f..ng downloads folder crashing

[enyaw]

My turn to ask for advice. As it says in the title. I've tried booting in safe mode, even taken out the drive to put in a reader no dice. My guess is the damn eval of windoze 10. My documents, videos, and music folder work fine. I even did a system refresh but that didn't help the downloads folder still hangs. Should I just wait til the final release to see what happens with it? Yes I have some torrents, but they were fine up until last weekend.

thanks,

as a last resort, do you guys think I should empty it and see what happens?

 

[SkyRider]

My turn to ask for advice. As it says in the title. I've tried booting in safe mode, even taken out the drive to put in a reader no dice. My guess is the damn eval of windoze 10. My documents, videos, and music folder work fine. I even did a system refresh but that didn't help the downloads folder still hangs. Should I just wait til the final release to see what happens with it? Yes I have some torrents, but they were fine up until last weekend.

thanks,

as a last resort, do you guys think I should empty it and see what happens?

By "downloads folder", you mean stuff you download from the Internet? Do you keep all that stuff on your internal harddrive?

 

[enyaw]

yes I do and yes it is on the internal. I googled file explorer crashing and now I'm reading about (com surrogate) but the surrogate is part of windows not malware. I also see that the hard drive is running at 99% when I open the downloads folder. Do you think I could rename it/relocate it/delete it or just hang in there? I mean the folder. I can get to most of my stuff, by other means. I even tried getting to it via, c drive/users etc. It crashed

when I click on the com surrogate and choose end task, the drive usage drops but I still can't go in there it will start everything all over

I scanned the folder and 2 pups came up, got rid of them and same thing. I've always kept stuff in the folder without a problem. The files stay there til I edit/downsize or install them. Never had any issues before. I send them to the external after awile

 

[SkyRider]

I send them to the external after awile

External storage is the safest. Even safer is to have a dedicated computer for your valuable stuff that is never connected to the Internet.

 

[enyaw]

I do have 2 clean machines, the one I'm referring to is what I call my "slut" box lol. I have a laptop and 3 pullout drives. If anyone comes up with some solutions/ideas to try, I'm all ears. If not I'll use as is til the next patch from windows, or just roll it back to windoze 8.1

 

[WoodPeckr]

I also see that the hard drive is running at 99% when I open the downloads folder.

Do you mean your PC is running at 99%, as shown when you open: 'task manager' > 'performance' ?

Of this is the case I suspect you picked up some 'nasties', causing your PC to MAX out and crash. You really can't do anything else if this happens till you find out what caused it and remove it. Security scans should find it and remove it.

 

[enyaw]

I scanned it with malwarebytes 2 pups which are minor. Got rid of them. Scanned it with avast, trial found 1 item which was a pup. A pup is not malware, more like a tracking cookie isn't it? Yeah when I open task manager it says 99% disk use til I close (com surrogate) which shows up at 11.9mb. If I choose end task, the % drops to below 10%

I was reading somewhere that changing some folder settings will allow me to get in there. What I do now is install anything I need as soon as the browser is finished downloading, and if it's a torrent I can right click and send it to my documents.

 

[enyaw]

I wiped the drive, time for a clean up anyway. Business as usual here. I guess it's because I don't format my "slut drive" that frequently it kind of freaked me out. Backed up my shit, and all is well

 

[WoodPeckr]

A drive reformat usually cleans things up nicely.

Yeah when I open task manager it says 99% disk use til I close (com surrogate) which shows up at 11.9mb. If I choose end task, the % drops to below 10%

COM Surrogate looks like it is the culprit.

After your PC has been running awhile and is just 'idling', not running anything and you then open task manager > performance, PC should show about 0-2% resource usage. 10% is still on the high side while idling, unless you run certain apps in the background at PC startup, using up PC resources.

I turn off all the background crap, so Windoze and Linux only shows 0-2% resource usage while PC is idling.

 

[enyaw]

thanks woody, I tried all kinds of shit then just gave up. It wasn't worth the hassle. I didn't really format, I just told windows to go back to a brand new state. And the option to delete everything on the drive. It's kind of the same thing but much faster. I would call that a true system restore, even user name gone lol

the part I like the most is, all of my drivers are there no need for any disks/downloads. I turned my printer on just to see and whamo discovered

 

[SkyRider]

I wiped the drive,

A drive reformat usually cleans things up nicely.

But, don't you lose all your stuff on that drive?

 

[WoodPeckr]

But, don't you lose all your stuff on that drive?

Yes! You lose everything. You then have to fully update your M$ OS then install all your fav apps/programs. A real PIA! Used to do this twice a year when running XP but after it was done the PC always ran FAST like it was brand spanking new!

This was another motivating factor that led me to move to free Linux where all this BS is NOT NEEDED!......:thumb:

 

[enyaw]

that's a 2 pronged question, I had all the software I used on the external and I said I backed up all my shit beforehand. Hey that's part and parcel for windoze. I really didn't lose anything, backed up. How hard is it to reinstall not download your fav apps again. I'd say less than an hour. And the OS took about 40 mins. Worth it Win 10 doesn't need much updating, it's a baby. And you can do it in the background while doing other things

 

[WoodPeckr]

... I had all the software I used on the external and I said I backed up all my shit beforehand. Hey that's part and parcel for windoze. I really didn't lose anything, backed up. How hard is it to reinstall not download your fav apps again. I'd say less than an hour. And the OS took about 40 mins.

Did something similar.
Had and extra HDD with a clean updated version of XP Pro with all my fav programs/apps/browsers, even AV on it.
Then used Seagate DiscWizard to format the dirty main drive clean and reinstall/transfer all over again from the ext drive to the main drive......took 30 minutes! Then PC was good to go.....

 

[Twister]

Maybe also run a seagate diag, to make sure you didn't sprout a bad sector right where that folder was...

 

[enyaw]

I've used the seagate wizard in the past but I have a question. Does it only work on seagate drives? and the fact you have to go in there and physically swap out the drives. I picked up an actual hd cloner, standalone. Think of it as a dual cassete deck. Copies every single file verbatim

http://www.startech.com/ca/HDD/Duplicators/USB-3-Hard-Drive-Duplicator-Docking-Station~SATDOCK2REU3

something like this but my model isn't there a bit older. And you don't need a computer just the source and the blank

 

[WoodPeckr]

I've used the seagate wizard in the past but I have a question. Does it only work on seagate drives? and the fact you have to go in there and physically swap out the drives.

When I first used DiscWizard years ago it worked on all make drives. Now believe it only works on Seagate drives but I may be wrong. It was amazing and easy to use. Believe it's a clone app of Acronis True Image.

And yes you have to physically swap out the drives, but never had problems doing that. Gave me a chance to clean up and vacuum out the box, something that should be done yearly.....lol

 

[enyaw]

aye aye capt'n, I prefer my stand alone cloner though esp with my setup, pullout enclosure