Windows 7 | Chuck's Tech Blog

Random Black Screens with nVidia Graphics Card and Windows 7

For several months, I had dealt with an increasingly frustrating issue with my monitor’s screen suddenly going to sleep. Nothing I could do, aside from unplug it from the desktop and plug it back in, could get it to wake up. It certainly wasn’t a monitor issue (though I had those too), as swapping the monitor resulted in the same behavior. It wasn’t a cable issue, nor was it an issue with Windows power settings. I had narrowed it down to single point of failure – driver issues. My NVIDIA driver kept crashing and its frequency was increasing. It went from only happening in games to happening in Office and general browsing.

I had taken some steps to fix this – reverting to old drivers, installing new drivers from a completely clean slate. Nothing worked. Then I found this thread on the EVGA forums. The thread included details that matches my symptoms, down to the event log. According to that thread, it was an issue between the driver series and Windows 7. Even reverting to old drivers didn’t work as I simply hadn’t gone back long enough, as this issue has plagued the driver series for months.

So, I did what any sane person would do – I upgraded to Windows 10.

It has been two weeks now and not a single crash or blip in the event logs about a driver crash.

Now if you are having a similar issue, what do you do? Upgrading to Windows 10 for free ends December 31^st, so after that you will need to pay a hefty sum for a license. I wish I can say I have a fix for users still on Windows 7 (aside from going back long enough on the driver history to avoid the bad drivers), but perhaps the thread above will.

The User Profile Service Failed the Logon Fix

Recently we had a very interesting issue. On two domain connected machines, users were not able to log on for the first time without getting “The User Profile Service failed the logon” error message. This isn’t the first time we had this issue and have fixed it before following Microsoft’s instructions.

However, in this case none of the fixes worked to solve the issue. There was no entry for the user to edit in the registry and no profile to copy.

What did fix the issue, is so long as an admin can still log into the computer (which in this case two admins could) then we could elevate the domain user account to a local administrator. It’s weird, but once that happens then the user can log into the machine normally. Once they log in you can remove their account from the local administrator group and their account will still function like normal.

It’s a quick and easy fix, but a bit of a bizarre one.

Know a better way, please comment below!

Windows 7 Stuck on Checking for Updates? Use the Windows 7 Update Readiness tool.

Windows 7 may be dead (at least according to Microsoft), but I have found myself still working on many Windows 7 machines. I also still end up with the occasional new computer that I am tasked to bring up to date and deploy for a client.

One particular issue I have found with either new Windows 7 computers or fresh Windows 7 installs is when I begin the computer’s first check for updates. Often it will take between one to three hours for the computer to go from Checking for Updates to actually having updates to install.

However, there have been a few times (including a machine I am working on now) where Windows 7 Updates is stuck on ‘Checking for Updates’. It doesn’t seem to matter how long it runs for, it will always stay at ‘Checking for Updates’.

The first time I ran across this mess I ran it for three days before calling it quits. I have had computers take a few hours to find updates before, but after three days then you know it’s a lost cause.

Thankfully there are a several ways of fixing this, but for now I will just cover the two that has consistently worked for me.

Update Windows Update Agent

This one can be a fairly quick fix. Simply download the update agent and run it. This has worked a couple of times for me, however if that fails then it’s time for the Windows Update Readiness Tool.

The Windows 7 Update Readiness Tool

This tool isn’t the easiest to find. As a matter of fact, it’s buried below all the other Microsoft support pages for Windows 7 Update issues. Despite the various standalone FIXIT programs they offer, this tool has worked every time where the others fail.

Simply download the tool and run it. Be warned – this will take a very long time as the software scans the updates on the system and searches for updates that are needed. Even on a machine with 12GBs of RAM and a speedy SSD, it took over an hour for the scanner to do its job. Worst case, you can probably run it overnight.

Once the tool does its job, simply follow the prompts and install the updates.

It should be as simple as that! Granted there might be a different update issue you are having than the one I listed here. Unfortunately I do not have the answers for them all I’m afraid, but this one is one that hopefully helps for those whose updates get stuck on ‘Checking for Updates’.

Do you have any questions or tips? Comment below!