Maintenance :: Repeated (Not Responding) Messages In Windows 8 Pro
Nov 27, 2012
I saw the other thread here about "Windows 8 Pro Randomly Freezing," but I think I'm seeing something slightly different. In my case, I'm getting random, repeated instances of various desktop applications temporarily "locking up" and displaying a "Not Responding" message in the title bar of the effected app.
I see this most commonly in Firefox (32-bit version, v17.0 release). These lock-ups last roughly a minute. It seems to minimize the Firefox window (yes, even when not responding, window controls are operative) and then restore it. It will still display the "Not Responding" message, but this seems to clear within 10 or 15 seconds. Not sure this is a fix, and it could be coincidental.
While I initially thought my problem was Firefox, I'm seeing it in other apps, including Evernote and Windows Explorer. I think on a couple of occasions I actually saw this "Not Responding" message appear in dialog boxes.
Temporary freezes and occasional "not responding" messages are not often seen in Windows 8, but occur much more frequently than they do in W7. Same hardware, same software. Only the drives and a few drivers differ.
These hesitations arise in various programs or while manipulating UI options, and have since the earliest Windows 8 betas, though they have become less frequent with each release. No forum messages that I have come across relate specifically to this random issue.
Additionally, Windows 8 is a multitasking slug as contrasted to W7 when, for example, a large file is downloading in the background. Open another program in W7 and it pops up almost immediately; open in Windows 8 and it takes 15-30'. Priority has been assigned to both "programs" and "background services." Made no difference.
2600 Intel CPU, ASUS P8P67le MB, NVidia 210 GPU, at least 28G free space on each drive.
Constant pop-up saying important message about 8.1, that I should click on HP Compatibility Assistant, but nothing happens when I click on this. Also a link to "more info" about windows 8.1, but the link doesn't work. How do I even find out if I even need 8.1?
I've got Toshiba L50-A-19N half of a year old and it started to load everything really slowly or is not responding for a short period of time (acts like frozen for 2-3 second, something like spike). I've done Chkdsk, Memory Diagnose tool, defragmentation. Scanned PC with McAfee, Windows Defender and Malwarebytes. Also reinstalled Windows but nothing worked. Disk seems to be in good health according to Toshiba Health Center and the CPU is not hot, neither used (7% usage and i still get spikes)...
Twice in last 2 weeks, some of my tiles (Games, Bing News, Store, People, Mail, etc.) have just stopped responding.When clicked, I get a blank screen, then the full Start Screen re-appears.Other tiles such as Chrome, Word and Outlook work OK.When this first happened, I did a system restore, and the problem went away, but this time the restore point seems to have gone too.The 'Change PC Settings' does not work either, as I decided to try a complete refresh, but can't access that.
Recently I've started having this problem where if I right-click anywhere in File Explorer, no matter what folder, my cursor switches to loading, then the folder goes to (Not Responding), and I have to close it out which causes Windows Explorer to disappear for a few seconds.
Any way to force a process to become "Not Responding" for troubleshooting purposes, but I have not been able to find one. I have also been unable to find anyone on the internet who is trying to do the same thing as I am. Basically, does any way I can intentionally stop a process from responding?
Why do so many programs just stop working, stop responding for no apparent reason??? This includes IE9, e-mail service, new printer/scanner installation, etc, etc, etc. Sometimes even writing a letter or "Save as" just stops responding. How can this be??? Windows says "we're looking for a solution", but nothing ever shows up. Is there no diagnostic that can identify the failure? Is it memory, conflict, what can be causing these annoying interruptions??? Mostly rebooting the system will clear things up.
My setup: Windows 8 PRO, CPU Intel i7 3.40 GHz 64 bit, 16 GB RAM, INTEL SSDSC solid state hard drive 223 GB (about one quarter full). I did not have these problems with Windows 7, or the Windows 8 pre releases.
I don't know what happened but today when I tried to enter IE I received this message:
The proxy server isn't responding. Check your proxy settings. Go to Tools > Internet Options > Connections. If you are on a LAN, click "LAN settings". Make sure your firewall settings aren't blocking your web access.
If I go to LAN and remove the block with a check beside the proxy sever IE starts, however, if I log off and try to reenter the proxy server box has a check mark.
My laptop has occasionally failed to start up (BSOD at boot) but eventually restarts correctly (after a hard restart or two) sometimes saying it is running a diagnostic and starting in a previous state. But this morning it BSODed on me a dozen times. I backed up all my data to an external drive and got the SFdebugfiles (attached).
I upgraded my Windows 8 to 8.1 a few weeks back and ever since then I've been catching the BSOD (seemingly) randomly. I've tried everything I can think of yet still can't things going right again. I've tried refresh, repair, restore you name it. I've done malware searches, registry repairs, I've even run AVGs cool toolbox program (which found A LOT of crap not set properly). I've ran chkdsk, scndsk, and every other *dsk I can think of. I've even reformatted my drive (from within windows and without) a couple times. Somehow I've got what seems to be a stable system, but even a few hours ago it gave me the BSOD. It's booted back up, and has been running since but I cannot play online games (Forsaken, SWOR, etc.) without it freezing up and threatening me with that BSOD again.
How I have my phone set up: Phone is Nokia Lumia 520 - ATT
I have 2 groups of contacts, which are 'family' and 'common contacts'. I pull all contacts from outlook online and facebook, in addition to the phone itself. So family and common contacts do not have all my contacts listed in them, because there are quite a few.
These contact 'boxes' tell me who has texted me in the past, by saying 'New Message', etc. Also, my lock screen tells me if I have missed texts, calls, etc.
Pic of Contacts box:
Pic of lock screen
I have more than 7 messages listed on the lock screen that I cannot find the source to. They aren't in my family or common contacts or it would display 'new message' in the green box, so they must be from someone else in my address book. Also, whenever someone who is not a family or common contact messages me, I get the message, but no notification except on the lock screen (which says how many new messages I have, but not who from).
I really like Windows 8, but I have a problem with the app that controls messages. It's linked with Facebook, so whenever one of my friends is messaging me, I'm can answer from the app. Pretty smart, I think.
However, I have a problem. I have to friends with same name and last name.
My problem:
Friend number 1 is chatting with me.
Friend number 2's profile picture appear in the app.
Sometime friend number 2 recieves the message I'm sending to friend number 1.
Another problem is that the app doesn't seem to figure out if I already read the message on Facebook.
So, yahoo web mail's giving me grief on both this Windows 8 machine and my vista machine, which I'd done a fresh zero out and software reload on, neither machine will load yahoo messages, keeps spitting up error code 45s...
I saw they had a yahoo for windows 8 app available, lets try that! no such luck, yahoo mail Windows 8 app is doing the EXACT same thing.. sans the error code 45s.. Getting grief from their yahoo email?
The snapshot below is what it HAD been tossing up nonstop before the error 45s started saying hi.. as you can see..I had alot of mail tabs open on the mail screen..they were all spitting up errors.
I just recently purchased a Skype number and I have a few emails telling me that I have a new voice message and I should sign into Skype to listen to them.
So I signed into the metro style Skype app on windows 8.1 but could not find voice messages. I tried on the surface rt app but no option for voice messages. I tried logging into the Skype website and again could not find my messages.
So how does one listen to their voice messages in Skype?
My Windows 8 Mail app shows I have 3 UNREAD messages in my inbox, but I dont actually have any unread emails. I have gone through and opened every single email, but it still displays 3 unread emails. When a new email comes through, it goes to 4 unread emails, but when I open the new one it reverts back to 3. Its as though its stuck? How to fix this, aside from uninstalling and reinstalling the program, but then I have to remove a few apps with it (calender etc) and that will lose too much stuff....
My Windows 8.1 desktop system is not able to show DOS-based messages. That is, messages from the system as it is starting up and before Windows opens, and other DOS-like displays. For example, Windows 8.1 has a "Windows Memory Diagnostics" app. When I start this app from within Windows, nothing is shown on the monitor.
For example, upon powering on my computer the first thing I used to see was the Gateway monitor logo. Now nothing shows until Windows boots.
For example, the computer crashed unexpectedly and began restarting immediately. I was not presented with the typical screen that offers to start in safe mode. Instead, it takes a minute or two and Windows appears.
For example, (pure speculation) when the computer crashes I am wondering if the system is trying to show me the Blue Screen of Death. But nothing is shown at all and the computer reboots.
Suspects: I have a dual monitor system with an XFX R7700 graphics card. It was suggested I remove the card and plug in one monitor with VGA cable. That "fixed" it and I am seeing DOS-like displays.
Related Problem: My computer has been crashing unexpectedly and often -- several times a day. When it does it is so immediate and complete it is as if the power plug had been pulled. It starts up again immediately but may take a bit more time to get going than usual. Then everything is fine until it crashes again.
My laptop windows suddenly stop responding .. the mouse is moving but cant open anything even the task manager or Start menu! have to shut down from the power button!
Ok so here is some info I have Internet from storm Internet it's a radio dish Ethernet go's to the power over Ethernet device then into my extreme gigabit router , see storm had to come out and move the dish for 20 percent better signal and it was working fine for a day I was getting 6mbps easy, then was on Xbox when out of nowhere it gos out... SO I power cycle.
The poe device and usually it comes back up but it didn't and the computer said the dns server isn't responding..... So I did the ip configuration thing and cleared / renew. Then tried power cycling the router still nothing it should be working...
I just installed windows 8.1 on pc and everything worked at the time but know almost all my programs and software are not responding, so when I open a program notepad it works and everything then allove a sudden it freezes and have to Ctrl+Alt+Delete and the task manger opens and then I selected the program that's not responding and click end task, and when I do that the task manger stops work and the only thing to do is farce restart.
Win 8.1 Pro x64, single-user computer. I don't know if it started with updating from 8 to 8.1 in December, but roughly since then I've getting been a fair number of error messages while saving or changing a program's default setting, saying directly or indirectly that I need administrator rights to do the operation. My user account is Standard and shows me as Administrator, and everywhere I look says I am Administrator with full administrator rights. Yet, as the screenshots below show, I now can't save to the system drive (C:) and can't even uncheck the default file manager setting within the XYplorer, my normal file manager. The other day I couldn't save an extracted folder under in its intended program folder in Program Files (x86), something I did numerous times with new versions of the same program under Win 8 and Win 7. What is the way to overcome this?
Recently my taskbar has begun to obscure messages that appear and I can't click on the message now.
For example sometimes when I go to a website I would get a warning message saying this website wants to ....
Allow once or Allow Never. I'm pretty sure these used to appear above the taskbar now they are underneath it and I can't access the message to click on Once or Never.
Also I have a desktop programme that has certain options at the very bottom of the screen and now the taskbar won't let me access this either. I can see through the taskbar but can't action anything.
I'm on a new laptop running Windows 8 Pro, and I'm running into permission issues. I just created an icon (using Axialis Icon workshop), and tried to save it to a folder which I myself created. But I got this message:
C:Program FilesIconsIN-USEGS.ico You don't have permission to save in this location. Contact the administrator to obtain permission.
Would you like to save in the My Pictures folder instead? No, I wouldn't like to save in My Pictures. I never use it. How can I get permission to save to the folder I want? I'm a sole user; I'm a member of administrators; I've tried (unsuccessfully so far) to give myself permission to run all programs without being nagged.
I suspect that taking ownership of the C:Program Files might do the trick, but it seems like an extreme measure. Should I simply follow the steps in Brink's tutorial 'How to Allow or Deny Access Permissions to Users and Groups in Windows 8'?
When I click on file explorer, sometimes there are no icons, so then I close the windows for a bit. Reopen it, same problem. So I close it and reopen it a bit later, and it's fixed. When the problem is happening, clicking on any folder will bring me to basically the same blank screen, with green loading bar as you see below. I ran an anti-malware and anti-virus check, and that didn't uncover anything.
I have an issue with Windows 8. Whenever I have used past Windows operating systems, left clicking on a window in the background only brought that window to the front. However, with Windows 8, when I click on a background window to bring it to the front, the window that I am trying to bring front responds to the click on the page. How do I make it so that when I click anywhere on a background window, it ONLY brings it front and does not respond to the click?
Basically I have about 15 messages in my outbox that won't send and whenever I try to send a new message it just goes to the outbox. This has been going on for about a week (unfortunately I only noticed the day before yesterday!). (I'm using Windows 8 and Windows Mail - my account is a Gmail account)
