Any tool to detect mouse/keyboard freeze and fix it?

[ambush]

I have an extremely frustrating problem: My 64-bit Win7 Pro SP1 system keeps running fine for hours, as long as I'm frequently interacting with it. But when I start a disk-intensive application that needs to run for 6-10 hours, when the task is about 90% complete, the system usually hangs/freezes (i.e., the mouse and keyboard do not respond)!

I assure you I have followed several people's advice and have reduced the number of installed apps and drivers, have run extensive CPU & RAM diagnostics, re-seated boards, run multiple anti-malware tools, registry checkers, temperature monitors, etc, etc, etc -- but the problem never goes away.

What I'm looking for (and I realize I'm asking for a lot!) is a utility that monitors the OS -- apps, services, drivers, etc -- and can detect when a freeze/hang is about to happen and then takes whatever actions that are possible. The idea is that it might either prevent the freeze or reset the keyboard/mouse drivers or do SOMETHING that would allow me to access a process manager (such as Process Hacker or the like). That way, at least I have a fighting chance to correct the problem without rebooting and starting all over again! :banghead:

BTW, Resplendence Software provides a freeware goodie named "AntiFreeze", but even assuming it works under Win7 (there's contradictory info, so I've asked for a clarification), it the keyboard is inactive or ignored, it does no good at all.

Does anyone know of anything like that?

Thanks!

 

[kanewolf]

Does the PC still respond to network traffic? Ping etc? What about RDP from another PC?

 

[jsmithepa]

I am going to bet you have a slow ram leakage. Next time have Task Manager opened so you can monitor the active tasks and swap file size.

 

[ambush]

Does the PC still respond to network traffic? Ping etc? What about RDP from another PC?

Thanks for your excellent suggestion, kanewolf! I don't know the answer yet, but I've made some minor progress that I'll explain below. I'm going to try again soon, and this time I'll test your suggestions and report back.

I have an update: I accidentally found something that does keep the keyboard and mouse from freezing, but only kinda/sorta. Let me explain: In order to try and figure out what's causing the hang, I decided to run Process Monitor while I tried again. When the application in question finally hung after about 4 hours (with at least two hours to go), I was pleasantly surprised to discover that ProcMon had somehow kept the keyboard and mouse from hanging! Unfortunately, while the keyboard & mouse kept working, the only application that would respond to them was ProcMon itself, and absolutely nothing else! CTRL-ALT-DEL did nothing, nor did the AntiFreeze trigger key sequence. I could click on anything I wanted to, but the only thing that responded was ProcMon. Oh, well....

Check my thinking, please. It seems to me that means that either Explorer was completely hung (along with the app I needed to run), or the user event queue (as opposed to hardware interrupt handlers) stopped being processed.

I examined the event logs, but the only thing that seemed weird to me was the following: "VDS Basic Provider - Unexpected failure. Error code: 490@01010004" Here is the event log entry:

Log Name:      System
Source:        VDS Basic Provider
Date:          9/16/2015 7:26:09 AM
Event ID:      1
Task Category: None
Level:         Error
Keywords:      Classic
User:          N/A
Computer:      Power7
Description:
Unexpected failure. Error code: 490@01010004
Event Xml:
<Event xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/win/2004/08/events/event">
  <System>
    <Provider Name="VDS Basic Provider" />
    <EventID Qualifiers="49664">1</EventID>
    <Level>2</Level>
    <Task>0</Task>
    <Keywords>0x80000000000000</Keywords>
    <TimeCreated SystemTime="2015-09-16T11:26:09.000000000Z" />
    <EventRecordID>20304</EventRecordID>
    <Channel>System</Channel>
    <Computer>Power7</Computer>
    <Security />
  </System>
  <EventData>
    <Data>490@01010004</Data>
  </EventData>
</Event>

Many people have seen this error and asked for help, but the responders have almost always said to just ignore it, since that's what Microsoft said to do for ONE and only ONE situation where the error occurred (something to do with "Hyper-V guest operating system", whatever the hell that is -- it's certainly nothing I'm doing!)

Myself, I'm wondering if some disk I/O driver filters are at fault, since there are several installed on my machine. Right now, I'm preparing to try my task again, but this time with several of those filters disabled (I'm pretty sure I can disable them using AutoRuns).

Anyway, if you can think of something else to try, please let me know!

 

[ambush]

I am going to bet you have a slow ram leakage. Next time have Task Manager opened so you can monitor the active tasks and swap file size.

Thanks, jsmithepa!

I'll see if there's a way to have ProcMon monitor and display that info also.

 

[ambush]

It was the filters -- THE FILTERS

As many of you already know, disk device drivers -- and applications that need special access to disk I/O -- include driver filters. You can see them easily using AutoRuns (MUST be v13.4 or later). First, move to the "Everything" tab, then in the search box at the top labeled "Filter" (coincidentally), enter the word "filter". Here's a link to a screenshot showing the filter list from a different computer than the one in question:

Although not all of the filters in that screenshot are for disk drivers, the overwhelming majority are! Note that AutoRuns shows ALL the filters on the system, not just disk driver filters. For example, it will also list all the audio/video filters associated with all the codecs you have installed, as well as some other types of filters. The list shown in the screenshot are all those listed under the heading HKLM\System\CurrentControlSet\Services.

SO, what filter was it that was causing the hang after several hours? I had to try them one by one, but I had a hunch about which were the most likely ones, so I only had to test 3 of them by trial and error before I found the culprit. It was: SDDisk2K, the SecureDoc Disk Encryption Filter.

I had hoped that I could simply use AutoRuns to disable that filter, but after trying that the system would crash during boot. So I was forced to uninstall SecureDoc completely to get it to work. After which, the multi-hour process completed successfully.

Problem solved.