Generic Host Process for Win32 services...

[Charlie]

Hello,
New user here so please forgive me if this has been answered before, but a search found nothing.

After installing Cumulus and running it for a few days, I noticed that file and printer sharing was no longer working properly on my machine. A reboot later and I got a Windows dialog box that "Generic Host Process for win32 Services encountered a problem and needed to close". Networking will work properly again for some time - then stop working again. I got the message on every reboot. The problem would return whether or not I ran Cumulus, so I did not believe Cumulus was the root cause of the issue.
After a week of scanning with every virus, spyware, defender, registry repair, etc., tool I could find, I uninstalled Cumulus and the problem has not returned.

Any thoughts? (Windows XP SP3)

[steve]

Cumulus doesn't install anything into system folders, and uninstalling Cumulus has no effect other than to delete the installed files, so there's no difference between not having Cumulus running and not having it on your system, if you see what I mean, so it's highly unlikely that uninstalling Cumulus fixed the problem.

I don't really know what to suggest; Google has lots of hits on that error message and a number of suggested fixes.

[Charlie]

Thanks for the quick response, Steve!
I did chase the message on google, and most replies pointed to some sort of infection - hence the unsuccessful massive house cleaning before I tried removing Cumulus. It may also be that Cumulus changes something while running that causes the process to crash on the next reboot. This is definitely "needle in the haystack" stuff.
I'm going to let the machine run for a few days to be completely certain the issue is gone, then re-install and see if it returns. I'll let you know what I find. This machine is loaded with tons of software and it's possible there are conflicting variable or dll names. Or it might be the weather station itself since I unplugged it's USB port at the same time as the uninstall. I'll keep you posted on what I find.
I really hate to lose this program - it's almost exactly what I was looking for.

[steve]

I did chase the message on google, and most replies pointed to some sort of infection

I've noticed when searching for solutions to problems on the web that most of the time at least one person will say "it's a virus" when that is actually the least likely cause. Very annoying!

Or it might be the weather station itself since I unplugged it's USB port at the same time as the uninstall. I'll keep you posted on what I find.

Possibly. Or possibly the way Cumulus reads the data from the USB port...

[mattb]

Charlie

If you do manage to find a way to get rid of it let me know, I have the same problem on another machine (not running Cumulus).

I'm thinking of doing a rebuild on that machine to fix it.

Matt

[Charlie]

After 24 hours of running clean, I installed EasyWeather so I could see if the issue is related to USB. It's been happy for 12 hours now so the only thing left is Cumulus. I'll download a clean version (just in case) and install it over the weekend to see if the issue comes back. The fun continues...

[Charlie]

A quick update:

After about 18 hours, Easyweather caused the problem too. Since this happens so rarely, it must be a timing issue with accessing the HID. I likely have some other USB device that is not playing nicely with others. The good news is Cumulus can come back. The bad news is I now need to spend a couple weeks wading my way through several other devices to find the culprit.

A bit more info if you are interested... I use a program called RegRun to flag any changes to the registry or start up sequences. It will flag that windows has scheduled a dump request for the next reboot. At this point file and printer sharing does not work, nor does the audio mixer (can't change audio volume). There may be other issues, but at this point I reboot. The machine then sends a report off to Microsoft and disables the "generic host process for win32 services". I reboot a second time and life is good (until it isn't again if you get my drift).

The fun never ends!

[malc-c]

To be honest you could spend so much time trying to hack the registry and still have problems, as it would be to wipe the machine and perform a fresh installation.

If you are having issue with file and print sharing and locating other PC's on the same network then the issue would appear to be un-related to Cumulus and or EW. There was an issue with a MS update prior to SP3 causing this issue and MS even released a separate update for it. However it seems that often the MS automatic update routine tends to screw things up. You could try the following:

1.Go to the start menu
2.Right click "my computer"
3.Click "properties" then the "automatic updates"
tab
4.Choose "turn off automatic updates"
5.Reboot your computer
6.Go back to start menu and in all programs go to "windows update" you have to be
connected to the internet.
7.Manually update windows.
8.Turn your automatic updates back on.

Failing that, it's down to you, if you still want to spend hours googling possible fixes. Me I would wipe the drive and re-install XP

[Charlie]

Just to wrap up this thread, I think I have the final fix. I've now run 4 days without an incident.

Let me preface by saying I have a couple machines and chose this one because it is always on. The machine is used for everything - my business, personal records, communications, and storage. It has a pair of 1/2 TB disks in a RAID array for protection that are about 80% full and it's used 10-12 hours every day and powered up 24 x 7. So the suggestion to just wipe it and reinstall would not be an option until I'd exhausted everything else. It probably was not the best idea to also use it to play with "experimental" software, but then I never claimed to be smart

Anyway, the root cause seems to have been a bad Logitech USB mouse. My PS2 mouse got flaky and I replaced it with a USB model just a day or so before I bought the weather station, installed Cumulus, and the problems started. I'm now using a different mouse in a different physical port.

Note also that the nature of the fault seemed to be messing up some registry entries associated with Winsock. (XP and socket errors are common) I removed all USB devices and reset winsock with the netsh command, then went back to my PS2 mouse for a few days with no errors. I then added devices until the problem came back. I junked the mouse, reset winsock again, added a new mouse, and so far, so good! (crossed fingers)

Anyway, sorry for suspecting Cumulus - it's back running happily and I'm learning a ton from this forum! Thanks for an excellent tool!