I recently began noticing some run problems with my Windows 7 installation, culminating in HWINFO64 even being stuck at the opening splash screen with "Flushing Buffers ...."
Generally, the system is running or slow or gets hung on certain processes (most noticeably system-related apps like HWINFO and certain Control Panel functions).
Specifically, my complaints include:
- Windows Installer Service hangs and .msi applications cannot be installed or uninstalled
- Shutdown hangs sometimes the machine never turns off. Sometimes I am seeing the very rare and unusual message, "Preparing to configure Windows ... Do not turn off your computer." message instead of the more familiar, "Shutting Down" message.
- HWINFO64 hangs indefinitely at startup 'Flushing Buffers...' as described previously
- At login, wireless network sits with a blue pending circle for a long time
- Service 'LanmanServer' is always stuck on 'Start Pending' state.
- Service 'Defender' is always stuck on 'Stop Pending' state
- Computer Management / Disk Management is slow to launch
- Trying to get into the Control Panel | Advanced | System | Performance Settings | Change Virtual Memory hangs
- There's probably many other things not working right too!
Obviously, HWINFO64 and Windows Installer not working are the most serious issues for me, though Shutdown is also pretty annoying (sometimes it works).
The system works fine without these issues in Safe Mode with Networking, but of course many things like Windows Installer won't run there. The computer also has Windows 10 and Ubuntu, and these work fine without issue, so I don't think it is a hardware issue but rather a service or driver issue or conflict in Windows 7. I have been changing graphics cards recently, and I thought that was the cause but it may be a false indicator. I don't see much in the Event Viewer to indicate what is causing these delays or hangs.
I would like this installation to work again, and I'm not sure if a repair install of Win7 (if I even have the right ISO) would even fix anything. Certainly, I have tried 'SFC /scannow' and 'DISM /Cleanup-Image /ScanHealth' and they have not helped or found anything. Ditto on chkdsk too.
Any clues on how to find the culprit here? HWINFO64's startup hang seems like a big clue here. Something fundamental is really wrong here, and I don't know what I did to the system bring this upon myself.
Generally, the system is running or slow or gets hung on certain processes (most noticeably system-related apps like HWINFO and certain Control Panel functions).
Specifically, my complaints include:
- Windows Installer Service hangs and .msi applications cannot be installed or uninstalled
- Shutdown hangs sometimes the machine never turns off. Sometimes I am seeing the very rare and unusual message, "Preparing to configure Windows ... Do not turn off your computer." message instead of the more familiar, "Shutting Down" message.
- HWINFO64 hangs indefinitely at startup 'Flushing Buffers...' as described previously
- At login, wireless network sits with a blue pending circle for a long time
- Service 'LanmanServer' is always stuck on 'Start Pending' state.
- Service 'Defender' is always stuck on 'Stop Pending' state
- Computer Management / Disk Management is slow to launch
- Trying to get into the Control Panel | Advanced | System | Performance Settings | Change Virtual Memory hangs
- There's probably many other things not working right too!
Obviously, HWINFO64 and Windows Installer not working are the most serious issues for me, though Shutdown is also pretty annoying (sometimes it works).
The system works fine without these issues in Safe Mode with Networking, but of course many things like Windows Installer won't run there. The computer also has Windows 10 and Ubuntu, and these work fine without issue, so I don't think it is a hardware issue but rather a service or driver issue or conflict in Windows 7. I have been changing graphics cards recently, and I thought that was the cause but it may be a false indicator. I don't see much in the Event Viewer to indicate what is causing these delays or hangs.
I would like this installation to work again, and I'm not sure if a repair install of Win7 (if I even have the right ISO) would even fix anything. Certainly, I have tried 'SFC /scannow' and 'DISM /Cleanup-Image /ScanHealth' and they have not helped or found anything. Ditto on chkdsk too.
Any clues on how to find the culprit here? HWINFO64's startup hang seems like a big clue here. Something fundamental is really wrong here, and I don't know what I did to the system bring this upon myself.
Last edited: