<2 Week Installation: Welcome Hang, Black Screen after Logon, etc.

Xyllia · 05 May 2018

This is frustrating me out of my mind!

Two days ago, I started getting the "Welcome..." screen hang, where I type my password, hit enter, and it says "Welcome..." and it just hangs. I've left it go for 15+ minutes once, and every 2 minutes or so there's 5-10 seconds of HDD activity then nothing.

Up until today, powering off the computer (because CAD and the button on the case won't work) and powering it back on would "fix" whatever was wrong and the computer booted up.

Well, tonight was a different story.

Got home, booted up the computer, got a Welcome... hang.
Powered it off, tried it again, another Welcome... hang.
Booted in Safe Mode, and did msconfig...

In startup:

There's only 2 items: Microsoft Security Essentials (I left this on) and Realtek HD Audio Manager (I unchecked this to turn it off).

In Services, I clicked "Hide all Microsoft Services" and there were only two that did not have to do with graphics card drivers: Steam Client Service and Mozilla Maintenance Service. I left these two alone.

Rebooted the computer.

Got to the login screen, typed my password, I watched the "Welcome..." for a few seconds, and then I got a black screen with mouse cursor and nothing else. Waited a few months, nothing.

Powered off the computer, went back into Safe Mode, and went into Event Viewer.

I uncheck'd both Steam Client Service, and Mozilla Maintenance Service. I noticed that somehow, Realtek HD Audio Manager somehow re-enabled itself... maybe I didn't apply it properly.

I also decided to check Event Log Viewer... and I found these two things:

Event filter with query "SELECT * FROM __InstanceModificationEvent WITHIN 60 WHERE TargetInstance ISA "Win32_Processor" AND TargetInstance.LoadPercentage > 99" could not be reactivated in namespace "//./root/CIMV2" because of error 0x80041003. Events cannot be delivered through this filter until the problem is corrected.

And several instances of:

The winlogon notification subscriber <GPClient> was unavailable to handle a notification event.

And these were timed about right for when the system was hanging.

This is driving me out of my mind. This is a <2 week install, it should not be doing this. I don't have anything loading on startup except for Mozilla and the Steam Service (I don't have Steam Itself loading on startup; I manually start that with everything else) and my graphics/sound drivers.

Xyllia · 06 May 2018

A couple updates: Steam apparently is adamant about having the service load on startup because it errors out so I was forced to re-enable that.

Firefox doesn't seem to mind starting without its maintenance manager, and the computer doesn't care that the HD Audio software isn't running.

Today, it booted up without any hangs at all, but I'm not confident the problem is fixed; I don't trust it.

Xyllia · 06 May 2018

Update 2:

I found a .vbs script to get rid of the 80041003 errors, but oddly enough it refused to run giving me 'access denied' like I was not the administrator (I am). I had to run Command Prompt as administrator and run the vbs from there, but it said it cleared it, so we'll see if whatever is _really_ causing the hangups (it took 4 tries today for me to boot my computer) ends up showing up in EventViewer now that those stupid SP1 errors are gone.

I worry, though, that the computer seems to think that my user profile is not the administrator (yet Control Panel\User Accounts says it is) when it comes to that vbs script.

Mellon Head · 06 May 2018

Just because you are the computer's administrator doesn't necessarily mean that apps and programs will run if they require elevated privilege.

If an app or program requires elevated privilege to run, then you have to right click it and choose "Run as Administrator" even though you are the admin account. It's a security feature designed to prevent elevated privilege programs to just run on their own, possibly doing dangerous things.

Xyllia · 13 May 2018

I think I might have FINALLY figured out what the problem is.... well kinda. I know where to start but have no idea where to go from here.

So I found this in the eventviewer:

DCOM 10010: The server {3EB3C877-1F16-487C-9050-104DBCD66683} did not register with DCOM within the required timeout.

This happens at the exact same time that the computer hangs on the Welcome screen or displays a black screen with a mouse cursor. There are a whole slew of other errors, but it sounds like this one is at the root, because all of the other errors talk about dependencies and junk not loading but this is the only error that doesn't mention a dependency.

And I looked up that ID and it turns out to be the Wininet Cache Server.

I've read that people have various problems with this thing, and some people take steps to nuke it altogether.

How do I find out what is really causing the problem, or should I just get rid of this altogether?

EDIT: The fact it went for 4-5 days without any problems suggests to me that the problem is really the webcachev01.dat file getting too bloated, maybe? If this happens again in a few days I'll check the size of this file in safe mode.

EDIT2: Doubt this has anything to do with it, but I also ran CCleaner and found that there was an active Startup link to Drivertoolkit (when I installed the OS I had trouble getting my mouse to work and so I had to try to find some kind of downloadable drivers for my mobo's USB3.1 drivers because the driver CD had them locked away in some app that required a mouse to use its GUI). I uninstalled drivertoolkit but apparently it left a registry key in startup. I disabled it. I doubt that would cause this, but meh.