Significant delay / freeze when opening CC

[cavjj]

Hi there, thanks in advance for any help on this. Happy to poke around my system and send over any info that may be of assistance.

Upon opening CC I should usually expect a lengthy freeze before it starts to function. Freeze presents itself as open but unresponsive - with the cursor changing to the rotating blue circle. The 'health check' tab is selected but no content appears in the tab. Freeze can last anywhere between 10 to 30 minutes. The info bar at the top displays (Not Responding) during the freeze but program will eventually kick into life and operate normally.

Trying to click inside the program, or forcing closure causes system instability and a full restart is then required.

I do appreciate this may be an issue somewhere else in my system but not having problems with other programs.

CC ver: 6.07.10191
Win 11 Pro 64 bit, version 21H2, build 22000.1219
Intel Core i7-9700K @3.6GHz
32GB Ram
SSD
Nvidia card with relevant drivers
Realtek audio

Edited December 30, 2022 by cavjj
Extra system info

[nukecad]

1 hour ago, cavjj said:

Upon opening CC I should usually expect a lengthy freeze before it starts to function. Freeze presents itself as open but unresponsive - with the cursor changing to the rotating blue circle. The 'health check' tab is selected but no content appears in the tab. Freeze can last anywhere between 10 to 30 minutes. The info bar at the top displays (Not Responding) during the freeze but program will eventually kick into life and operate normally.

That isn't normal at all.
It should be seconds at the most not minutes.

The fact that it does eventually respond is interesting though, most people wouldn't have the patience to leave it that long so thanks for that.

It does sound like something in your computer/setup.

First of all I'd turn off Fast Startup it's enabled by default but can cause issues - you don't need it with an SSD anyway.
https://www.makeuseof.com/windows-11-turn-on-or-off-fast-startup/

Restart the computer, use 'Restart' not 'Shutdown' (that makes sure that it is a full restart), and try CCleaner again.

Next let's rule out a faulty CCleaner installation.
Download the 'Slim' instaler from here: https://www.ccleaner.com/ccleaner/builds
(It installs the same CCleaner but does the install slightly differently).

Once downloaded double click on 'ccsetup607_slim.exe' to reinstall CCleaner - don't uninstall the existing one first.
Doing it like that will keep your CCleaner licence key etc. in the new install if you have a Pro licence.

Does CCleaner launch normally now?

Are you using a 3rd party Antivirus, if so which one and what version number ist it?

[cavjj]

Thanks so much for getting back to me.

I’m not currently using 3rd party anti virus though have historically used Norton on this machine. It’s currently uninstalled. 

Deactivated Fast Startup via the registry, restarted, no change. The delay / freeze is still present.

Installed slim version as requested, also no change. Left the original version installed as requested, and it did pick up my premium licence. 

I totally understand this could be an issue elsewhere on my machine but if there’s any benefit to devs/community in searching for this error or conflict then I’m more than happy to keep looking. Really appreciate your response.
 

 

[hazelnut]

@cavjj

Press the Windows start flag on your taskbar and immediately type the word reliability. No need to put the word in a box or anything as Windows will automagically do it all for you.

Click on View Reliability History, let it load and see if any errors show up for the date and times CCleaner fails to start.

If an error shows, click on it to see what it says.

[cavjj]

No entries for CCleaner on the problem reports log. 

[hazelnut]

19 minutes ago, cavjj said:

No entries for CCleaner on the problem reports log. 

Any entries for anything else?

[cavjj]

[PICPro]

Do you have a very large winapp2.ini file?  Even the untrimmed winapp2.ini file from the forum thread here can cause a long delay just as described above, then works fine after.

[Nergal]

8 hours ago, cavjj said:

Freeze can last anywhere between 10 to 30 minutes. The info bar at the top displays (Not Responding)

 

7 minutes ago, PICPro said:

cause a long delay just as described above, then works fine after.

Not that long, you're talking about a delay that could take seconds or minutes but not 10-30 min .  That sounds more like a blocked server, but i haven't re-read the thread so i don't know where we are on troubleshooting (and am too lazy to do so). 

Thank you for the suggestion though, all ideas can breed reasons and causes .

Edited December 30, 2022 by Nergal

[hazelnut]

@cavjj I do realise it may take a while to look at the things below because of your issues with CCleaner opening slowly.

What happens if you turn off your network and then run CCleaner?

What happens if you choose Custom Clean as default on CCleaner and then run it?

What Processes show as using the most CPU in your Taskmanager when you try to run CCleaner?

What items do you have running at start-up on your machine (can be seen under Start-up tab in TaskManager.)

Did you upgrade to Win 11 or was it already on the machine?

Are all your Win updates done and you have done a full restart of your machine (not a shutdown, it must be a restart)

[cavjj]

30 minutes ago, hazelnut said:

@cavjj I do realise it may take a while to look at the things below because of your issues with CCleaner opening slowly.

What happens if you turn off your network and then run CCleaner?

What happens if you choose Custom Clean as default on CCleaner and then run it?

What Processes show as using the most CPU in your Taskmanager when you try to run CCleaner?

What items do you have running at start-up on your machine (can be seen under Start-up tab in TaskManager.)

Did you upgrade to Win 11 or was it already on the machine?

Are all your Win updates done and you have done a full restart of your machine (not a shutdown, it must be a restart)

- Machine is a custom build laptop from PC Specialist, about 2 and a half years old. Shipped with Win 10, I changed to Win 11 pretty soon after its public release. I’ve previously had CCleaner running fine with Win 11.

- Win updates are all done to my knowledge, version number and build is in the original post. I do try and keep drivers on the machine up to date (usually through CCleaner actually) but the optional driver updates via the windows updates screen have all been done as well.

I’ll get back to you with the other queries on what’s happening while CCleaner runs a little later today. I really do appreciate everyone who has spent a bit of time on this and I do get it’s NYE as well.

[hazelnut]

This is the Windows build you are on.

https://support.microsoft.com/en-gb/topic/november-8-2022-kb5019961-os-build-22000-1219-92b05506-99a5-449f-b3fa-c9bc96b19b67

Perhaps do a manual check for updates (Start-Settings-Updates and Security then press check for updates) as there are Windows Modules installer errors showing for you it may be Windows is having an issue doing the December update)

[nukecad]

15 hours ago, Nergal said:

That sounds more like a blocked server,

That was my thought too.
Although it would be odd for it to suddenly become 'unblocked' after 10 to 30 minutes, I can't think of any reason why that would happen regularly?
(I could see it happening as a one off perhaps).

Hazelnut's first suggested test of running CCleaner when disconnected from the net should show if it is indeed a server connection error.

[cavjj]

5 hours ago, hazelnut said:

This is the Windows build you are on.

https://support.microsoft.com/en-gb/topic/november-8-2022-kb5019961-os-build-22000-1219-92b05506-99a5-449f-b3fa-c9bc96b19b67

Perhaps do a manual check for updates (Start-Settings-Updates and Security then press check for updates) as there are Windows Modules installer errors showing for you it may be Windows is having an issue doing the December update)

So this is strange - when I was starting this thread yesterday I went through this, searched for any new updates which said everything was up to date. By now there is a new Win 11 update KB5021234 which is failing to download. I note through searching elsewhere that others have had this issue. I'm currently going through the in built troubleshooter and will look at deleting any files by deactivating WindowsUpdate via services.msc and deleting the contents of the update folder. However.. I'm now running file corruption scans via command prompt as I got a 1503 error in services.

My issues with CCleaner started approx 3 weeks ago - maybe a bit longer?

Quote

What happens if you turn off your network and then run CCleaner?

 

 

Quote

Hazelnut's first suggested test of running CCleaner when disconnected from the net should show if it is indeed a server connection error.

This was interesting. On running this test, the same behaviour continued, though the freeze was a lot shorter in duration - 3 or 4 minutes. On opening the program a second time, it ran fine. This is new behaviour, previously no matter how many times I opened CCleaner the freeze was present. I'll run this test again.

 

Quote

What items do you have running at start-up on your machine (can be seen under Start-up tab in TaskManager.)

As little as possible. Currently a mouse driver (pximouse) and Realtek Audio. Everything else is disabled.

I'll take a look at Task Manager's CPU tab and running Custom Clean in CCleaner when I've run this corruption scan.

[nukecad]

55 minutes ago, cavjj said:

This was interesting. On running this test, the same behaviour continued, though the freeze was a lot shorter in duration - 3 or 4 minutes. On opening the program a second time, it ran fine. This is new behaviour, previously no matter how many times I opened CCleaner the freeze was present. I'll run this test again.

That is interesting, especially the fact that it hung at first and then ran fine the second time.
And it sounds similar to a thread from earlier this week.

What are your settings in Options>Updates?

Try unticking them both and see if that makes any difference to the launch time.

(Because of the earlier thread being similar I'm thinking that the connection to the CCleaner update server might be having an issue. It may even be that the server is getting overloaded with update check requests as a consequence of making Automatic Updates available to users of CCleaner Free? Which in turn could possibly explain why it suddenly connects after 10-30 minutes of trying).

[hazelnut]

@cavjj

I take it you are running a SFC ? (system file check)

I would be inclined to make sure I was online, do cmd prompt as admin and run Dism, then reboot afterwards.

DISM.exe /Online /Cleanup-image /Restorehealth  then press enter (note spaces before forward slashes.)

You have quite a few odds and ends in errors and running Dism should deal with them.

May I suggest in future to only get your drivers through Windows or from the website of which ever manufacturer did the laptop components.

Keep the info coming.

 

[hazelnut]

@cavjj

Don't worry if you feel uncomfortable with any of the suggestions we have given and don't want to do them at the moment. After all, it is your machine 

Just let us know how you are getting on.

(by the way, running Dism does not set your machine back to how it was when you first got it, all your stuff will still be there)