Perhaps monsieur IDRASSI could confirm this is unfixable (he suggests so in one of the posts in the thread)? I enjoyed using VeraCrypt even with occasional lockups, at least until I scrounge enough to upgrade Windows to Pro and switch to BitLocker, but last time it corrupted my Vagrant.
If this is fixable, I'd be happy to assist.
Last edit: Mimino 2020-01-19
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I would be surprized if the issue would really be unfixable.
Bitlocker can do it, the question is only how much afford it would be to find out how it does that.
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I'm going to try testing this out, too, using Windows v. 1903 and Veracrypt 1.23 and then 1.24Update2. I know on my newer machine, when it defragments, sometimes it takes like a minute or two just for the lock screen to show up, and it defragments at only 300 kB/s, and that's putting the system at 100% disk usage. Maybe it partially has to do with Intel's drivers, as I tried installing the Intel rapid storage driver (do you think it would help with the Veracrypt driver being so slow, too?) when I installed the rapid storage driver, the system kind of hung and black screen, cpu fan going at maximum, had to hold down the power button.
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This does not look like what Katarina and I are experiencing. When I get a lockup caused by VeraCrypt, the PC is not doing anything due to a lockup and it cools down and slows down the fans.
Last edit: Mimino 2020-01-21
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Got it crashing pretty much reliably (due to Webpack's memory leaks consuming all RAM, which causes the system to lockup pretty fast). And once again it corrupted Vagrant's index file.
Decrypted the system drive and it no longer happens.
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@m1m1n0: Analyzing this issue properly requires a lot of time and effort which I can not afford for now. Thanks to Katarina tests and analysis, we know for sure that it happens because of conflict between VeraCrypt driver and another system driver since the issue doesn't happen in safe mode.
The fact that BitLocker is not affected indicates that it is possible to avoid such conflict but it can be based on internal knowledge that Microsoft has and which is not available publicly so it is hard to judge its feasibility.
That's what I can say for now and for those whose use cases involve such extreme low memory situations I would advise to not use VeraCrypt System Encryption on Windows 10 to avoid system freezes that can lead to data corruption.
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Do you figure it's a low memory situation?
I'm really thinking that it might not be a problem with Windows v1903, but rather with the .net framework 4.8. I've heard how Microsoft has been causing their development tool to insert code when an .exe is run to mitigate the effects of Spectre and Meltdown. If somebody has a system that doesn't yet have .net 4.8 on it, but is windows v1903, I'd be curious for sure to see if it still freezes. Apparently you can't go back to an older version of .net if your operating system already came with it. I have a system that had .net framework from 3.5 or so, so I'll see what I can do to further test it, if I get around to it. :) And otherwise, maybe I can see if I can actually downgrade my Windows from 1903 to 1809.
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Maybe you (as the developer of VeraCrypt) could contact Microsoft and ask them about this issue? I'd imagine that their Windows 10 or Bitlocker developers would know the cause or at least have a good guess. At least it would be worth a try?
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Has anyone tryed if drivecrypt-plus-pack has the same issue? There is a 30 days trail so one could test if thay are also affected. If yes than well bad, but if no that probably a fix is reasonybly easy snd one did not need secret msft insider knowledge.
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What happens if there's a bad block on the hard drive? Does Veracrypt let Windows know? or just try to fix it itself? I know I just got a Bluescreen, DRIVER_POWER_STATE_FAILURE, error 3, which according to https://www.faultwire.com/solutions-fatal_error/DRIVER-POWER-STATE-FAILURE-0x0000009F-1167.html?order=date means that A device object has been blocking an IRP for too long a time. (XP and later). or The device driver did not properly set the IRP as "pending" or complete the IRP (Windows 2000 only). I'm using Windows v1903. Interestingly, I tried to cause a freeze on windows 10 v1909 but couldn't, but it wasn't until I installed Avast that I caused it to freeze, but while encrypted without Avast, it didn't. And yet Windows v10240 froze without Avast. Anybody know how to fix Windows not sending the hardware error reports? I was using 1.24-Update2. I just thought that maybe because of how slow the driver currently access the information, if it can't get it fast enough, certain services will fail their timeouts, because I know I see those events in Event Viewer sometimes. I have my hard drive set to directly read and write, not buffered, for this very reason of the computer freezing - I don't want to lose data. Here's an interesting page I found, if anyone's interested in reading it. https://www.microsoftpressstore.com/articles/article.aspx?p=2201309&seqNum=3
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I tried using that HxD program that someone mentioned before, but it doesn't allow me to write to the hard drive - thank you veracrypt. But I'm suspecting that it has to do with Avast. Do others here use Avast or AVG? I'm thinking I'll switch over to a different "free" antivirus. Avast / AVG ends up installing like 10 drivers, including one for the keyboard, and then they sell the information except you opt out. I guess that's the whole thing with "free". Somebody has to make money to keep things going. It's like Windows 10 too - it's free, but they want information. I'm not sure how the linux people do it.
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I tried on a Windows 8.1 system encrypted with Veracrypt 1.23, .net 4.7.2 to get it to freeze, and it wouldn't, not until I installed Avast antivirus free. It didn't freeze with Avira free. But then when I tried on my windows 10 v1903 system to get it to crash, I disabled Avast and it froze. I installed Avira free and it froze. But I also think my hard drive is heavily fragmented, like over 30% and defragmenting takes days to only reduce it 1% at a time, because the disk throughput is only like 700 kB/s - is that because of the Veracrypt driver? I hope someone figures it out.
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I ran some tests with DiskCryptor (yet an other opensource whole disk encryption tool) and while i couldn't get the system to freez in normal operation, when encrypting the system volume as long as there is a page file on it, i expirienced freezes about evers 15-20 minutes of progress, it did not mater what disk region was being encrypted or decrypted. encrypting/decrypting otehr volumes or the system voluem without a page file on ot seamed fine.
So there is some undelaying issue that affects variosue software's regarding te page file and WDE software, hmm...
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On my system, windows 10 v1903, I don't even see the option to "check for solutions to all problems". I had to create a separate link to do it. And then when it asks to send additional information for the hardware problems, they don't send. Anyone know how to effectively fix this? I've gone into the group policy editor too to try to fix some things, but still to no avail.
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Is there some sort of program that someone can get to catch when the system freezes and do something about it? I find my windows hardware error reports aren't being sent, either, so if anyone knows what I can do about that, please let me know.
Also, I recently found that my Win10 system froze from opening a file I have in Firefox with Avast, and Veracrypt 1.24U4 installed, but the hard drive not encrypted.
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@DDD: Your problems are very likely not related to VeraCrypt. You should move over to the Microsoft support and ask there for help. A clean (new) installation of Windows could be a good start though.
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!!!! Possibly found a solution !!!
There seams to be an issues with the memory compression. Likely Windos 19xx compresses the Veracrypt driver. Turning off the memory compression using
did the trick for me! Using the described method given by @Katarina Schubitz (thanks! )my laptop crashed before everytime. However when turning off the win 10 memory compression I just get a very short freeze when the system seems to page to the ssd... it recovers after one or two seconds and I can continue to work. I had been watching the mem cmpression task before and came to the suspission it may cause the trouble, Happy to hear if it works for you as well!
Hey Bud, I've been lurking this topic for a few months but joined to give a little feedback.
This does seem to save the system roughly 80% off the time, unfortuntely it can still crash. When the machine would normally lock up, instead it slows down to almost a halt and manages to pull back, but in the end it can and has still crashed multiple times. This is extremely frustrating as this is a gaming rig and quite powerful! It shouldn't be happening.
Note, I also had to change the VRAM and MMAgent together as you suggested because seperately neither would do much of anything.
Last edit: Donal David 2020-03-20
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I use Win Pro 1909 Build 18363.657, i5-6300U, 8GB RAM with internal graphics. I could clearly reproduce the error turning compression on/off. Also I fixed the virtual ram size (system->advanced->virtual ram-> Min=8gb,max=8gb...)... Maybe that makes a difference too as the size cant change? Please check. (PS I have anoptgher PC with 32 GB and no pagefile. Never had any issues there, probably since I never run out of ram.)
Last edit: Kolja 2020-03-14
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I was looking through the Group Policy Editor at different protection mechanisms for running programs, but I'd need to do more research to figure out how to implement the various ones - it's not straightforward. It's nice when Windows doesn't freeze. It's nice when there is proper error logging.
windows - it's like you think you're system is yours, but it's a facade. Their Powershell program will do things in the background without your consent, and they could be trying to run your computer from the outside, as Windows-as-a-Service.
I was hoping there was some program that could keep track of what the computer was doing so that I could see. Process Monitor looks interesting. It makes a huge log file, but at least I would know what's causing the computer to freeze.
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I agree. Its a mess . Looking forward to the day where we can leave that crap behind and move to linux or bsd. Today after update on my other computer it wanted to nudge me in the freaking MS cloud. Never! The day MS forces me to log into theior crap is the day where I format hd on any system i can do it on.
However I have been hitting my laptop hard today again in terms of RAM and CPU load. No issues since the memory compression has been turned of.
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@idrassi, Same problem. Since I encrypted system partition 2 years ago, the system is freezing on high loads all this time and only a hard reboot helps. Disabling TRIM on system partition in VeraCrypt settings helped for not a long time and the problem still occurs. Reencrypted with latest VeraCrypt. Windows 1709 till 1909, SSD. I have two different HP laptops - Pavilion and Pavilion x360 - all the same. No solution: https://www.google.com/search?q=veracrypt+system+freezing
Last edit: Вадим Шеллар 2020-03-15
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Same problem. Win 1809 (!) and i7 4790k, 8 GB DDR3, GTX 980 Ti, Samsung Evo 500GB.
Especially when using applications that need a lot of RAM (Premiere Pro, Minecraft Modpack). And it often crashes when opening a new application like Firefox while RAM is already used > 70%.
Deactivating the memory compression doen't really do anything for me.
Is there any workaround or fix in sight? Or should I use TrueCrypt for the C drive again?
Last edit: darkx 2020-03-22
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Having this issue as well.
Perhaps monsieur IDRASSI could confirm this is unfixable (he suggests so in one of the posts in the thread)? I enjoyed using VeraCrypt even with occasional lockups, at least until I scrounge enough to upgrade Windows to Pro and switch to BitLocker, but last time it corrupted my Vagrant.
If this is fixable, I'd be happy to assist.
Last edit: Mimino 2020-01-19
I would be surprized if the issue would really be unfixable.
Bitlocker can do it, the question is only how much afford it would be to find out how it does that.
I'm going to try testing this out, too, using Windows v. 1903 and Veracrypt 1.23 and then 1.24Update2. I know on my newer machine, when it defragments, sometimes it takes like a minute or two just for the lock screen to show up, and it defragments at only 300 kB/s, and that's putting the system at 100% disk usage. Maybe it partially has to do with Intel's drivers, as I tried installing the Intel rapid storage driver (do you think it would help with the Veracrypt driver being so slow, too?) when I installed the rapid storage driver, the system kind of hung and black screen, cpu fan going at maximum, had to hold down the power button.
This does not look like what Katarina and I are experiencing. When I get a lockup caused by VeraCrypt, the PC is not doing anything due to a lockup and it cools down and slows down the fans.
Last edit: Mimino 2020-01-21
Got it crashing pretty much reliably (due to Webpack's memory leaks consuming all RAM, which causes the system to lockup pretty fast). And once again it corrupted Vagrant's index file.
Decrypted the system drive and it no longer happens.
@m1m1n0: Analyzing this issue properly requires a lot of time and effort which I can not afford for now. Thanks to Katarina tests and analysis, we know for sure that it happens because of conflict between VeraCrypt driver and another system driver since the issue doesn't happen in safe mode.
The fact that BitLocker is not affected indicates that it is possible to avoid such conflict but it can be based on internal knowledge that Microsoft has and which is not available publicly so it is hard to judge its feasibility.
That's what I can say for now and for those whose use cases involve such extreme low memory situations I would advise to not use VeraCrypt System Encryption on Windows 10 to avoid system freezes that can lead to data corruption.
Thanks for your reply. I'm sorry if I sounded entitled in my post.
Last edit: Mimino 2020-01-23
Do you figure it's a low memory situation?
I'm really thinking that it might not be a problem with Windows v1903, but rather with the .net framework 4.8. I've heard how Microsoft has been causing their development tool to insert code when an .exe is run to mitigate the effects of Spectre and Meltdown. If somebody has a system that doesn't yet have .net 4.8 on it, but is windows v1903, I'd be curious for sure to see if it still freezes. Apparently you can't go back to an older version of .net if your operating system already came with it. I have a system that had .net framework from 3.5 or so, so I'll see what I can do to further test it, if I get around to it. :) And otherwise, maybe I can see if I can actually downgrade my Windows from 1903 to 1809.
Maybe you (as the developer of VeraCrypt) could contact Microsoft and ask them about this issue? I'd imagine that their Windows 10 or Bitlocker developers would know the cause or at least have a good guess. At least it would be worth a try?
Has anyone tryed if drivecrypt-plus-pack has the same issue? There is a 30 days trail so one could test if thay are also affected. If yes than well bad, but if no that probably a fix is reasonybly easy snd one did not need secret msft insider knowledge.
What happens if there's a bad block on the hard drive? Does Veracrypt let Windows know? or just try to fix it itself? I know I just got a Bluescreen, DRIVER_POWER_STATE_FAILURE, error 3, which according to https://www.faultwire.com/solutions-fatal_error/DRIVER-POWER-STATE-FAILURE-0x0000009F-1167.html?order=date means that A device object has been blocking an IRP for too long a time. (XP and later). or The device driver did not properly set the IRP as "pending" or complete the IRP (Windows 2000 only). I'm using Windows v1903. Interestingly, I tried to cause a freeze on windows 10 v1909 but couldn't, but it wasn't until I installed Avast that I caused it to freeze, but while encrypted without Avast, it didn't. And yet Windows v10240 froze without Avast. Anybody know how to fix Windows not sending the hardware error reports? I was using 1.24-Update2. I just thought that maybe because of how slow the driver currently access the information, if it can't get it fast enough, certain services will fail their timeouts, because I know I see those events in Event Viewer sometimes. I have my hard drive set to directly read and write, not buffered, for this very reason of the computer freezing - I don't want to lose data. Here's an interesting page I found, if anyone's interested in reading it. https://www.microsoftpressstore.com/articles/article.aspx?p=2201309&seqNum=3
I tried using that HxD program that someone mentioned before, but it doesn't allow me to write to the hard drive - thank you veracrypt. But I'm suspecting that it has to do with Avast. Do others here use Avast or AVG? I'm thinking I'll switch over to a different "free" antivirus. Avast / AVG ends up installing like 10 drivers, including one for the keyboard, and then they sell the information except you opt out. I guess that's the whole thing with "free". Somebody has to make money to keep things going. It's like Windows 10 too - it's free, but they want information. I'm not sure how the linux people do it.
I tried on a Windows 8.1 system encrypted with Veracrypt 1.23, .net 4.7.2 to get it to freeze, and it wouldn't, not until I installed Avast antivirus free. It didn't freeze with Avira free. But then when I tried on my windows 10 v1903 system to get it to crash, I disabled Avast and it froze. I installed Avira free and it froze. But I also think my hard drive is heavily fragmented, like over 30% and defragmenting takes days to only reduce it 1% at a time, because the disk throughput is only like 700 kB/s - is that because of the Veracrypt driver? I hope someone figures it out.
I ran some tests with DiskCryptor (yet an other opensource whole disk encryption tool) and while i couldn't get the system to freez in normal operation, when encrypting the system volume as long as there is a page file on it, i expirienced freezes about evers 15-20 minutes of progress, it did not mater what disk region was being encrypted or decrypted. encrypting/decrypting otehr volumes or the system voluem without a page file on ot seamed fine.
So there is some undelaying issue that affects variosue software's regarding te page file and WDE software, hmm...
On my system, windows 10 v1903, I don't even see the option to "check for solutions to all problems". I had to create a separate link to do it. And then when it asks to send additional information for the hardware problems, they don't send. Anyone know how to effectively fix this? I've gone into the group policy editor too to try to fix some things, but still to no avail.
Is there some sort of program that someone can get to catch when the system freezes and do something about it? I find my windows hardware error reports aren't being sent, either, so if anyone knows what I can do about that, please let me know.
Also, I recently found that my Win10 system froze from opening a file I have in Firefox with Avast, and Veracrypt 1.24U4 installed, but the hard drive not encrypted.
@DDD: Your problems are very likely not related to VeraCrypt. You should move over to the Microsoft support and ask there for help. A clean (new) installation of Windows could be a good start though.
!!!! Possibly found a solution !!!
There seams to be an issues with the memory compression. Likely Windos 19xx compresses the Veracrypt driver. Turning off the memory compression using
admin ---> Powershell ---> Disable-MMAgent -mc ---> (restart)
did the trick for me! Using the described method given by @Katarina Schubitz (thanks! )my laptop crashed before everytime. However when turning off the win 10 memory compression I just get a very short freeze when the system seems to page to the ssd... it recovers after one or two seconds and I can continue to work. I had been watching the mem cmpression task before and came to the suspission it may cause the trouble, Happy to hear if it works for you as well!
https://superuser.com/questions/1000485/how-to-disable-windows-10-memory-compression
Last edit: Kolja 2020-03-08
Hey Bud, I've been lurking this topic for a few months but joined to give a little feedback.
This does seem to save the system roughly 80% off the time, unfortuntely it can still crash. When the machine would normally lock up, instead it slows down to almost a halt and manages to pull back, but in the end it can and has still crashed multiple times. This is extremely frustrating as this is a gaming rig and quite powerful! It shouldn't be happening.
Note, I also had to change the VRAM and MMAgent together as you suggested because seperately neither would do much of anything.
Last edit: Donal David 2020-03-20
@Kolja, I tried disabling memory compression but found it didn't help my problem.
I use Win Pro 1909 Build 18363.657, i5-6300U, 8GB RAM with internal graphics. I could clearly reproduce the error turning compression on/off. Also I fixed the virtual ram size (system->advanced->virtual ram-> Min=8gb,max=8gb...)... Maybe that makes a difference too as the size cant change? Please check. (PS I have anoptgher PC with 32 GB and no pagefile. Never had any issues there, probably since I never run out of ram.)
Last edit: Kolja 2020-03-14
I was looking through the Group Policy Editor at different protection mechanisms for running programs, but I'd need to do more research to figure out how to implement the various ones - it's not straightforward. It's nice when Windows doesn't freeze. It's nice when there is proper error logging.
windows - it's like you think you're system is yours, but it's a facade. Their Powershell program will do things in the background without your consent, and they could be trying to run your computer from the outside, as Windows-as-a-Service.
I was hoping there was some program that could keep track of what the computer was doing so that I could see. Process Monitor looks interesting. It makes a huge log file, but at least I would know what's causing the computer to freeze.
I agree. Its a mess . Looking forward to the day where we can leave that crap behind and move to linux or bsd. Today after update on my other computer it wanted to nudge me in the freaking MS cloud. Never! The day MS forces me to log into theior crap is the day where I format hd on any system i can do it on.
However I have been hitting my laptop hard today again in terms of RAM and CPU load. No issues since the memory compression has been turned of.
@idrassi, Same problem. Since I encrypted system partition 2 years ago, the system is freezing on high loads all this time and only a hard reboot helps. Disabling TRIM on system partition in VeraCrypt settings helped for not a long time and the problem still occurs. Reencrypted with latest VeraCrypt. Windows 1709 till 1909, SSD. I have two different HP laptops - Pavilion and Pavilion x360 - all the same. No solution: https://www.google.com/search?q=veracrypt+system+freezing
Last edit: Вадим Шеллар 2020-03-15
Same problem. Win 1809 (!) and i7 4790k, 8 GB DDR3, GTX 980 Ti, Samsung Evo 500GB.
Especially when using applications that need a lot of RAM (Premiere Pro, Minecraft Modpack). And it often crashes when opening a new application like Firefox while RAM is already used > 70%.
Deactivating the memory compression doen't really do anything for me.
Is there any workaround or fix in sight? Or should I use TrueCrypt for the C drive again?
Last edit: darkx 2020-03-22