After reinstalling Windows 7 Ultimate 64-bit SP1, sometimes processes take a long time to shut down. This happens most often when you start them from VS2010, but this is not limited to this. A common case is a Windows application with a console (/ SUBSYSTEM: console), which seems to close properly, but the console remains open for seconds or minutes. In the end, the message “press any key to close” appears on the console, and the process can be completed.
How can I diagnose this problem?
- I installed Windows 7 Ultimate 64-bit SP1, but this time the version of vanilla (and not N)
- The only driver I installed manually was the NVIDIA display driver, but I tried several versions of WHQL
- Symptoms closely match. Visual Studio debugging console sometimes remains open and cannot be closed. However, even non-connected applications will be affected.
- Both native and managed applications suffer from this.
- WRONG: I believed that only 32-bit processes were affected, but 64-bit were also affected.
- if the debugger is already connected and I interrupt during the process, the debugger says:
The process seems to be at a standstill (or not a single user-mode code is running). All threads are stopped.
- I cannot connect the debugger to the process while it is in this state
- I cannot kill these zombie processes from the task manager or ProcessExplorer, even when closing all the handles that belong to the specified processes. (I can't close lsass.exe with handles, though)
- ProcessExplorer says the single-thread freeze function is that every hanging process has ntdll! RtlDosSearchPath_Ustr.
- In most cases, I have to close Visual Studio completely so that the zombie processes close.
- The last event that Process Monitor sees during a hang in each case is the exit from the thread, which succeeds, and it looks like the exit takes normal time. When the process finally closes, no events show.
- LiveKd shows nothing when I follow the steps described at http://blogs.technet.com/b/markrussinovich/archive/2005/08/17/unkillable-processes.aspx
It seems that a bad driver is the culprit, so I will reinstall Windows soon.
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