" got solved! This must have been a surrogate service that Adobe was using to download its crap. And crap it is with tons of stupid services trying to sync content I don't have. Syncing with who knows what cloud services.
Why or why the background process list doesn't have a sane description of what it is? Google for them and you just land on a top of clickbait pages trying to scam you with some random program download and whatnot. Why hasn't Microsoft documented its own bloody background apps? Why can't I click in process manager on any app and get a decent description of what the process is for, and what it is currently doing?
Back to Adobe, why not ask me if I want all these stupid services?
I am thinking all is well but then realize almost all the time when I wake up my laptop, it performs a cold boot. At first I thought it was Windows update installing things requiring a fresh reboot. But then this thing became a daily occurrence. I go in event manager and what do you know? Stupid machine has been crashing every day but with no notifications whatsoever! Are you kidding me? Of course there is no indication as to why.
I go in the dump directory and I see a crash dump for every day of the month (I close the lid at night forcing it to sleep causing it to crash). I run the Windows kernel debugger. It tells me that some device driver is not going into lower power state in the allotted time. What device driver? It won't tell me. Are you serious? Stupid OS knows which device it is but won't leave any breadcrumbs in the crash to find this?
And why on earth would you cause a system crash because a device won't go to sleep? And if you did crash, why not tell me so I know what is going on.
So how do I find the darn device. I uninstall every driver that I am not using. Nothing makes it work.
Finally, I go to the device driver and look at the network interfaces. Notice that the wireless driver from Intel does not have the check that says the system can put it to sleep. Check that box and it fixes the problem. Incredible! They give you a simple check box that causes a direct crash like this?
What an intertwined pile of junk Windows has become. I mean really. Who would have known all the things I went through to fix these obscure problems? I suspect 99% of the people would have to reinstall windows and go through the hell that is to get all your apps and settings back to where they were.
The "good news" is that after stopping and deleting everything I possibly could, this machine is now running so cool and fast!
Thought to vent a bit here and dispel any notion that I have any love for much of the software from my ex employer.
First, it started to cook all the time with CPU maxed out. I would bring out task manager and the process going crazy was "Microsoft Content." If you google everyone says it is related to Microsoft downloading an update or something. Yet checking Windows update showed nothing.
Then the search indexer started to go at it at the same time. Now I had two cores running like mad, laptop heating up, and so slow it was hard to get anything done.
Tried everything under the sun. Nothing would fix it. Temporarily halted search indexer but then could not search folders. Worse yet, could not search for anything in my Outlook inbox. Are you kidding me? Of course it would not say so in Outlook. At least I had control of the machine back and it wasn't burning a hole on my legs due to running so hot.
Analyzing background processes I noticed adobe tasks running a bit here and there. Tried to stopping them but they would start right back up. I swear there were at least a dozen apps between my Creative Suite and Adobe Reader constantly attacking this poor PC trying to light themselves back up. I finally put the hammer down and stopped all the services and killed every setting I could find related to Adobe software. Bam! The problem with "Microsoft Content" got solved! This must have been a surrogate service that Adobe was using to download its crap. And crap it is with tons of stupid services trying to sync content I don't have. Syncing with who knows what cloud services.
Why or why the background process list doesn't have a sane description of what it is? Google for them and you just land on a top of clickbait pages trying to scam you with some random program download and whatnot. Why hasn't Microsoft documented its own bloody background apps? Why can't I click in process manager on any app and get a decent description of what the process is for, and what it is currently doing?
Back to Adobe, why not ask me if I want all these stupid services?
I am thinking all is well but then realize almost all the time when I wake up my laptop, it performs a cold boot. At first I thought it was Windows update installing things requiring a fresh reboot. But then this thing became a daily occurrence. I go in event manager and what do you know? Stupid machine has been crashing every day but with no notifications whatsoever! Are you kidding me? Of course there is no indication as to why.
I go in the dump directory and I see a crash dump for every day of the month (I close the lid at night forcing it to sleep causing it to crash). I run the Windows kernel debugger. It tells me that some device driver is not going into lower power state in the allotted time. What device driver? It won't tell me. Are you serious? Stupid OS knows which device it is but won't leave any breadcrumbs in the crash to find this?
And why on earth would you cause a system crash because a device won't go to sleep? And if you did crash, why not tell me so I know what is going on.
So how do I find the darn device. I uninstall every driver that I am not using. Nothing makes it work.
Finally, I go to the device driver and look at the network interfaces. Notice that the wireless driver from Intel does not have the check that says the system can put it to sleep. Check that box and it fixes the problem. Incredible! They give you a simple check box that causes a direct crash like this?
What an intertwined pile of junk Windows has become. I mean really. Who would have known all the things I went through to fix these obscure problems? I suspect 99% of the people would have to reinstall windows and go through the hell that is to get all your apps and settings back to where they were.
The "good news" is that after stopping and deleting everything I possibly could, this machine is now running so cool and fast!
Thought to vent a bit here and dispel any notion that I have any love for much of the software from my ex employer.