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[Blizzard]

I thought about posting this in gaming, but it's not specific to a game. I thought it was a complicated enough problem that I might put it in its own thread. If it should be in gaming or in its own thread, please let me know, and I apologize in advance.

The last 2 days, I've had a very peculiar problem. I've programmed computers, built computers, and fixed problems on computers for many years. Asking for advice is one of the last things I'd normally do, but I'm really confused about this. I have a Windows 7 desktop, 64-bit home premium, 8GB memory, and...

OBJECTION! You should upgrade to Windows 10. This is what you get.
I understand many love Windows 10, but I ask your patience and consideration of this as a special case. I do use the system to play games, but it is also a build system and test system since I develop games and need a Windows 7 test machine. So for the purposes of this exercise, I'd like to accept that it's Windows 7 for now and was working 2 days ago.

Why don't you just reinstall
I could, but this system has been working quite well and I have a ton of games, development software, and so forth. It worked fine until 2 days ago, so I'm really curious if there's a way around that.

So what's the problem on your antiquated system which you refuse to reinstall?
It's complicated. Example symptoms:

• Unable to right click in Firefox
• Unable to open new window in Firefox (but new tabs work?)
• Unable to right click system tray icons
• Audio stopped working in League of Legends
• Unable to launch programs like command prompt
• Unable to open task manager

Hold it! Unable to open task manager? Classic virus / malware. Run some scans.
I thought the same thing! I consider myself tech-savvy, I try to browse safely (noscript + flash disabled), I run Avast antivirus + windows defender...

Avast? That's a piece of garbage and you should use (insert other software here).
I understand Avast has its problems, but for this particular machine it's free and works well enough (or did in the past). For the purposes of this exercise, I would greatly appreciate if we just assume I'm someone dumb who's sticking with Avast in this instance.

So you're stubborn and you got a virus despite your safety measures.
A reasonable conclusion. However, when I poked around I found some odd things:

• Avast scan finds nothing.
• Windows Defender scan finds nothing.
• HijackThis finds nothing.
• Malwarebytes finds nothing (technically still doing file system and heuristic scan, but I'll report if it finds something).
• Things would start working again and it SEEMED like there would be a reason. For example, I might close a web browser, and right click would start working. Or if I closed a text editor window, I might be able to open task manager or launch a command prompt.

Maybe your hard drives are dying.
I considered this, but SMART checks (Crystal Disk Info) on two hard drives and an SSD all indicate good health. I can't find a single negative indicator.

Maybe you have some odd resource-exhaustion?
This would make sense with the "close one application and stuff starts temporarily working" situation. And then I checked my uptime, and the system had been running about a month straight with no reboots. Aha, problem solved! Shutdown and restart.

And then it happened again today.
So now I'm really at a loss. Yet again, right click stopped working. Yet again, audio died. Both times I think the League of Legends client was running. Both days, I had been streaming a bunch of Masters golf tournament.

While trying to figure out the problem today, I think I noticed audiodg.exe (Windows Audio Device Graph Isolation) using about 1GB of private working set RAM. Audio was dead in League, so I tried Internet Explorer just for comparison. YouTube would sometimes play silently, and sometimes play audio but in a really choppy manner, as if the system was under heavy CPU load. I tried to load the Realtek HD Audio Manager, but it wouldn't run at all. I tried killing audiodg.exe too.

Eventually, I somehow got audio working again. It might have been restarting explorer.exe, might have been killing Steam, League etc. audiodg.exe once again runs, and once again shows normal memory usage (20-30 MB). Right click, running programs, task manager etc. all work as expected. I ran some League games with audio and everything was fine.

One possible clue
I did find one hotfix: https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/kb/981013
I apparently have to request an email link to this hotfix, and I don't know if it even applies. It seems odd I never encountered this problem before though, and it can happen in only a day of uptime. Maybe a bizarre League / Flash bug? Both pieces of software have updated recently.


Any other ideas?
It's very odd. I appreciate your time reading this, and if you have any ideas I'd like to hear them.

 

[Hazaro]

adwcleaner
sfc /scannow
memtest 86+
safe mode MBAM / preboot anti virus scan

SMART isn't end all, I'd clone your OS HDD to something else and see if it works. Sounds to me like a Windows corruption caused by HDD issue or memory or power failures.

*And yeah see if issues persist in Safe Mode / without Avast. For a trial period I'd suggest ESET until you pick another free AV.

 

[Blizzard]

adwcleaner
sfc /scannow
memtest
safe mode MBAM / preboot anti virus scan

SMART isn't end all, I'd clone your OS HDD to something else and see if it works. Sounds to me like a Windows corruption caused by HDD issue or memory or power failures.

I forgot to mention I also did sfc /scannow, also with no results.

I haven't done adwcleaner, safe mode MBAM, or memtest yet. Is there a memory test you'd recommend? *edit* I see you mention Memtest86+, thanks.

Thanks for the suggestions.


I should also clarify that the problem didn't happen all day until this evening, so even if I clone a hard drive I'd have to try it for a couple of days to see.

 

[Symphonia]

Avast is more than likely the issue. I had Avast, and ran in to similar issues, such as not being able to right-click the taskbar and being unable to open the task manager. I booted in safe mood, uninstalled Avast, rebooted as per normal, and everything worked fine again. In short, don't use Avast. I use AVG Pro, and it works like a charm.

 

[Ronabo]

run Tron https://www.reddit.com/r/TronScript/

 

[davepoobond]

My guesses:

Power supply doesn't have enough power or it is dying
Right click on your mouse is dying (try an external mouse when it is happening)
Sound card is dying
Not enough RAM
Firefox and flash hasn't been working right in ages and could be doing some funky stuff


You keep mentioning league and Firefox. Maybe if you have both up it is doing something weird with not enough power or RAM

 

[scogoth]

Have you checked event viewer? (seems you check most everything else but didn't mention this)

Check System and Application logs for any warnings or errors.

Next you can try using Process Monitor https://technet.microsoft.com/en-ca/sysinternals/processmonitor to monitor any errant applications for problems.

 

[Blizzard]

Avast is more than likely the issue. I had Avast, and ran in to similar issues, such as not being able to right-click the taskbar and being unable to open the task manager. I booted in safe mood, uninstalled Avast, rebooted as per normal, and everything worked fine again. In short, don't use Avast. I use AVG Pro, and it works like a charm.

When did it happen for you? I've been running Avast on this particular machine for probably 2+ years without this ever happening, and Avast itself hasn't updated this month. I've played tons of League in that time -- the only new thing was streaming the Masters in the last 2 days.

I could believe it being related, but it just boggles my mind that it wouldn't happen until now.

I'm updating Avast itself at the moment and will give it a couple more days just in case it's related and got fixed.

 

[Symphonia]

When did it happen for you? I've been running Avast on this particular machine for probably 2+ years without this ever happening, and Avast itself hasn't updated this month. I've played tons of League in that time -- the only new thing was streaming the Masters in the last 2 days.

I could believe it being related, but it just boggles my mind that it wouldn't happen until now.

I'm updating Avast itself at the moment and will give it a couple more days just in case it's related and got fixed.

It kicked in about two months after installing Avast. I don't know whether an update to Avast had botched it up or not, but I wasn't waiting around to find out. It could well be something else causing the problems, but it just sounds too similar.

 

[Blizzard]

It kicked in about two months after installing Avast. I don't know whether an update to Avast had botched it up or not, but I wasn't waiting around to find out. It could well be something else causing the problems, but it just sounds too similar.

Thanks, maybe I'll have to change after all.

Have you checked event viewer? (seems you check most everything else but didn't mention this)

Check System and Application logs for any warnings or errors.

Next you can try using Process Monitor https://technet.microsoft.com/en-ca/sysinternals/processmonitor to monitor any errant applications for problems.

I have Process Monitor but didn't run it (plus if I get the problem where I can't open applications, I assume Process Monitor wouldn't run).

Good point about Event Viewer.

Application log:
Nothing really strange. I see the errors from the Realtek audio program crashing for instance.

System log:
The only odd warning/error/critical entry in the last two days is a Win32k desktop heap allocation failure. That would suggest a memory problem, but it only happened on one of the two days. However, that particular error has happened twice in the last 3 or so days, and never happened otherwise in the last 1-2 years. Suspicious.

 

[Blizzard]

It finally happened again tonight. Once again, it happened after I was playing League of Legends. I couldn't open task manager / internet explorer etc. until closing a window or two, and then I could run something again.

audiodg.exe is only using a normal amount of memory however, and audio is still working at the moment.

Once again, the Realtek control panel either doesn't launch or launches and has a corrupted window. Once it's open, I can't close it via either the X or via the task bar.

 

[Lactose_Intolerant]

Try playing Dota for a few nights and see if you get the bug.

 

[Finaika]

My new computer is haunted too.

 

[Blizzard]

Post-mortem: This literally hasn't happened once since I stopped playing League of Legends. The few other games I played (Firewatch, Mirror's Edge) had no issues.

So I'm chalking it down to some strange combination of Avast, LoL, Windows 7 audio, and/or audio driver issues.