WaasMedic Agent Exe stopping me from working

MarcHoppe

>>Yes Waas is scheduled to run every Sunday here so happy WaasDay. You can check the Task Scheduler to see if it's the same there.<<

Ran on my machine and had it crippled for over 75 minutes.(Scheduled for "one time 10/15/2000" then "every 7 days indefinitely thereafter".  It turns out 10/15/2000 was a Sunday. Slightly further down in the list, WindowsUpdate is scheduled to run "one time" 5/2/2021 at 5:59 PM (it is now 4:13 PM).  This appears to be the daily WU check you might see reported whenever you go to Settings, Windows Update and must be updated by some hard-coded portion of the Windows boot code.

Anyway, once I could finally get Resource Monitor running and its interface actually filled in, WaasMedic was chewing up all the disk I/O time AND bandwidth.  There were THOUSANDS of entries in the "Disk Activity" pane for WaasMedic and it stayed that way until about 90 minutes after boot-up.  The vast majority of file references listed for WaasMedic access WERE NOT WINDOWS OS OR MICROSOFT APPLICATION FILES.  Windows update HAS NO BUSINESS PERUSING MY PICTURE FILES, MY PHOTO EDITING APPS' CATALOG DIRECTORY AND FILES OR OTHER NON MICROSOFT, NON WINDOWS OS FILES!!!  If WaasMedic restricted itself to accessing only OS files it likely would end in under 10 minutes.  I have nearly 10,000 image files, five Photo editing applications, each with its own catalog, thumbnail and work cache for these photos, and WaasMedic was accessing all of them.  COMPLETELY UNNECESSARY MICROSOFT INVASION OF PRIVACY, SPYWARE ACTIVITY THAT SHOULD BE ILLEGAL.

MichaelIrons,

>>Had Compattelerunner running again this morning, no real noticeable performance issues. MS description reads as being used for 'Fixing major Bugs or Security Issues'. <<

That is a different bit of MS "snoopware" that scours your HDs for applications you have installed and sends the info back to MS.  Some have speculated it is used to target apps MS does not want running on Windows due to marketing / royalty wars or to find ways to force you into paid updates for some apps you use regularly by tweaking the OS to  not support existing, long running apps you don't see the need to update.  True or not, in hoovering up the contents of your HDs it can bog down your machine on startup.

Regardless, you can exercise some control over this: "Task Scheduler->Task Scheduler Library->Microsoft->Windows->Application Experience" will list 3 to 4 tasks to be done on varying schedules. The names, "Micorosoft Compatibility Appraiser", "PcaPatchDbTask" (the newest entry to this list), "ProgramDataUpdater", and "StartupAppTask" can all be disabled by rigth-clicking and selecting "Disable" from the context menu.  Alternatively you can right-click each task, select "Properties" then in the "Tiggers" tab select each trigger, click the "Edit" button and uncheck "Enable" in the "Edit Trigger" pane.

NOTE: PcaPatchDbTask, scheduled to run every 12 hours, will re-enable itself at every reboot.  It is possible to delete this task but I have not seen enough convincing info from people who know more about Windows internals than I  that it is safe to do so.  The other tasks will remain disabled until certain major Windows Update pushes, so you have to check them periodically to make sure these snooping tasks remain off.

Yes Waas is scheduled to run every Sunday here so happy WaasDay. You can check the Task Scheduler to see if it's the same there. I notice that WaasMedic which is a "Windows Update component that is run in the background for the purpose of repairing Windows Update should it get damaged or corrupted" was reading all the files on one of my systems even files that have nothing to do with Windows. It ran for 13 minutes and 30 seconds on the system where the screenshot below was taken. 90% of the time reading files and not writing anything. Certainly that's the textbook definition of Spyware.  Windows is not "fixing" anything it is the problem not the solution. 

MarcHoppe wrote:

Ok I've booted two computers so far today on "WaasDay". ......WaasDay has become a real source of frustration here. 

Marc: Your "today on WaasDay" comment made me laugh out loud.

Your post was useful. After I read it today, I opened task manager and saw waasmedic agent was at top of disk usage list. My computer - which has hard drive - was slower than usual - disk activity was 100%, but it had not slowed to a stop, as happened on many WaasDays in the past.

My experience with waasmedic agent bringing my computer to a near stop is that those incidents mostly happen around 2nd and 4th Tuesdays of the month when MS sends out monthly in-band and out-of-band Win10 updates.

As a workaround, for last couple of months, I have been pausing Windows updates during the 2nd and 4th weeks. That seems to prevent waasmedic from slowing computer down during the pauses. Once I have time to allow the update and waasmedic follow-up to run and slow things down without getting in my way, I remove the pause.

Pausing updates temporarily is just a workaround, not a fix. It just postpones the slow-down. It seems better than all the "use third-party software", "modify the registry", "kill the process" tips that get tossed around here and elsewhere on the net.

Waasmedic agent only affects my computer with HDD. Other, newer computer with SSD has no problems with it.

I have been following this thread for months. Have also reported the problem in feedback hub, where there are a similar reports - but few. So far there is no indication from Microsoft that waasmedic stopping some computers is even a Windows 10 problem.

So, until the next WaasDay.....