Legacy API Shutdown

Fokke Nauta wrote:

VanguardLH wrote:

Fokke Nauta wrote:

OK, but it did not restart. It just hung.
Well, Windows... I thought 10 would be OK.

How long did you wait after the shutdown event?

Hardly a minute.
After it crashed, and its shares were gone, I pushed the power button in
order to switch it off. It didn't, but rebooted.

Did you press the Power button and hold it for 4-6 seconds, or just push
and release the power button? Press and hold should have the firmware
force a power off; i.e., it overrides anything by the OS for power
control. Yanking the power cord from the PSU effects the same as
pushing and holding the Power button for 4+ seconds.

But the server did not come back.

I have seen that with some updates. I had to force off the power (press
and hold the Power button for 4 seconds), power on, and choose in the
boot menu to go into safe mode, then reboot and it came up okay in
normal mode.

This was a lot easier in prior Windows versions. I think it was the F5
key to get Windows to present its boot-time menu. With Windows 10, and
without going to its desktop (which may not be reachable if the boot
keeps crashing or hanging), you have to get it to count several boot
failures to get it to present the boot-time menu. When the Win10 logo
appears, remove power (press and hold the Power button or yank the
cord). Do that 2-4 times and Win10 eventually decides it will present
the boot options menu.

Then I decided to pull the power cord out, waited 10 seconds
and plugged it back in again. Then I started the server.
And this haappened two days.
The update itself took place last Saturday.

Was that for the LanguageFeatureOnDemand update you mentioned, or were
there other updates? Did you check the Windows Update history?

https://www.thewindowsclub.com/windo...update-history

Hanging on a cold boot is sometimes caused by a driver change or
hardware that won't initialize. After you managed to get into normal
mode for Windows 10 (you got to the desktop in normal mode), have you
since tested if Win10 will reboot okay (doing a cold boot, not a hybrid
or other power-mode reboot)?

Part of the boot sequence is to have a reset signal sent to each
hardware component to put it in a known starting state. I've had
hardware that wouldn't reinitialize (e.g., winmodem) with a reboot. I
had to remove power so a cold boot got performed which sent a reset to
the device to put it in a known state so the driver could communicate
with it.

I'd check the WU history to see what showed up recently, especially
anything that runs in ring zero of the OS, like drivers. I'd also test
if rebooting still encounters a problem but cold booting does not.

Fokke Nauta wrote:

I feel more towards your approach. I will write a batch script, which
will disable the BITS and WU services, and which will enable and start
them on each first Monday of the month, when I check for and perform
updates on all the systems here and when I make my monthly backups on
external hard disks. Afterwards they will be disabled again.

While I do the updates monthly, I wait a couple weeks after Patch
Tuesday (i.e., third Tuesday of the month) before I perform the monthly
update check. Lets me see what problems were encountered by the
involuntary early adopters. However, with Microsoft releasing updates
with severe defects, I'm changing my reminder to show on the last
Saturday of every month hoping there's been enough time by the early
adopters to reveal problems with that month's Patch Tuesday updates.

https://www.computerworld.com/articl...nths-ever.html

VanguardLH wrote:

cut

I keep WU services disabled. When I decide to get updates, and after
saving a backup image (system restore sucks and is not reliable), I
enable the WU services and check for updates. After the updates have
completed, I do a reboot even if not mandated and then disable the WU
services again. WU is off until I decide it is on.

This is a good idea.
I use Macrium reflect Free to make an image of the system partition each
month. I do that on all our systems. In a few occasions I needed to put
an image back - and that saved my day.

When I see the time in the right lower corner, is that the BIOS or the
Windows time? But this time is synchronized every hour by the internet.

The clock shown by Windows is the OS clock, not the RTC (real-time
clock) in the hardware. The RTC is used to track time when the computer
is off hence the need for a CMOS battery to power the RTC. Actually the
RTC runs all the time either powered by the 3V standby when the computer
is on or off (the PSU still provides 5V standby to the power-on logic on
the mobo which is cut down to 3V to power the RTC chip). During boot,
the OS reads the RTC to get the time; however, thereafter the OS uses
its own clock to track time.

Never realized that there are multiple time systems.

The RTC uses a crystal to keep time. The OS clock uses software. If
the OS gets heavily loaded, the time will drift hence the need to
periodically synchronize the OS clock with a time server using NTP
(which could be a server host in your network that gets its time from
another NTP server or your host connects to a 2nd-tier NTP server).
That's the point of the Windows Time service; however, some users prefer
a more easily configurable "atomic clock" utility (I use Socke****ch).
The OS clock has a GUI where you can, for example, define which NTP
server to use (if not pushed by domain policy) but you can add more or
different ones under the following registry key:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\Curr entVersion\DateTime\Servers

I use 1st Atomic time for that. It runs on the file server and
synchronizes its time every our with a Dutch internet time site.
All other systems are synchronized every hour by the time of the server.

Microsoft's NTP server is, by default, the one configured for use by
Windows. That means it is the most heavily used NTP server (for that
OS). Servers can too busy to accept additional requests, so your host
might have to retry many times. Another choice is NIST's servers which
thankfully Microsoft already included. I decided to add my own from the
local university's NTP server. There are other registry settings on
when to poll the NTP server and other config options. Rather than delve
into the registry, I use Socke****ch to do the time sync.

cut

I'm getting curious to your batch files.

I wish I could remember but there is a 3rd service involved in Windows
Updates. I would disable it if I could remember it just to be thorough
in killing off WU until I decide to enable it. For now, my batch files
contain the following. I might've added ERRORLEVEL check but that
doesn't work with service starts and stops. sc would return a status
code when it issues the request (to stop or start), not when the service
actually starts or stops. I could add loops to keep checking if the
service stopped or started as requested with a timeout but that's too
much work for something that has worked okay each time I use these batch
files. I just added a pause for me to see if the commands worked okay.

Batch file: WU-enable.bat (needed before checking for updates)

@echo off
cls

echo __________________________________________________ __________
echo.
echo Enable BITS (Background Intelligent Transfer Service) ...
sc.exe config BITS start= demand
echo.

echo __________________________________________________ __________
echo.
echo Enable Windows Update service to Manual startup mode ...
sc.exe config wuauserv start= delayed-auto
echo Start Windows Update service ...
sc.exe start wuauserv
echo.

echo __________________________________________________ __________
echo.
echo Hit any key to end ...
pause nul
.................................................. ....................

Batch file: WU-disable.bat (kill WU to prevent updates)

echo off
cls

echo __________________________________________________ __________
echo.
echo Stop BITS (Background Intelligent Transfer Service) ...
sc.exe stop BITS
echo Disable BITS ...
sc.exe config BITS start= disabled
echo.

echo __________________________________________________ __________
echo.
echo Stop Windows Update service ...
sc.exe stop wuauserv
echo Disable Windows Update service ...
sc.exe config wuauserv start= disabled
echo.

echo __________________________________________________ __________
echo.
echo Hit any key to end ...
pause nul

Thanks!
I never expected it to be that simple to control services by the command
line.
I use TCC/LE as a command processor on all our systems. I will create my
own batch files - be it somewhat based upon yours.

I run these batches manually using shortcuts to the .bat files. You
could add events in Task Scheduler (ran under admin privs) to allow the
services to be enabled only at those times you want auto updates to
occur. Since wuauserv is running only when I choose, I can leave it in
loaded (auto) waiting for a request from the WU client - because
wuauserv won't be running after the updates complete, so it doesn't
matter if it is disabled or set to auto (triggered). Actually I could
probably change from Automatic (Delayed) to just Automatic since delayed
is only to help boot-time performance of Windows, and I'm not running
these batch files during boot-time. Since the OS is already booted,
Automatic (Delayed) is effectively the same as Automatic. For when I
use the batch files, delayed-auto and auto would be the same.
Similarly, I haven't bothered to edit the registry setting for the delay
(HKLM\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\services\AutoStartD elay, doesn't exist
until you create it). I think the delay is 120 seconds after the last
Automatic service has been requested to start (not when all Automatic
services have actually started). I don't have sc.exe define triggers
because I do want wuauserv to run for whatever calls it (which is when I
run the WU client).

If Paul wants to comment on my batch files, I'll be happy to see what he
has to say for improvement. Maybe he'll remember what is that 3rd
service employed by Windows Update that I could add; however, since that
service is only under Windows 10, I'd be using the batch files on
Windows 7, too, with the result that sc would report an error of no such
service. I probably could just disable/enable the wuauserv service to
keep Microsoft from changing the state of my computer at their whim.


Fokke

On 23/08/2018 20:26, VanguardLH wrote:
Fokke Nauta wrote:

VanguardLH wrote:

Fokke Nauta wrote:

OK, but it did not restart. It just hung.
Well, Windows... I thought 10 would be OK.

How long did you wait after the shutdown event?

Hardly a minute.
After it crashed, and its shares were gone, I pushed the power button in
order to switch it off. It didn't, but rebooted.

Did you press the Power button and hold it for 4-6 seconds, or just push
and release the power button? Press and hold should have the firmware
force a power off; i.e., it overrides anything by the OS for power
control. Yanking the power cord from the PSU effects the same as
pushing and holding the Power button for 4+ seconds.

But the server did not come back.

I have seen that with some updates. I had to force off the power (press
and hold the Power button for 4 seconds), power on, and choose in the
boot menu to go into safe mode, then reboot and it came up okay in
normal mode.

This was a lot easier in prior Windows versions. I think it was the F5
key to get Windows to present its boot-time menu. With Windows 10, and
without going to its desktop (which may not be reachable if the boot
keeps crashing or hanging), you have to get it to count several boot
failures to get it to present the boot-time menu. When the Win10 logo
appears, remove power (press and hold the Power button or yank the
cord). Do that 2-4 times and Win10 eventually decides it will present
the boot options menu.

Then I decided to pull the power cord out, waited 10 seconds
and plugged it back in again. Then I started the server.
And this haappened two days.
The update itself took place last Saturday.

Was that for the LanguageFeatureOnDemand update you mentioned, or were
there other updates? Did you check the Windows Update history?

I never checked the update history. I perform all updates in blind
faith. But I just learned from your other post that that's not the right
thing to do.

https://www.thewindowsclub.com/windo...update-history

Hanging on a cold boot is sometimes caused by a driver change or
hardware that won't initialize. After you managed to get into normal
mode for Windows 10 (you got to the desktop in normal mode), have you
since tested if Win10 will reboot okay (doing a cold boot, not a hybrid
or other power-mode reboot)?

Part of the boot sequence is to have a reset signal sent to each
hardware component to put it in a known starting state. I've had
hardware that wouldn't reinitialize (e.g., winmodem) with a reboot. I
had to remove power so a cold boot got performed which sent a reset to
the device to put it in a known state so the driver could communicate
with it.

I'd check the WU history to see what showed up recently, especially
anything that runs in ring zero of the OS, like drivers. I'd also test
if rebooting still encounters a problem but cold booting does not.


Under "Quality updates" there was an update on 22/08/2018. It says
Update for Windows 10 version 1709 for x64 based systems (KB4090007). It
was sucessfully installed.
On 18/08 there were other updates - obviously the ones I let install.

Fokke

On 23/08/2018 21:21, VanguardLH wrote:
Fokke Nauta wrote:

I feel more towards your approach. I will write a batch script, which
will disable the BITS and WU services, and which will enable and start
them on each first Monday of the month, when I check for and perform
updates on all the systems here and when I make my monthly backups on
external hard disks. Afterwards they will be disabled again.

While I do the updates monthly, I wait a couple weeks after Patch
Tuesday (i.e., third Tuesday of the month) before I perform the monthly
update check. Lets me see what problems were encountered by the
involuntary early adopters. However, with Microsoft releasing updates
with severe defects, I'm changing my reminder to show on the last
Saturday of every month hoping there's been enough time by the early
adopters to reveal problems with that month's Patch Tuesday updates.

https://www.computerworld.com/articl...nths-ever.html


Interesting link. Untill now I have allways blindly let the updates go
their way, in full believe it would be OK. Gonna change that approach now.

Fokke

On 23/08/2018 20:25, VanguardLH wrote:

cut

Well, thanks to your batch files there are now two new icons on the
desktops of our W10 systems. Disable and Enable services.
I rewrote them in order to be handled by our TCC/LE command processors,
and they are individualized.

But this was a good idea.
Thanks, again!

Fokke

Fokke Nauta wrote:

On 23/08/2018 20:25, VanguardLH wrote:

cut

Well, thanks to your batch files there are now two new icons on the
desktops of our W10 systems. Disable and Enable services.
I rewrote them in order to be handled by our TCC/LE command processors,
and they are individualized.

But this was a good idea.
Thanks, again!

Fokke

While it is possible to use environment variables to track the state of
toggling a single batch file, so one batch file could be used to both
enable or disable the services, that could lead to confusion as to what
is the state of the services since the user may not remember how many
times they ran the batch file. Alternatively, and perhaps a more
interactive solution, the user could be prompted as to whether they
wanted the services to be disabled or enabled. The 2 .bat files could
be rolled into 1 .bat file with prompts asking the user which way they
wanted the services: enabled or disabled. For batch files, I could use
the 'choice' command to present a list of choices (e.g., Enable,
Disable) and the script would run the sc commands based on my response.
I suspect TCC has something similar, like choice, select, or switch,
rather than having to chain a couple 'if' commands.