[SOLVED] Windows 8 Automatic Maintenance Stop Maintenance Not Working

writhziden

writhziden

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Alright, I will be the first one to post this problem since according to Microsoft, I am the only person to experience the problem so far with Windows 8. My Action Center is currently stuck with Automatic Maintenance running. It continues to show Maintenance in progress even when I click Stop maintenance, and the Action Center flag icon in the task bar notification area constantly shows the clock icon with the message that Maintenance in progress is occurring when I hover the mouse over it.

MaintenanceInProgress.PNG

ActionCenterNotification.PNG


I have tried restarting, I have tried leaving it alone for hours to see if it finishes, and I have contacted Microsoft Answer Desk to get support with the problem. The Microsoft Answer Tech escalated it to the second level of support, and he was told that I was the first to experience the problem and there is not yet a known solution to it. I thought I might get some ideas here from our experts. In Scheduled Tasks, I see a Regular Maintenance scheduled task that started around 9:30 AM and is still running over seven hours later. Automatic Maintenance is supposed to only run when the system is idle and it is supposed to stop within a couple seconds of idle ceasing: Automatic Maintenance (Windows)

RegularMaintenanceRunning.PNG


Any ideas how to get Maintenance to stop?
 
Seeing five other Maintenance tasks that successfully ran, are there additional details to that particular Maintenance task item that hasn't ended?
 
At 9:32:07,
Task Scheduler stopped instance "{74542aa4-8cf1-4095-8e83-823d94716baa}" of task "\Microsoft\Windows\TaskScheduler\Regular Maintenance" because computer is no longer idle.
Click to expand...
. It seems like it stopped it, but the ending of the task did not register to the scheduler nor to Action Center...
 
Try a real shutdown and reboot, meaning hopefully you know how to turn that Windows 8 hibernation shutdown mode feature off, otherwise you aren't really shutting down your PC. That's probably why a restart didn't work as far as I know. It's all in your power options. Windows 8 'cheated' with portraying it to being faster at the boot process, it only really happens once, and past that, you're already in, until you do a full shutdown again where the BIOS has to reinitialize and test your hardware.
 
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The restart does that automatically. It is only shutdown that uses hibernate instead of doing a full shutdown.

Thinking you might be onto something anyway, though, I did try turning off the fast startup feature:

  1. From the Start page type Shutdown Settings
  2. Click the Settings Icon on the right of the screen.
  3. Click Change what the power buttons do on the left of the screen.
  4. Click Change settings that are not currently available
  5. Scroll to bottom of Dialog box.
  6. Uncheck the box titled Turn on fast startup (recommended).
  7. Click Save Changes button.
  8. Exit Power Options Dialog box.

Above steps taken from When I try to log off i get error "no disk in drive x:/ - Microsoft Community


I then turned off the system completely and let it sit for 30 seconds. After booting into Windows a minute later, the problem still exists; my system still thinks Maintenance in progress is the state of the Automatic maintenance feature.
 
It was a little cloudy about the Restart, but I heard about the Shutdown... I again didn't do much research, but I do know that there is a shutdown hibernation mode.

Problem still persists though, hmmm. I'm thinking now that, just like Windows updates. There is a storage location that is checked at some point in time which tells the PC that there was a pending action or unfinished action even before the PC was shut down. Windows 7 uses this kind of strategy to tell the system "wait, before you start any of the processes, we may need a handle on those in order to make some changes, THEN you can start up". Noticed the updates would start somewhere at the stage of the secure desktop?

Perhaps Microsoft carried this method over to this maintenance thing...? I can't see any other reason why it would still recognize that it's in Maintenance.
 
The good news is that the maintenance in progress message does not appear in safe mode. The bad news is that it comes back in normal mode.

Safe Mode does not allow scheduled maintenance to run.
 
Alright, I also tried a disk cleanup with no success. I did find a solution, though. Here are the steps:

  1. Click the lower left corner to open the Start screen.

  2. Type Schedule tasks in the Start screen

  3. Click Settings

  4. Click Schedule tasks

  5. Go to Task Scheduler Library\Microsoft\Windows\TaskScheduler

  6. Right Click Regular Maintenance

  7. Click Properties

  8. Click the Settings tab

  9. Put a check in the box to Allow task to be run on demand

  10. Click OK

  11. Right Click Regular Maintenance again

  12. This time, click Run

  13. Right Click Regular Maintenance a third time

  14. And this time, click End

Problem solved!!
 
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writhziden said:
Alright, I also tried a disk cleanup with no success. I did find a solution, though. Here are the steps:

  1. Click the lower left corner to open the Start screen.
  2. Type Schedule tasks in the Start screen
  3. Click Settings
  4. Click Schedule tasks
  5. Go to Task Scheduler Library\Microsoft\Windows\TaskScheduler
  6. Right Click Regular Maintenance
  7. Click Properties
  8. Click the Settings tab
  9. Put a check in the box to Allow task to be run on demand
  10. Click OK
  11. Right Click Regular Maintenance again
  12. This time, click Run
  13. Right Click Regular Maintenance a third time
  14. And this time, click End

Problem solved!!
Click to expand...
Hi writhziden, I have a similar problem and was so excited to find this thread. Unfortunately the steps as posted did not work for me. My problem started after I had to force shut down when the system froze. Don't know if that makes any difference. Do you have any suggestion? Anyone else?

Thanks
 
I have seen this occur on my own system where the steps I gave previously did not work. Speaking with Microsoft support led me to believe this was supposed to be fixed in one of their updates, so make sure you have all updates installed. As I said, even with all updates on my own system, this still occurs occasionally. The only guaranteed solution I've found for my own system is to leave the system alone for a few hours or overnight, and it is usually sorted the next time I use the system.

Are you still getting the message after four days have passed?


Apoligies for the slow response; life has had me over a barrel the past few weeks.
 
Hi, I'm having similar problems to what's described. The problems started after installing the June updates. A lot of people say that KB2821895 (servicing stack update) is causing all kinds of problems!!!:banghead:

Here's the long tale:-

Never had any problems with automatic maintenance or Action Centre until June/July. After that series of updates I noticed that 'maintenance was in progress' for a long time. Checked to see that TiWorker.exe was taking up a lot of CPU. That task eventually failed or I restarted. After that the message 'Automatic maintenance was delayed. Please run now' displayed in action centre is always present. The recommendation was to run DISM and then SFC so that sfc /scannow finds nothing afterwards. This was done succesfully.

I've tried other recommendations like in Maintenance in windows 8 gets always delayed - Microsoft Community. This recommends running the regular maintenance task manually. This results in 'maintenance in progress' until shutdown.

I believe that the maintenance function is working mostly(Update etc), but something is broken after that servicing update. I honestly hope that MSFT is working on a patch for this because some others have frozen machines because of this. Hopefully Windows 8.1 completely reworks the servicing stack again to eliminate these problems which are annoying and for some destructive!!!

Any suggestions would be appreciated and spread the word to MSFT for those that are close to the company.
 

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