Strange boot behaviour. Is Windows Update to blame?

[martinlest]

One of my PCs (Win7 x64) has been behaving oddly the past few days. It boots to the desktop fast enough, but certain things won't run.. there's no desktop gadget (just ALL CPU monitor), certain scripts that I run at startup hang (batch files seem to run, but visual basic scripts don't); System Restore, when I click on it, doesn't open.

Then, some minutes later all the above suddenly comes alive. In Device Manager, the System Devices tree had expanded and the entry for AMDA00 Interface had a yellow exclamation mark against it. After things come right, the entry is OK again (I have had problems with that entry before, though I don't recall what I did to set it right, it was a long time ago. Perhaps someone knows the solution, other than using System Restore?).

When System restore finally opens, I run it to a point made a few days previous and all is fine again.

As far as I can tell, the problem starts when I allow Windows Update to run (though I may be wrong there; on the other hand I can't see what else could cause the PC to malfunction like this). Has anyone any ideas here, or has heard of any recent updates that may possibly be causing issues like this? I am not running any more updates until I get to the bottom of this, just in case that is the cause. (If I don't get to the bottom of it, I guess I'll have to try installing updates one by one to find a possible culprit, but I'll wait a while before I start down that path - could take a time to find the right one, if any).

Thanks.

 

[torchwood]

Hi Martin,

as its a custom build - DONT let windows update your drivers, see screenshot, manufactueres only


Roy

 

[martinlest]

Thanks, I didn't know that that option was available. I never run updates automatically though, I always have Update just announce that updates are ready to download and I select them myself. I don't download drivers, through bitter experience...

Actually, I see that the only 'Important' update sitting waiting to be installed (and which therefore would have been installed before I ran System Restore) is KB4055532 - an update for .NET framework. Not sure that that makes any sense. As I said, I am only guessing that it's a Windows update that is to blame, given the circumstances.