Windows Start Menu Locked Up, unable to restart machine.

Apologies I did not explain this too well. I have one user where if we shutdown and start it up each day, it generally works ok, but will fail if a restart is done for whatever reason. We suspect other uses are doing this. Another system seems to fail more consistently whether starting up or a doing a reboot. We spent a lot of time rebuilding systems trying to isolate the issue and found adding a second windows user profile helped a little instead of shutting down and rebooting each time trying to get it to work. So log out of one profile and into the second one and back again and this seems... to work, well as a poor workaround I know. Kevin

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 totally agree, like you and others we cannot leave systems unprotected. We are a new Sophos customer only since November. I stuck my neck out to get Sophos and now we have this. I will be talking, to my supplier tomorrow as well logging a case and escalate it as I guess this is the only way to get priority for a resolution.

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.

Hi all, Sophos got back to me today and advised to just install only the advanced endpoint and not Intercept x or login with non-admin accounts. It is escalated to the Dev team. We can’t work with non-admin accounts so I’m taking Intercept x off the failing systems. They could not give an approx time for a patch but this is what they are working towards with MS. Kevin