Windows Start Menu Locked Up, unable to restart machine.

Hi All,

I installed Windows 1703 and replicated all previous steps I took with 1709.  

It installed fine, and after the reboot no issues. 

The issue has something to do with 1709.

That's not a legit answer.

Hi,

Thanks for replying.  As this has sometime to do with the SOPHOS' internal mechanics and Windows, it is beyond me to fix it. I am unsure why SOPHOS have not fixed it yet, but I can not provide any other answer than to re-install. 

I am sorry for the inconvenience.

If anyone gets this please respond. We are getting this on every new Dell machine we deploy. We do a fresh install of Windows 10 Pro, Install all updates and then Sophos.

With nothing else on the machine it becomes unusable. Right now we have no answer and have tried everything we can think of to test and fix.

If you have other software such as Malwarebytes active protection it can cause simliar behavior but this is happening on vanilla workstations out of the box with nothing installed.

Just opening task manager 100% the CPU and takes up to a minute to release and open.

Hi We are also experiencing this issue. In addition to the start button we noticed edge and settings do not function either. The problem seems to be worse if doing a reboot of windows 10. We have tried rebuilding windows 10 3 times and on a new disk but still it fails.

We have noticed  this problem on 3 systems we know of and assume more users are affected. We will log a case as this issue needs resolving urgently.

Kevin

Hi

My laptop, which was working fine now no longer works. I had to uninstall SOPHOS, reboot and then it worked.

I've also just had a client who has SOPHOS Home who is unable to use their machine now.

I think it is Hitman Pro

Can you explain please?

Are you saying for at least some time if you shut the machine down and do a cold start instead of rebooting it did not happen? Is that what you mean?

The profile thing is just strange I will try that on my lab machine now.

Interesting, I was unaware of the profile part.

So, if you leave SOPHOS AV installed, but remove InterceptX, are you getting resolution?

What use to work was, install 1706 or some earlier version, and then update to 1709 (or the latest) and everything will be fine, however, this does not appear to be the case.

Lodging a ticket with SOPHOS is going to take a while, but maybe I have to.

I am unsure about this Shut Down / Restart thing, this is new, did you find these action affected this bug?

FYI we have a partner ticket open with escalation and I will post the details here for sure.

Wait how long has this been a known issue? I thought we found a bug not something that has been known for a long time. That is very concerning.

In our test lab (about 20 machines) every IX the machine is basically toast. With that said I did a new Dell yesterday with only EPA and it did not blow the machine up but it ran poorly. For example it took about 45 seconds to open task manager. We ad no choice but to deploy it without protection other than Windows Defender because of time constraints.

FYI we have a partner ticket open with escalation and I will post the details here for sure.

Wait how long has this been a known issue? I thought we found a bug not something that has been known for a long time. That is very concerning.

In our test lab (about 20 machines) every IX the machine is basically toast. With that said I did a new Dell yesterday with only EPA and it did not blow the machine up but it ran poorly. For example it took about 45 seconds to open task manager. We ad no choice but to deploy it without protection other than Windows Defender because of time constraints.

I ran into this mid october.  I downloaded the latest ISO from MS under SPLA and used that install. I fully deployed the machine, and installed SOPHOS, great. I then was about to ship to client when I forgot to install some custom app they use.  When I went to install it, Start Button wasn't working.  I spent a good 4-5 hours working on the assumption that Windows was faulty. (I couldn't understand how a fresh install could go so wrong).  In this time, I reinstalled the machine following the exact steps, same issue. So I knew it wasn't a bad install etc.

After giving up, I Re-Installed again and noticed that it only happened when SOPHOS was installed and rebooted.

I then downloaded the prior version of Windows, installed SOPHOS and no issue.  I then updated to 1709 and it was stable and fine.

My laptop, which I had to remove SOPHOS from was installed over a year ago, so the version of Windows 10 has no issues with SOPHOS, but just 2 days ago, I had the exact issue, start button dead unless I spam right click to make it come to life a bit, Windows Apps gone, everything running in slow motion.

I am now DEEPLY concern I am going to be getting support calls about this, and i have no recourse but to remove SOPHOS. EMBARRESSING!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Yes we are in the same boat. We are new partners and luckily have only deployed about 8 sites. Still enough to be bad although right now the only thing saving us is this users mostly have not been forced to update to the latest Windows OS. With that said we have already been absolutely roasted by the companies having the issue. Several folks were down all day before we could figure out what was going on. All happening on new machines but was it caused by removal of old product (Intune) etc.

We then started deploying on fully updated machines in the lab and that did not go well.

Oddly I can confirm that I just took a machine that was totally whacked, logged in as administrator (had not been used at all), shut down, cold boot, logged in as whacked user and it seems fine now. WTH

I can say that some of the machines we had issues with did not show the problems right away so it remains to be seen if this holds up.

If this was reported that long ago and not looked in to deeply I am a bit shocked.

I've logged an urgent case here in the UK, I've been doing various tests for the support here. The L2 support seem to be aware or have heard of this issue. Does anyone know if this issue has already been escalated  and if so any numbers so we can attach? My support case is: #7862295

Regards

Kevin

We are facing the same issue with different fresh installs of Windows 10 and re-installs of EPA.

Machine performance goes down and Start Menu freezes. 

Hi Michael,

Yep totally agree this is what we are experiencing as well. This morning I have a newly built system with pretty much nothing else installed other than Sophos and it freezes in the same way, Start menus, Edge and Settings.

I have a case open here with support they are investigating  my procmon outputs and SDU logs.

Regards

kevin

Any Updates?

Everyone I was in contact with seems to have gone dark.

I was able to try an older computer this weekend. I installed Sophos then the 1709 update and it seemed to work although there was an revision update to the client and it was installed without IX

No, I still have the same issue. I think I have worked it out. 

It is the same issue SOPHOS originally had, Windows Defender.

Even though  SOPHOS disable certain things, Defender is still running, more specifically, Exploitation Protection by Windows Defender.

I went through and disabled these AND THEN i went to GPO and disabled it there. 

After reboot, my start button worked.  Unsure if co-incidence or not, or if it actually fixed, did this last night.

Okay thanks for the info...

Windows Defender I don't think is the issue we have had issues with and without.

You must be special we had this opened for weeks and cant even get an update.

I can confirm in each instance we log out and back in to a new profile it seems to work. We are trying a beta release but we did not get clear indication if that is a shot in the dark or an actual fix. We have not received any feedback about what exactly or superficially causing the issue, at this point we are assuming its a guess.