Start11 Random Crashes & High CPU

Start11 Periodic no-input crashes & S11Search oddly very high CPU usage

from Stardock Forums

Hi. I'm a long time user and lover of Start11. I've been having 2 major issues that have progressively appeared and disappeared over the past while.

Windows 23H2 22631.4169. Start 11 2.11. 

1. Start11 Search (S11Search.exe & S11Search64.exe) have very high CPU usage after a while.

While working, or even leaving my computer idle Start11 Search starts using a ton of CPU and makes a noticeable difference on games, and other workloads. I kill the process, and CPU use normalizes. The next time Start11 Search starts the CPU usage is normal. After an unknown amount of time (usually < 1hr) the CPU usage spikes to noticeable high numbers. This high CPU usage sometimes disappears on it's own, but it's very strange behaviour for the following reason:

I hate Windows' useless search, and don't use the Start Menu search for anything but programs. I create YouTube videos, often showing my computer, so I hide everything from the start menu but programs - to keep sensitive file names private. These are my Indexing Options:

 

The only indexed file is: C:\Users\tcno\AppData\Local\Stardock\Start10Ctrlpnl, where all of the shortcuts for control panel things are.

Start 11 Search options:

I am messy, and very busy, so I leave thousands of files in my Downloads folder, and other places. I also work lots with Node.js, so I have many node_modules folders with near infinite numbers of files in them. Over 6 drives I have 19.5TB space, with 8.9TB free. Files for each are: 60,887 - 723,314 - 952,191 - 377,426 - 1,278,228 - and on my C drive over 4 000 000. I would understand if it was indexing all of my drives but it should be indexing none of them. It also does not have any drive usage at the time of high CPU.

I even tried removing S11Search64.exe from the Program Files x86/Stardock/Start11 folder, then copying and renaming S11Search.exe to it. This only temporarily made a difference before an hour or so ticked by and the S11Sarch high CPU load kicked in again. There was no difference on my x64 system between the native x64 version and the x86 version.

 

2. Periodic crashing of Explorer.exe often without user interaction

While writing this I had 2 crashes of Explorer.exe. The first led me to finally detail my issues here on the forum, and the second was when I searched the Start menu for "Indexing", and clicked the Indexing Options item which opened the window seen above. That crash was caused again by the same dll, even though it was clicking on the Start11 Start Menu.

This is incredibly annoying as I have multiple windows open for multitasking and often need to reopen all explorer windows to get back to where I was a moment ago. Other windows stay unaffected, it's only Explorer.exe. The desktop goes blank/gray and comes back after Explorer.exe restarts. Windows as a whole is okay, no BSOD no nothing.

The first crash (random, and happens between every 10 minutes and an hour):

Faulting application name: Explorer.EXE, version: 10.0.22621.4169, time stamp: 0xdf363a33
Faulting module name: Start10_64.dll, version: 2.1.1.0, time stamp: 0x66d9d587
Exception code: 0xc0000005
Fault offset: 0x00000000000c7d6d
Faulting process id: 0x0x2768
Faulting application start time: 0x0x1DB3C1CE5E5C03E
Faulting application path: C:\WINDOWS\Explorer.EXE
Faulting module path: C:\Program Files (x86)\Stardock\Start11\Start10_64.dll
Report Id: ec82b5ad-b69a-4c9a-9e23-728f4e1c00f8
Faulting package full name: 
Faulting package-relative application ID: 
Other possibly useful info:

The second crash (user-input caused):

Faulting application name: Explorer.EXE, version: 10.0.22621.4169, time stamp: 0xdf363a33
Faulting module name: Start10_64.dll, version: 2.1.1.0, time stamp: 0x66d9d587
Exception code: 0xc0000005
Fault offset: 0x00000000000ca563
Faulting process id: 0x0xBFC0
Faulting application start time: 0x0x1DB3DC446C0846D
Faulting application path: C:\WINDOWS\Explorer.EXE
Faulting module path: C:\Program Files (x86)\Stardock\Start11\Start10_64.dll
Report Id: 97fa51a2-d2a6-468f-8931-0057ce9d838c
Faulting package full name: 
Faulting package-relative application ID: 

 

I have set up WinDbg and am waiting for another crash so I can hopefully upload a crash log.


I run a lot on my computer. As we speak I have VSCode, Brave with 86 tabs, Firefox with 1 tab, NordVPN, ESET, OBS, Steam, KeePassXC, ShareX, GitHub Desktop and Thunderbird running. This is my usual workload with the brave tabs fluctuating between 10 and 100... Depending on my laziness and "I'll check this later"-ness

Doing different activities seems such as intensive gaming, to just spotify and news reading has no effect on the frequency of the random explorer crashing, or high CPU usage. I am truly at a loss here.

Any help would be appreciated.

Thanks for your fantastic product.

EDIT: I have a dump. I am uncomfortable uploading it here as I'm unsure of the content included from my memory - Lots of sensitive stuff running. (also it's massive so I'm waiting for a possibly smaller one. Lots of explorer.exe stuff was open while I was getting file counts of my drives) Is there a way I can privately get a download link of the dump to you? I also asked on the Discord but haven't heard back yet.

start menu products
1,960 views 6 replies
Reply #1 from Stardock Forums Top

Hi. I'm a long time user and lover of Start11. I've been having 2 major issues that have progressively appeared and disappeared over the past while.

Windows 23H2 22631.4169. Start 11 2.11. 

1. Start11 Search (S11Search.exe & S11Search64.exe) have very high CPU usage after a while.



While working, or even leaving my computer idle Start11 Search starts using a ton of CPU and makes a noticeable difference on games, and other workloads. I kill the process, and CPU use normalizes. The next time Start11 Search starts the CPU usage is normal. After an unknown amount of time (usually < 1hr) the CPU usage spikes to noticeable high numbers. This high CPU usage sometimes disappears on it's own, but it's very strange behaviour for the following reason:

I hate Windows' useless search, and don't use the Start Menu search for anything but programs. I create YouTube videos, often showing my computer, so I hide everything from the start menu but programs - to keep sensitive file names private. These are my Indexing Options:

 

The only indexed file is: C:\Users\tcno\AppData\Local\Stardock\Start10Ctrlpnl, where all of the shortcuts for control panel things are.

Start 11 Search options:



I am messy, and very busy, so I leave thousands of files in my Downloads folder, and other places. I also work lots with Node.js, so I have many node_modules folders with near infinite numbers of files in them. Over 6 drives I have 19.5TB space, with 8.9TB free. Files for each are: 60,887 - 723,314 - 952,191 - 377,426 - 1,278,228 - and on my C drive over 4 000 000. I would understand if it was indexing all of my drives but it should be indexing none of them. It also does not have any drive usage at the time of high CPU.

I even tried removing S11Search64.exe from the Program Files x86/Stardock/Start11 folder, then copying and renaming S11Search.exe to it. This only temporarily made a difference before an hour or so ticked by and the S11Sarch high CPU load kicked in again. There was no difference on my x64 system between the native x64 version and the x86 version.

 

2. Periodic crashing of Explorer.exe often without user interaction

While writing this I had 2 crashes of Explorer.exe. The first led me to finally detail my issues here on the forum, and the second was when I searched the Start menu for "Indexing", and clicked the Indexing Options item which opened the window seen above. That crash was caused again by the same dll, even though it was clicking on the Start11 Start Menu.

This is incredibly annoying as I have multiple windows open for multitasking and often need to reopen all explorer windows to get back to where I was a moment ago. Other windows stay unaffected, it's only Explorer.exe. The desktop goes blank/gray and comes back after Explorer.exe restarts. Windows as a whole is okay, no BSOD no nothing.

The first crash (random, and happens between every 10 minutes and an hour):

Faulting application name: Explorer.EXE, version: 10.0.22621.4169, time stamp: 0xdf363a33
Faulting module name: Start10_64.dll, version: 2.1.1.0, time stamp: 0x66d9d587
Exception code: 0xc0000005
Fault offset: 0x00000000000c7d6d
Faulting process id: 0x0x2768
Faulting application start time: 0x0x1DB3C1CE5E5C03E
Faulting application path: C:\WINDOWS\Explorer.EXE
Faulting module path: C:\Program Files (x86)\Stardock\Start11\Start10_64.dll
Report Id: ec82b5ad-b69a-4c9a-9e23-728f4e1c00f8
Faulting package full name: 
Faulting package-relative application ID: 
Other possibly useful info:

The second crash (user-input caused):

Faulting application name: Explorer.EXE, version: 10.0.22621.4169, time stamp: 0xdf363a33
Faulting module name: Start10_64.dll, version: 2.1.1.0, time stamp: 0x66d9d587
Exception code: 0xc0000005
Fault offset: 0x00000000000ca563
Faulting process id: 0x0xBFC0
Faulting application start time: 0x0x1DB3DC446C0846D
Faulting application path: C:\WINDOWS\Explorer.EXE
Faulting module path: C:\Program Files (x86)\Stardock\Start11\Start10_64.dll
Report Id: 97fa51a2-d2a6-468f-8931-0057ce9d838c
Faulting package full name: 
Faulting package-relative application ID: 

 

I have set up WinDbg and am waiting for another crash so I can hopefully upload a crash log.


I run a lot on my computer. As we speak I have VSCode, Brave with 86 tabs, Firefox with 1 tab, NordVPN, ESET, OBS, Steam, KeePassXC, ShareX, GitHub Desktop and Thunderbird running. This is my usual workload with the brave tabs fluctuating between 10 and 100... Depending on my laziness and "I'll check this later"-ness

Doing different activities seems such as intensive gaming, to just spotify and news reading has no effect on the frequency of the random explorer crashing, or high CPU usage. I am truly at a loss here.

Any help would be appreciated.

Thanks for your fantastic product.

EDIT: I have a dump. I am uncomfortable uploading it here as I'm unsure of the content included from my memory - Lots of sensitive stuff running. (also it's massive so I'm waiting for a possibly smaller one. Lots of explorer.exe stuff was open while I was getting file counts of my drives) Is there a way I can privately get a download link of the dump to you? I also asked on the Discord but haven't heard back yet.

End of quote

If you can privately message me the link I can get it looked into.

Reply #2 from Stardock Forums Top

Sent 2.

I will see if I can catch more dumps. I'm not too sure what I can do about the high CPU usage from the search exe... If there is something more I can do, please let me know.

Thanks!

CursorFX - Customize your Windows cursor
Reply #3 from Stardock Forums Top

I experienced a few more crashes. I completely reinstalled Windows keeping none of my programs or settings because it was getting slower - thought that may have been it.

Nope. Reinstalled. 100% HDD health according to smart, and same issue. After reinstalling Start11, configuring how I like it and letting it run, Windows Explorer started crashing. All of my explorer windows closing.

I'm afraid I'm being pushed closer to just a full uninstall of Start11, as it's reliably causing issues. I've DMd you another crash dmp captured on this brand new install of Windows - As well as a backup of my settings in Start11. For now I've disabled "Use Start11 search in the Start11 start menu" to see if it will help.

I really want to keep Start11 on my computer. It does a ton of work for the aesthetics Windows just doesn't provide.

Reply #4 from Stardock Forums Top

Quoting TroubleChute, reply 3

I experienced a few more crashes. I completely reinstalled Windows keeping none of my programs or settings because it was getting slower - thought that may have been it.

Nope. Reinstalled. 100% HDD health according to smart, and same issue. After reinstalling Start11, configuring how I like it and letting it run, Windows Explorer started crashing. All of my explorer windows closing.

I'm afraid I'm being pushed closer to just a full uninstall of Start11, as it's reliably causing issues. I've DMd you another crash dmp captured on this brand new install of Windows - As well as a backup of my settings in Start11. For now I've disabled "Use Start11 search in the Start11 start menu" to see if it will help.

I really want to keep Start11 on my computer. It does a ton of work for the aesthetics Windows just doesn't provide.
End of TroubleChute's quote

We have been looking into your crashes and thank you very much for the DMP files.  They are extremely useful when trying to find the cause of a reported issue.  Google didn't like the 22GB DMP file so we couldn't look at that one but probably similar.

Two of them are nothing to do with Start11 at all.  One was a hang (when dragging something in a file dialog) and another was a crash in AdobeCrashProcessor.exe.  Unfortunately WinDBG when set as default postmortem debugger catches all crashes and apps sometimes crash silently in the background more than you might think (Onedrive and AMD driver apps on a box here do it way too much).

The others seem to be directly linked to search and we have an idea what might be going on there.  It may well all be linked to your search process sitting there using more cpu than it should and so causing things to run slower and is exposing a potential issue.

For now disabling Start11 search will indeed avoid the issue.  Likewise switching to Win10 style search will fix it, or you could run Start10Tweak.exe which is in your Start11 install folder and on the search tab just enable show programs and show control panel.  This will stop the other searches leaving just apps and settings/control panel results.

The next S11 build will have a small tweak to hopefully address this race condition.

Reply #5 from Stardock Forums Top

Exactly why the search process uses lots of CPU is a different question.  It is automatically cleaned up when search has finished, but if explorer had crashed whilst requesting a search might be left running?  We will see about adding an additional watchdog on that process to stop it in that scenario.

Have you added additional folders to Windows search indexing?

Reply #6 from Stardock Forums Top

"The others seem to be directly linked to search and we have an idea what might be going on there" I'm stoked to hear this.

I disabled Search > Use Start11 search in the Start11 start menu, and have not had another crash since. > 24 hours and no crashes. This solved it.

I have only removed folders from Windows search indexing. As I record things my screen, documents and other info appears in start menu searches -- So nothing is checked but "C:\Users\tcno\AppData\Local\Stardock\Start10Ctrlpnl". Literally nothing else. This was how it was since my previous install.

I cleared the indexing cache to make sure it was only this back then and also now.