6 July 2016

Windows 10 Insider crashes (Updated)

Second Update: All is well with the final Windows 10 Anniversary Update, and the problem was been resolved by Microsoft.

Update July 10: It looks like Windows 10 Insider build 14385 has fixed this, so far at least. Please let us know if you see otherwise.

If you're using a Windows Insider preview build of Windows 10 (especially 14376 and 14379) you may have found Directory Opus is crashing a lot.

After much effort we've traced this to the Connected User Experiences and Telemetry service. This Windows service seems to provide Microsoft with some sort of diagnostic feedback or client tracking (we're not sure to be honest).

One way to prove that it's involved is to, while Opus is running, shutdown that service from the Services control panel. You'll see Opus crash immediately. Our theory is that the service hooks into all applications periodically (maybe to track which applications users are running) and when it unloads itself again (either automatically, or in this case by you shutting down the service), something goes wrong and it crashes while removing its hooks.

(Note that we have seen reports of crashing and instability in other applications as well due to these Windows Insider builds - it's not just Opus that's affected.)

Until Microsoft fix this, you can disable this service to prevent the crashes.

  1. Press Windows+R (or Start -> Run) and enter services.msc to open the Services control panel.
  2. Locate the Connected User Experiences and Telemetry service, select it, and click the stop button at the top of the window to stop the service.
    (note that if Opus is running, it will probably crash immediately at this point)
  3. Right-click the same service entry, select Properties from the context menu, and change the Startup type to Disabled. Click OK.
  4. Restart your machine.
A fifth step is to report this issue to Microsoft, as they're the only ones who can fix it long term (and the whole point of using the Insider builds is so you can report Windows bugs).

You can follow the discussion about this at the Opus Resource Centre.