Windows 10 Education 1511 10586.0 Freezing

[ptotham]

We are currently having a issue with the OS freezing randomly, our setup is a Surface 3 Tablet running Windows 10 Education 1511 10586.0 Clean Install (Not Upgrade), our test staff are complaining that they will be using the tablet and it can randomly freeze up (its not a specific software package) our staff account are Man Profiles and were using redirected start menus through group policy, we are using Classic shell for our start menu setup, we do link our tablet to the toshiba dynadocks (port replicator) running the latest driver but this issue can happen even when not connected to it, once the tablet freezes the only way to get it back working is to hard power off. we never came across this during our testing but we release windows updates during the half term and then issue 3 staff with tablets after the half term so am working on ruling out windows updates. Can anyone shed any light on this or have come across this issue themselves.

[Michael]

If you open Task Manager, expand details (bottom left), find the Windows Explorer process, then select Restart (bottom right). Does this clear the issue without having to switch off?

[ptotham]

I havent tried that yet michael am waiting for a user to ring me when it next freezes up. have you come across this yourself?

[Michael]

I havent tried that yet michael am waiting for a user to ring me when it next freezes up. have you come across this yourself?

 

Yes - interestingly a very similar time frame since deploying the February update, but only in isolated cases, not all.

[ptotham]

once you have restarted the explorer process does it happened again?

[ptotham]

just had a tablet freeze but when I check the task manager couldnt find windows explorer process which is strange.

[ptotham]

just had another tablet in that had frozen but this time wndows explorer was in the process restarting that bough the tablet back to life.

[Michael]

It just brings the computer back to life - I can only speculate the latest February update has a bug, but hopefully it'll be fixed soon.

[MicrodigitUK]

It's not Classic shell making it freeze is it?

We have a simile issue on our PCs running win 10 and Classic shell. Temporarily disabled it and not had any more freezing issues reported (shame win 10 start is so rubbish). We also have 120 Surface 3 devices but none are running Classic shell and not had any freezing issues with them. I'm trying to pin point what about our setup is making Classic shell crash explorer, but still unable to pinpoint the issue after trying lots of things.

[Michael]

It's not impossible that Classic Shell could be causing an issue, but then again I'd expect the issue to be a lot more widespread than reported. I have hundreds and hundreds of devices across different sites running Classic Shell.

 

I suspect the likely culprit is an issue with the February update, as this is the first I've had it reported. When I have the opportunity, I think I need to look at some event logs to see if I spot anything immediately obvious.

[ptotham]

I started going through the event log files yesterday and nothing jumps out going to continue going through them today.

[Hybrid]

I have seen this a couple of times when opening the start menu on the environment I was last working on. I have Windows 10 Edu 1511 with Classic Shell installed too. I seem to have narrowed it down to the OneDrive shortcut on the redirected start menu. Removing this via GPO from the machines seems to have cured it for now and the machine didn't lock up. **Touching wood right now**

 

HTH

[ptotham]

Hi Hybrid

 

 

which gpo did you use? as I am struggling to find it and dont have a one drive shortcut in my start menu.

[ADMaster]

Any update on this? I've had the same issue with both 1511 and 1607, no one drive installed. I've ended up removing classic shell, but when searching for my start menu woes, I see so many posts about it working well in W10.

Classic Shell is working great on all the machines still on W8.

 

Thanks,

[Matthew1985]

I've got the same problem. Removing classic shell doesn't seem to fix it...

[cooper]

I have the same problem with W10 Edu on some Dell and Fujitsu laptops.

 

Reading that if you enable "Launch folder windows in a separate process" has worked for some. (Not sure if there is a GPO setting for this.

 

Or removing the audio driver and letting Windows put a default driver on.

 

Not back at the school until Friday to test.