Many Hours Later
May. 20th, 2016 07:58 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
trickykittyThe explorer.exe was continuously crashing, and after searching online, this seems to be a common malady of the upgrade to Windows 10.
At one point I rebooted the machine after attempting to change something in the start programs, and it took 30min before the cursor stopped being a spinning circle of "Hang on a sec" fury once the desktop reloaded. When the cursor finally stopped and allowed me to even click on something, explorer.exe started it's crash-reboot cycle again, with a Cursor Spin Cycle of about 2min. So I'd get about 15-30 seconds to click on a couple things, like trying to open the Control Panel or Programs and Features, before the cursor would again change to a swirling whirlpool for another minute or two while I watched and waited, unable to click on anything again, until finally the desktop and taskbar would refresh/reset, come back to life, and I would have another 15 seconds of clickable time to race the clock to get into whatever system settings I was trying to reach. That reset, by the way was kind enough to keep my browser open for me, but would shut down all system windows, like the Control Panel, Programs and Features, Task Manager, etc. You know, the areas in which I actually needed access to figure things out.
One forum suggested it was Autodesk files messing with Windows 10, and mucking about with those installations and/or files seemed to work for some folks, but I had no Autodesk installed. I finally found a couple forums that made me believe it was the audio that came with the computer (Dell utilizes IDT software which seems to disagree with Windows 10, and this is a Dell Optiplex). That was about 3 hours into my day. I still wasn't certain, though, and it took another couple hours just to confirm that I even had the IDT software on the system, because again, things like Device Manager wouldn't stay open long enough for me to get where I needed to be, and once they were open long enough I only saw the Window 10 drivers. I attempted a driver update, but that wasn't the solution, which I figured out much later was because the Win10 driver had overwritten the IDT driver, so it WAS the most recent driver for the generic "High Definition Audio" versus the "IDT High Definition Audio". Admittedly, a big part of that time was wasted because nowhere in the forums did someone say that if it doesn't say "IDT" on the Device Manager, then you're not looking at the right software driver, and I wasn't aware that the Windows preferred driver would be so similar in name as to confuse me that way.
Then I searched for how to uninstall IDT, which again was more time wasted, because it doesn't show up in the Programs list, and disabling the Startup of the IDT HD Audio didn't fix the issue. (That was when I rebooted the system only to stare at the swirling circle of doom for 30min which was when I stopped to get some semblance of food for lunch.)
I eventually found a forum that walked you through catching the explorer.exe dump file, downloading the Windows SDK debug software, and then interpreting the dump file to find the source of the issue. This whole process took more time than I care to admit, while in the meantime I actually had a pressing work thing that needed to be done, namely, pulling a few permits with cities. THAT should have only taken me 15min at the most, but instead took another 1.5 hrs or so. Once the work thing was done, I went back to resisting utilizing a hammer on "all parts made in Taiwan" to solve my computer problem. The dump and debug worked to at least confirm that it was in fact the IDT program, and a specific file at that, causing the issue.
I then had a specific file name to Google (idtnc64.cpl), and go from there. Again, a lot of suggestions involved disabling or removing the IDT software, but I couldn't ever get to an uninstaller to accomplish that. I finally found two forums that suggested about the same thing - remove or rename the offending file. I didn't feel comfortable with removing the file (nor did I want it just hanging out on my desktop as the poster suggested), so I opted to go with the renaming. C:\Windows\System32\idtnc64.cpl became idtnc64.cpl.bak
After changing the name and pressing Enter, I got the warning box about renaming such an important file, and when I went to click YES in the warning box, explorer.exe reset one more time, so my click wasn't registered, nor the name change. Again I waited, and as soon as I could access Explorer again I raced to get that damn file renamed, this time managing to get past the confirmation warning.
The system reset one more time, so I opted to reboot.
So far, it's working. It only took me 9 hours (less the time I stopped to work on the permits), all to rename a single file.
Fucking Windows 10 upgrade. Grrr.
At one point I rebooted the machine after attempting to change something in the start programs, and it took 30min before the cursor stopped being a spinning circle of "Hang on a sec" fury once the desktop reloaded. When the cursor finally stopped and allowed me to even click on something, explorer.exe started it's crash-reboot cycle again, with a Cursor Spin Cycle of about 2min. So I'd get about 15-30 seconds to click on a couple things, like trying to open the Control Panel or Programs and Features, before the cursor would again change to a swirling whirlpool for another minute or two while I watched and waited, unable to click on anything again, until finally the desktop and taskbar would refresh/reset, come back to life, and I would have another 15 seconds of clickable time to race the clock to get into whatever system settings I was trying to reach. That reset, by the way was kind enough to keep my browser open for me, but would shut down all system windows, like the Control Panel, Programs and Features, Task Manager, etc. You know, the areas in which I actually needed access to figure things out.
One forum suggested it was Autodesk files messing with Windows 10, and mucking about with those installations and/or files seemed to work for some folks, but I had no Autodesk installed. I finally found a couple forums that made me believe it was the audio that came with the computer (Dell utilizes IDT software which seems to disagree with Windows 10, and this is a Dell Optiplex). That was about 3 hours into my day. I still wasn't certain, though, and it took another couple hours just to confirm that I even had the IDT software on the system, because again, things like Device Manager wouldn't stay open long enough for me to get where I needed to be, and once they were open long enough I only saw the Window 10 drivers. I attempted a driver update, but that wasn't the solution, which I figured out much later was because the Win10 driver had overwritten the IDT driver, so it WAS the most recent driver for the generic "High Definition Audio" versus the "IDT High Definition Audio". Admittedly, a big part of that time was wasted because nowhere in the forums did someone say that if it doesn't say "IDT" on the Device Manager, then you're not looking at the right software driver, and I wasn't aware that the Windows preferred driver would be so similar in name as to confuse me that way.
Then I searched for how to uninstall IDT, which again was more time wasted, because it doesn't show up in the Programs list, and disabling the Startup of the IDT HD Audio didn't fix the issue. (That was when I rebooted the system only to stare at the swirling circle of doom for 30min which was when I stopped to get some semblance of food for lunch.)
I eventually found a forum that walked you through catching the explorer.exe dump file, downloading the Windows SDK debug software, and then interpreting the dump file to find the source of the issue. This whole process took more time than I care to admit, while in the meantime I actually had a pressing work thing that needed to be done, namely, pulling a few permits with cities. THAT should have only taken me 15min at the most, but instead took another 1.5 hrs or so. Once the work thing was done, I went back to resisting utilizing a hammer on "all parts made in Taiwan" to solve my computer problem. The dump and debug worked to at least confirm that it was in fact the IDT program, and a specific file at that, causing the issue.
I then had a specific file name to Google (idtnc64.cpl), and go from there. Again, a lot of suggestions involved disabling or removing the IDT software, but I couldn't ever get to an uninstaller to accomplish that. I finally found two forums that suggested about the same thing - remove or rename the offending file. I didn't feel comfortable with removing the file (nor did I want it just hanging out on my desktop as the poster suggested), so I opted to go with the renaming. C:\Windows\System32\idtnc64.cpl became idtnc64.cpl.bak
After changing the name and pressing Enter, I got the warning box about renaming such an important file, and when I went to click YES in the warning box, explorer.exe reset one more time, so my click wasn't registered, nor the name change. Again I waited, and as soon as I could access Explorer again I raced to get that damn file renamed, this time managing to get past the confirmation warning.
The system reset one more time, so I opted to reboot.
So far, it's working. It only took me 9 hours (less the time I stopped to work on the permits), all to rename a single file.
Fucking Windows 10 upgrade. Grrr.
