WaasMedic Agent Exe stopping me from working

Think I saw something recently about a problem with the 'Sleep' function. Can't remember exactly what it was but thought it may have been a monthly update description that mentioned similar problem although was not connected with WaasMedic running on wake up or shutting down computer. What happens if you don't put to sleep ? I have never used Sleep or Hibernate, seems pointless for me, normally when computer is on, doing something, sometimes may leave for 30 minutes or so to give it time to catch up with background tasks etc, in sleep mode I don't think some of these actually run. Just look at the 'Fast Start' feature where the computer is in deep sleep mode which can cause a lot of issues as I found out out with a version 8.1 computer years ago - unaware of the feature is ON by default - MS don't tell you that. I'm old enough to remember when buying a computer, it was supplied with a user manual - now you don't even get anything, you are totally on your own.

I have experienced various settings going back to defaults after earlier Feature Updates (1809 and possibly later ones), and Fast Start back to ON might have been one of those. Certainly some printer drivers were lost a few times, and had to be fixed up, along with the 1GBE LAN settings going back to default setting, so losing the disabling of "Wake-on-pattern-match" - that causes random wakes from sleep if active. Plus the VERY irritating changes to my File Association defaults (PDF and others)!! 

As regards WaasMedic, my desktop that was suffering a couple of months back seems to have settled down, although I DO see the "Compatelrunner", Sysmain, and Norton AV eat some CPU, and lower down the list WaasMedic for a short time. I am currently at 20H2 build 19042.928.

Sorry, I don’t like people guessing on such forums, but I must, I can only offer anecdotal information. I have seen in other similar situations over the years of my PC hanging. In this case I attribute to a stand alone USB hard drive for backups. My intent going forward is to EJECT the drive before shutting down, hibernating or sleeping. I don’t *believe* Windows likes booting and finding a “missing” drive (or WiFi connection as I learned earlier. 

I’ve been waiting 20 minutes to get my laptop started from a hibernation.

JesselynYaeger,

>>Is there a way for it to just... not...? I built this computer myself only a year ago and would like to be able to use it without having to plan startup an hour out.<<

My routine:

1. Power up computer system (monitor, external RAID 5 SATA array and CPU).
2. Mix up protein powder drink, use it to take daily supplements (a small handful of pills, capsules etc.)
3. Assemble cold cereal breakfast (five ingredients including the milk).
4. Check if login screen is showing.  If so, login.
5. Eat breakfast.
6. Check if desktop is visible.  If so, try to open task manager to see if it is ready for human  interaction. If not....
7. Make a flat white or medium Americano with steamed milk from scratch (grind beans, tamp into portafilter, brew into cup, steam milk, add to coffee...)
8. Check if desktop is ready for human interaction.  If not, find another 10 - 20  minute chore to do.
9. Repeat previous step until UI response to mouse click is under 10 seconds.

My usual, non-WaasMedic boot time-to-usable is about 13 minutes.  I have many of the programs that enter themselves into the startup queue (see Task Manager, Startup tab) disabled.  Most of the "normal" delay is due to McAfee security processess and Acronis backup and ransomware scan processes.  If I use "msconfig" to turn off all non-MS services at startup and disable all startup routines from Task Manager, or do a minimal safe boot, the time drops to about 8 minutes.  Most of these times it is various MS (mostly "System PID 4) routines accessing all  kinds of files, most of which ARE NOT OPERATING SYSTEM FILES.  I my case I have over 10,000 image files (I'm into photography at the moment...) and MS seems keenly interested in looking at these files almost every day using some routine or another.

A normal WaasMedic day goes between 40 and 75 minutes before the machine  is usable.  I have turned off all indexing, disabled all the "Application Experience" tasks from Task Scheduler (although the PcaPatchDbTask re-enables itself every boot-up and schedules itself to run ever 12 hrs.), but these seem to have little impact on boot time and the 100% disk utilization time and the > 10 MB/s non-stop disk I/O to the system drive after boot. 

As best as I can tell with the monitoring tools I have (which I usually can't get started until well after the desktop appears) MS routines of one sort or another are snooping through all the files on the computer NOT JUST OS FILES, and sending the info back to MS.  Since many users got wise to "Compattelrunner.exe" and have used various ways to turn it off, I believe MS has taken its job, expanded it, and embedded its functions into other modules in a redundant way so that no matter what steps the user takes, MS is going to created not only an inventory of your hard drive contents, but also statistics for your usage of each file on your system.  

It is MS obsessive need to hoover up all your system content and usage data for NON-MICROSOFT APPLICATIONS AND FILES, and to override / work around any user attempt to prevent MS from doing so that is bogging down Windows systems.  Also the addition of "smoke and mirrors" privacy settings to make you think you have control over what MS hoovers from your system add bulk and complexity that slow the system down solely for the purpose of using complication to deprive you of actual control of your privacy wishes.

I believe that is the reason MS is all crickets on this issue.  An MS representative even admitted to me that the "public assumption" that WaasMedic is a Windows Update repair tool is not correct despite the fact that it is described as such in it's various properties panels.  So this is all part of the MS clandestine data mining effort that will only get larger and more intrusive as the OS developes.  Long boot up times will get longer and the only real relief is to upgrade to SSD system drives and live with the assumption that MS knows every file on your system, how often, when and from what UI / application you access any given file.  I'm sure that if they think they can get away with it, they will utilize some form of screen image capture and key-logging to add yet more data to your "profile" to suite their pursuit of profit.  Basically, we are f#$%^d.