Windows is Performing a Maintenance Task...

...it will shout down automatically. Really? Exactly what task is it performing? Is it a major task or a minor task? How long will it take? Eights minutes, or 8 hours?

I hate this blank screen with no indication of what task it is performing nor how long it will take. You're simply get locked out of everything without warning and have to watch the wheel of fortune loop, and loop, and loop.

Not only that, it doesn't give you any warning as to when or where it will decide to shut you out. Very unprofessional MS.

Mine locked me out the other day and 10 hours later, the little circles were still looping. I finally disconnected the power. Did it finish the maintenance?

 

Wow that is lame, Did it happen with win 7 or 8.1? Also did it occur while in windows or during a shutdown or startup? Do the always reliable logs shed any light?
Do you have anything out of the ordinary in scheduled tasks??

I am always glad to play the straight man !

vvvvvv

 

That's Windows 8; Win7 would never do anything like that to you. I'll stop at this point.

 

With Win8 my CPU frequently runs at 25% while idle with the system process, and fans spin up. I have no clue what it's doing. As soon as I move my mouse it drops back to 0%.

Beamed from my G2 Tricorder

 

It's gotta be a Windows 8 thing because i've seen on my laptop when it was running W8. I double clicked on the maintenance icon and all it said was it was performing needed maintenance.

Funny how after switching back to W7 my laptop doesn't randomly force itself to sleep while i'm using it.

 

" Windows 8 introduces a new feature that allows you schedule and run Automatic Maintenance on your computer. The task when run, will carry out task like Defragmentation, Disk Volume Errors, System Diagnostics, etc and also includes Protection scanning and security standards scanning on all enterprise workstations.

In Windows 7 and earlier versions, performance and energy efficiency are impacted to a certain extent, but in Windows 8, this maintenance activity, is designed to run in the background – in a prioritized fashion - with limited user interaction and minimal impact to performance and energy efficiency.

Automatic Maintenance in Windows 8 will run daily and will combine all the background maintenance activity, like updating of Windows software, apps, attending to Action Center messages, running background maintenance tasks, etc, without negatively impacting performance and energy efficiency. It will allow the user to be to be in control of maintenance activity scheduling and configuration too.

The process is named MSchedExe.exe, and it is located in the System32 folder. To access Automatic Maintenance in Windows 8, open Control Panel and navigate to Action Center. Here under Maintenance, click on the small arrow on the right side. This will expose Automatic Maintenance. If you find that this is not being monitored, you may click on Turn on messages about Automatic maintenance."

http://www.thewindowsclub.com/automatic-maintenance-windows-8

 

None of these things require a reboot.

I used Win8 from before official launch day and it *never* did this. Ever. Not once. The maintenance indicator in the taskbar I see sometimes when my machine is idle (my 8.1 gaming rig is doing it right now) but again, never a spontaneous (or requested) reboot.

I suspect something else is at play, and perhaps a screenshot is in order. Event Viewer may also shed light on the issue.

 

In Windows 7 it does some background maintenance too, but it's stealthy about it. The hard drive starts defragging or whatever, and the user is left wondering why the hard drive is chugging away. Even weirder, when they do *anything*, the drive suddenly becomes quiet. MYSTERY.

Win8+ not only performs more background maintenance tasks (like updating Store apps automatically, if selected) but it puts a little indicator that the user can identify.

I also have a handful of Win8.1 machines here, have used Win8 on them, and have several Win8 machines in production at my client. NONE of them have ever had a reported incident of it "randomly force itself to sleep while i'm using it."

 

Where is this mysterious indicator you speak of because I never see one, just my system decides to run hotter and spins up the fan and system process is running at 25% CPU.

 

I was running Windows 8/8.1 on a 2009 Toshiba Satellite and for some unknown reasons it would just go into sleep mode randomly whether I was using it or not. It just decided when it was time for a nap by golly it was going to sleep.

The only way around that was using a utility called DontSleep. It has never been a problem with Windows 7 so that's what i'm using now. I kinda missed the aero look as well.

 

You will see a clock like icon attached to the action center flag icon on your taskbar when Windows 8/8.1 are doing "maintenance". I've never had any problems with maintenance myself, never caused any shutdowns or anything like that.

It would be nice if it told you what the heck it is actually doing though.

 

It just says maintenance in progress and nothing else.

 

I had this problem with the bloatware-ridden factory install of Windows 8 on my Lenovo. It went away after doing a clean install.