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We have several windows 10 machines (notebooks), various version ranging from 1803 to 1903, showing the same symptoms: when shutting the computer down, a popup appears trying to kill a process but resulting in an unresponsive program message:

HardwareMonitorWindow

Translation of text in image:

Program is unresponsive

Click on Cancel to go back to windows and check the status of the application

Click on End now if you want to terminate the application right away. Non-saved data will be lost if you terminate the application now.

I've tracked this down to an (or multiple) office instance(s) (mostly excel, but have seen onenote on some occasions) still running, without an actual application running. I assume that closing a workbook somehow fails to close all process and resulting in a "ghost" process.

The symptoms vary from no occurances to 1 popup to even several (10+). It seems to depend on the nummer of office instances opened during that day.

When going through task manager, we can localize the "ghosted" processes and killing those results in a proper shutdown.

Could anyone shed a light what causes those processes to "ghost".

Environment:

  • Office 365 Proplus
  • Old and new installations of windows
  • Different AD users
  • No event logs entries about this issue

roplus

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8
  • It would appear users are trying to shut down without saving documents (any kind) and this is the message that results. Try a couple of test machines personally and ensure all documents are saved before shutting down.
    – anon
    Commented Feb 25, 2020 at 14:59
  • @John: my computer is one of the devices with these symptoms, and I have a CTRL+S addiction, so I'm quite sure not saving the documents is not the issue. I also make sure none of the applications is open anymore.
    – Terry
    Commented Feb 25, 2020 at 15:42
  • Look in Task Manager (Programs and Processes) before you close the next time. Is there an app still running or process that should have closed and did not? Also look in Security / Maintenance, Reliability History and see if there is a sequence of errors that tie into tthis.
    – anon
    Commented Feb 25, 2020 at 15:45
  • Are these documents stored on network drives? Are you able to provide an English translation for the error?
    – Burgi
    Commented Feb 26, 2020 at 10:44
  • @Burgi added in question
    – Terry
    Commented Feb 26, 2020 at 13:57

1 Answer 1

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I'm having the exact same issue since we upgrade from Windows 10 1709 to 1903 Therefore we created a case at Microsoft. Microsoft suggested to remove Ivanti Workspace manager because of user roaming issues. Could this help you out?

Edit 16-06; We figured it out with the help of Microsoft Please review the registry key;"HKLM\SOFTWARE\Policies\Microsoft\Windows\System\AllowBlockingAppsAtShutdown" This should be set to "0" but was set to "1" in our case. Since we changed this, the error doesn't occur anymore.

This setting correspond with the GPO setting; Computer Configuration > Administrative Templates > System > Shutdown Options. --Turn off automatic termination of applications that block or cancel shutdown.

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3
  • We don't use this 3rd party software.
    – Terry
    Commented Mar 30, 2020 at 9:42
  • I can see why this would resolve the problem. But imagine an excel document you have worked on and you shut down your computer. You wouldn't receive a notification you have unsaved changes as you disabled that in the registry. That behavior is on by default for a reason I think, so would it be wise to turn that of?
    – Terry
    Commented Jun 26, 2020 at 6:27
  • Hi Terry, The default setting is "0" if you do a clean install We changed this setting and now if we don't save a document and try to shut down a proper dialog box pop-up asking if we would to save the document. So imo setting this to "0" is actualy improving this behavior
    – Herby
    Commented Jul 30, 2020 at 10:07

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