Copying cripples Windows

[Fokke Nauta]

...

When you type "resource" in the start search box, does it show up ?

I found a Resource monitor.
That's what you meant, I guess.
It gives a tremendous amount of information.
What is the best item I should look for? Memory?

 

[Fokke Nauta]

Hi all,

W7 Pro 64b.
When I start my PC to get working, the first thing I do is copy a few
cells in Excel. Once I've done that, Excel freezes and there's nothing I
can do but kill the application. It happens in Excel 2003 as well as 2010.
When I copy tekst from Word to Notepad, the same thing happens and I can
kill Notepad. When I copy tekst from Notepad into an HTML editor, the
same thing happens again and I can kill the HTML editor.
This can go on for minutes and all of a sudden it works again, and I can
work for the rest of the day.
This happens very frequently and is very annoying.

I don't think it's Windows, as it also happened a few times in the days
that my PC was running with XP. But now it happens very frequently.

What can it be? Memory problem? CPU?
Any recognizes this or has an idea as to what it may cause?

Thanks in advance.

Fokke

I have recently installed Ditto Clipboard manager. Haven't had any
problems since. I'll keep checking for a week or so. If it won't happen
within a week, I may start to believe that this problems will be solved.

Fokke

 

[Paul]

I found a Resource monitor.
That's what you meant, I guess.
It gives a tremendous amount of information.
What is the best item I should look for? Memory?

As I suggested before, I think I'd look for errors, such as in
Event Viewer first.

Next, using Task Manager or Resource Monitor, I look for
high CPU usage, while things aren't working, to see if
there is evidence of a culprit.

There are two things that can be busy in a computer.
A process in Ring3 (application, service), in which
case Task Manager, Resource Monitor, or Process Explorer
might see it.

If the problem is in Ring0 (kernel, or drivers), then
we might not see it. For example, say your disk has a
bad sector, and the OS waits for the disk to finish,
the computer could be frozen or appear to be frozen for
15 seconds. Such problems are harder to debug. You
almost need WinDBG or kernel debugger, to make progress.
And I don't know how to run those. I've tried, but can't
say I was very successful.

Paul

 

[Paul]

I have recently installed Ditto Clipboard manager.

Fokke

In my country, we say "Bingo!" when spotting something like that.

I bet removing that, will help a lot. As long as
it hasn't damaged something, left a filter driver
sitting around, that sort of thing.

Paul

 

[Fokke Nauta]

In my country, we say "Bingo!" when spotting something like that.

I bet removing that, will help a lot. As long as
it hasn't damaged something, left a filter driver
sitting around, that sort of thing.

Paul

Well, Paul, unfortunately no Bingo!!
Since I have installed Ditto I haven't seen this problem again.
So it looks like it's the opposite.

Fokke

 

[J. P. Gilliver (John)]

On 18/12/2012 08:43, J. P. Gilliver (John) wrote: []

When you say "nothing I can do", do you just mean (in this case) nothing
you can do _in Excel_, i. e. you can do other things, or do you mean the
machine is almost unusable at all, and you can just about manage to kill
Excel (or whatever the target application is)?

No, only the application in which I try to copy freezes. All other
applications or folders that are running, keep working.

I can't help now, but that information may help some of the other people
helping here.
[]

No, nothing.


I will do this next time.

(Any development?)

I don't use hibernation but standby sometimes. But at the end of the

Do you get it on recovery from standby then?

day I shut down my PC completely. So it the morning there is always a
fresh start. And this problem only happens in the morning. After some
time all of a sudden my PC works normally again, and it stays so for
the rest of the day.


Our home is pretty constant, but perhaps the problem dissapears when
the temperature in my PC rises after it has been switched on.

Hmm. might be worth pursuing that: not sure how though. You could apply
some external (gentle!) heat to see if it makes the problem disappear
more quickly, or some external cooling to see if it comes back (or can
be made to remain longer).

If it _does_ turn out to be temperature-dependent, then there are
several possible causes. If your BIOS has such fine control, you could
try dropping the clock speed by 5 or 10 per cent, to see if that stops
it happening (or raising it to see if it gets worse or persists for
longer); this won't tell you what the cause is, but may be enough if
you're not bothered. (All sorts of other things to play with - memory
refresh cycle counts, multipliers, voltages ... - be careful, playing
with some of these, especially voltages, can harm the hardware.)
(I'm guessing 7 makes some parts of the PC work harder.)

 

[Fokke Nauta]

On 18/12/2012 08:43, J. P. Gilliver (John) wrote: []

When you say "nothing I can do", do you just mean (in this case) nothing
you can do _in Excel_, i. e. you can do other things, or do you mean the
machine is almost unusable at all, and you can just about manage to kill
Excel (or whatever the target application is)?

No, only the application in which I try to copy freezes. All other
applications or folders that are running, keep working.

I can't help now, but that information may help some of the other people
helping here.
[]

No, nothing.


I will do this next time.

(Any development?)

It hasn't happened yet.
But I have installed Ditto Clipboard manager and since then this problem
has no longer occurred.

Do you get it on recovery from standby then?

Yes, but mostly in the afternoon. Long after the problem was over.
It only happend after starting up and could take up to 10 - 15 minutes
or so.

Hmm. might be worth pursuing that: not sure how though. You could apply
some external (gentle!) heat to see if it makes the problem disappear
more quickly, or some external cooling to see if it comes back (or can
be made to remain longer).

I could disconnect the case fans and heat up the PC with a hair dryer.
But, as I mentioned, since the installation of Ditto I have not seen
this problem anymore.

If it _does_ turn out to be temperature-dependent, then there are
several possible causes. If your BIOS has such fine control, you could
try dropping the clock speed by 5 or 10 per cent, to see if that stops
it happening (or raising it to see if it gets worse or persists for
longer); this won't tell you what the cause is, but may be enough if
you're not bothered. (All sorts of other things to play with - memory
refresh cycle counts, multipliers, voltages ... - be careful, playing
with some of these, especially voltages, can harm the hardware.)

(I'm guessing 7 makes some parts of the PC work harder.)

That could well be.

It is strange that:
a) it happened with the same hardware with XP, but less often;
b) all of a sudden it no longer happens since I have installed Ditto
Clipboard manager. Is this a coïncident?

I just wait and see if the problem reoccurs.

 

[J. P. Gilliver (John)]

On 20/12/2012 00:28, J. P. Gilliver (John) wrote: []

Do you get it on recovery from standby then?

Yes, but mostly in the afternoon. Long after the problem was over.

Well, it might have been useful to have one of the many utilities that
monitor assorted system temperatures (case, HD, mobo, processor cores)
running, so you could see if there's any particular temperature on
recovery from standby.

It only happend after starting up and could take up to 10 - 15 minutes
or so.



I could disconnect the case fans and heat up the PC with a hair dryer.

I did sat gentle! That sounds a bit drastic.

But, as I mentioned, since the installation of Ditto I have not seen
this problem anymore. []
It is strange that:
a) it happened with the same hardware with XP, but less often;

7 may make the hardware work harder (or certainly differently).

b) all of a sudden it no longer happens since I have installed Ditto
Clipboard manager. Is this a coïncident?

Seems _very_ odd. You could try uninstalling that and see if it comes
back, but I can see you'd be reluctant (I would be)!

I just wait and see if the problem reoccurs.

--
J. P. Gilliver. UMRA: 1960/<1985 MB++G()AL-IS-Ch++(p)Ar@T+H+Sh0!:`)DNAf

Everything you've learned in school as `obvious' becomes less and less obvious
as you begin to study the universe. For example, there are no solids in the
universe. There's not even a suggestion of a solid. There are no absolute
continuums. There are no surfaces. There are no straight lines.
-R. Buckminster Fuller, engineer, designer, and architect (1895-1983)

 

[Fokke Nauta]

On 20/12/2012 00:28, J. P. Gilliver (John) wrote: []

Do you get it only at on, or also at (say) recover from hibernation?

I don't use hibernation but standby sometimes. But at the end of the

Do you get it on recovery from standby then?

Yes, but mostly in the afternoon. Long after the problem was over.

Well, it might have been useful to have one of the many utilities that
monitor assorted system temperatures (case, HD, mobo, processor cores)
running, so you could see if there's any particular temperature on
recovery from standby.

It only happend after starting up and could take up to 10 - 15 minutes
or so.



I could disconnect the case fans and heat up the PC with a hair dryer.

I did sat gentle! That sounds a bit drastic.

But, as I mentioned, since the installation of Ditto I have not seen
this problem anymore. []
It is strange that:
a) it happened with the same hardware with XP, but less often;

7 may make the hardware work harder (or certainly differently).

b) all of a sudden it no longer happens since I have installed Ditto
Clipboard manager. Is this a coïncident?

Seems _very_ odd. You could try uninstalling that and see if it comes
back, but I can see you'd be reluctant (I would be)!

I just wait and see if the problem reoccurs.

Well, the problem came back this morning. Tried to copy some cells in
Excel and Excel froze. So after killing Excel I uninstalled Ditto, and
opened the Resource monitor. Tried again in Excel and it worked OK.
And it'll be OK for the rest of the day.
Funny old problem. It only happens after booting up in the morning (a
fresh boot, not waking up from standby). It didn't happen for a few
days, but this morning it was back again. And all of a sudden it worked
again.

Fokke

 

[J. P. Gilliver (John)]

In message <[email protected]>, Fokke Nauta

Well, the problem came back this morning. Tried to copy some cells in
Excel and Excel froze. So after killing Excel I uninstalled Ditto, and
opened the Resource monitor. Tried again in Excel and it worked OK.
And it'll be OK for the rest of the day.

Probably because something has warmed up, a capacitor has charged, or
something.

Funny old problem. It only happens after booting up in the morning (a
fresh boot, not waking up from standby). It didn't happen for a few
days, but this morning it was back again. And all of a sudden it worked
again.

Fokke

Well, at least you've excluded Ditto from the blame, so - assuming you
actually found Ditto useful! - I guess you might as well put it back in.
(_Maybe_ its presence added just enough time to the boot process to get
past the problem time! Though I doubt that's the case.)

It _does_ sound as if some part of your hardware is marginal. Assuming
that, when it happens, the disc light isn't on, indicating that
something is hitting things hard (though that should make everything
sluggish, not just Excel), then it suggests to me processor and memory.
It might be worth (ideally if you can make the problem occur more,
perhaps by extra cooling temporarily), examining the settings for those
in the BIOS: primarily timing ones, such as dropping the processor clock
a little bit, and in particular playing with the RAM refresh settings;
perhaps, if your BIOS offers it, try the settings option called
something like "default" or "guaranteed to work", though go through and
make notes of what they currently are first so you can put them back to
that, if selecting that option slows the system noticeably. Possibly
also assorted voltage settings, though those are (I think) more likely
to damage hardware than timing settings (I'd say less likely from
reducing rather than increasing, but that's not always the case). As for
what the RAM refresh cycle counts and similar actually _mean_, that's
not my forte, but I'm sure there are those here who will explain, if you
find that changing them makes the fault go away.

Or, you could just live with it, perhaps leaving the computer on more
(at least in colder weather; you wouldn't be wasting energy, since your
heating would work fractionally less hard)!
--
J. P. Gilliver. UMRA: 1960/<1985 MB++G()AL-IS-Ch++(p)Ar@T+H+Sh0!:`)DNAf

Chuck Berry was once asked what he thought of Elvis Presley and he said, "He
got what he wanted, but he lost what he had." [Quoted by Anne Widdicombe, in
Radio Times 8-14 October 2011.]

 

[Rodney Pont]

Funny old problem. It only happens after booting up in the morning (a
fresh boot, not waking up from standby). It didn't happen for a few
days, but this morning it was back again. And all of a sudden it worked
again.

Have you tried removing and reseating the ram boards?

 

[Rob]

Have you tried removing and reseating the ram boards?

It maybe a good idea to run memtest 86 and check the ram in sitsu.

 

[Char Jackson]

It _does_ sound as if some part of your hardware is marginal. Assuming
that, when it happens, the disc light isn't on, indicating that
something is hitting things hard (though that should make everything
sluggish, not just Excel), then it suggests to me processor and memory.

I thought he said that the disk light is solidly on during these
moments of 'freeze', unless I'm mixing two threads, which is entirely
possible.

 

[BillW50]

I thought he said that the disk light is solidly on during these
moments of 'freeze', unless I'm mixing two threads, which is entirely
possible.

When I was last running Forte Agent 2.0 (many moons ago), I thought for
sure it had a threaded view. Am I mistaken?

 

[Fokke Nauta]

It maybe a good idea to run memtest 86 and check the ram in sitsu.

I already did this. 7 Passes and no error.

 

[Fokke Nauta]

Have you tried removing and reseating the ram boards?

I will.
I will come back on this.

 

[Fokke Nauta]

In message <[email protected]>, Fokke Nauta


Probably because something has warmed up, a capacitor has charged, or
something.


Well, at least you've excluded Ditto from the blame, so - assuming you
actually found Ditto useful! - I guess you might as well put it back in.
(_Maybe_ its presence added just enough time to the boot process to get
past the problem time! Though I doubt that's the case.)

It _does_ sound as if some part of your hardware is marginal. Assuming
that, when it happens, the disc light isn't on,

I didn't check this. Will do this the next time it happens.

indicating that
something is hitting things hard (though that should make everything
sluggish, not just Excel), then it suggests to me processor and memory.
It might be worth (ideally if you can make the problem occur more,
perhaps by extra cooling temporarily), examining the settings for those
in the BIOS: primarily timing ones, such as dropping the processor clock
a little bit, and in particular playing with the RAM refresh settings;
perhaps, if your BIOS offers it, try the settings option called
something like "default" or "guaranteed to work", though go through and
make notes of what they currently are first so you can put them back to
that, if selecting that option slows the system noticeably. Possibly
also assorted voltage settings, though those are (I think) more likely
to damage hardware than timing settings (I'd say less likely from
reducing rather than increasing, but that's not always the case). As for
what the RAM refresh cycle counts and similar actually _mean_, that's
not my forte, but I'm sure there are those here who will explain, if you
find that changing them makes the fault go away.

The BIOS had an option to overclock the CPU automacitally, which I had
done. I will reset the BIOS to defaults so the CPU will run at it's
original clock speed.

Or, you could just live with it, perhaps leaving the computer on more
(at least in colder weather; you wouldn't be wasting energy, since your
heating would work fractionally less hard)!

When we get snow here, I'll overclock the CPU again!

 

[Fokke Nauta]

I thought he said that the disk light is solidly on during these
moments of 'freeze', unless I'm mixing two threads, which is entirely
possible.

I haven't checked the disc light yet. Will do this the next time it happens.

 

[choro]

When I heard of Ditto I decided to give it a try but my 64-bit Win 7 Pro
PC started behaving oddly. One look at Ditto and I didn't like the
layout either. So I immediately uninstalled the damn thing which wasn't
showing up as one of the installed programs in START> CONTROL PANEL>
PROGRAMS AND FEATURES either which I thought was odd. Can't remember now
how I undeleted it but I certainly did not use the RESTORE facility.
Can't remember whether DITTO had its own UNINSTALL facility.

I think I much rather prefer Windows' own Copy to Clipboard facility. It
might be too simple for some but at least one knows what one is doing.

Sorry for the top posting but sometimes the *Woman on Top* is preferable
to the *Missionary Position*.

 

[Paul]

I will.
I will come back on this.

As a hardware guy, your symptoms don't sound like hardware. Sorry.

If your system crashed, or threw up error dialog boxes, then,
we'd be talking hardware. But a sedate, subsystem limited issue
that you're experiencing, "smells like software".

Windows uses a bit of randomization, when loading applications into
memory. I'd expect some of the structures in Windows though, to have
a degree of consistency in terms of where they're located. But something
like a copy-paste buffer, that would be dynamically allocated (every
new copy, uses fresh memory), and the address of the memory used
would be constantly changing.

Since your symptoms are so "well behaved", I've seen nothing
yet that suggests removing RAM boards. The computer is running,
and could be fetching hundreds of millions of cache lines per
second from main memory. And since it does this without
flinching or fidgeting, "it's working" from a hardware
perspective.

If you really thought the problem was memory related, you have
the option of booting up a Linux LiveCD and testing behavior there.
Since the layout and memory usage are entirely different, the
symptoms seen might give you a second chance to identify
a hardware type issue.

Note that memtest86+ does not test the entire memory. It comes
very close. But, it's not perfect. In particular, it cannot
test the 640K region. Certain areas of memory are marked by the
BIOS as "reserved", and memtest86+ honors those reservations.
It can mean somewhere around one megabyte of memory might not get
tested.

To fix that:

1) Reinstall RAM in single channel mode.
2) Run memtest86+ for one pass.
3) If error free, swap the two sticks sitting on the single
channel, such that the high memory stick, becomes the low
memory stick, and vice versa. By rearranging the two sticks
sitting on a memory channel, you can achieve 100% memory
test coverage. Run memtest86+ again, after the RAM sticks
have been swapped.

Remember to put the sticks back in dual channel mode when
you're finished. If you have four DIMMs, you do the above
procedure twice, using a pair of DIMMs each time. A total
of four memory installation procedures.

HTH,
Paul