Since last night some programs won't start while others do

[nerotic]

Some programs do launch normally but others, whether at startup or manually just sit there eating CPU and use exactly 3.29mb of RAM.

I''m not even sure where to begin with this. Any pointers would be appreciated.

SFC and DISM both come back clean.

 

[Trouble]

You might want to try clean booting your system as described here
https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/kb/929135
Easily done, easily undone.

Basically you're just disabling all the Startup Items and All non-Microsoft services.
Be sure to check the box to hide Microsoft Services, as you don't want to accidentally disable any of those.
See if that helps you sort the wheat from the chaff

NOTE: After configuring your machine to Clean Boot, if that seems to provide any relief from the problem you will then have to take some time and determine what the offending program, service / process might be.
Carefully and deliberately one non-Microsoft service at a time or in very small groups re-enable them, rebooting after each change to observe any changes. Then graduate to the Startup items again rebooting after each change.
Understanding that in some cases, a Startup item may have a non-microsoft service associated with it and as a result you may not notice the impact until both the Startup item and the service are re-enabled.

 

[nerotic]

This is a strange one. I use an app called Startup Delayer (see attached) to stagger my machine's app and service launches for a quicker startup.

Because of this I've already seen that it's not an issue of the applications being sequential.

So in this case, in order.
Plex Service Tray
CouchPotato
DUC
Sublight
Trillian

Red apps/services "lock up" as in the first screenshot while the green ones launch normally.

Even stranger, if I uninstall Plex Service Tray and reinstall it starts normally. However at the next boot it fails again.

Other applications such as Trackerr or Google Play Desktop Player (https://github.com/MarshallOfSound/Google-Play-Music-Desktop-Player-UNOFFICIAL-) won't even install without encountering the same fate.

 

[nerotic]

After going as far as to reset NTFS permissions and owners and still not gaining any ground I gave it a good think.

Since it was the exact same programs each time, I could install new ones without fanfare I decided to check my security setup which is Hitman Pro Alert and BitDefender Free.

I uninstalled both and everything started working again. I remembered that BitDefender had not just a definition update but also an application update and that's about when my problems started.

I've reinstalled HMP and still working fine, going to install BitDefender shortly and see if it was an isolated issue.

Hopefully this is helpful to someone else down the line.

 

[Trouble]

Glad to hear that you've managed to track it down.
Thanks for sharing your experience.
Much appreciated.