Windows Programs Keep Randomly Closing?

Question

For some unknown reason, my programs keep closing randomly? I know these programs have randomly closed: Atom, Discord, Steam, Slack, Notepad++, SourceTree, and DevStax. Atom seems to close the most so I have to wonder if it's possibly causing other programs to crash? Or perhaps it was that Windows Media Update thingy?

I found some other people online that have issues with Atom and a 3rd party package Go-Plus, but no one has provided a solution and Atom gives me no useful logs. I'd just close Atom and see if I get any crashes but I work 8-12hrs/day in Atom so it's not very feasible because of that and the fact that I cannot reproduce it on command.

Is there a way to try and detect what is causing my programs to close randomly? I ran System File Checker and File Signature Verification and they both came back clean. Any other diagnostic tools I should be looking at? Thanks.

System Specs: OS Name: Microsoft Windows 10 Home Version: 10.0.15063 Build 15063 System Type: x64 Processor: i7-4770 Ram: 16GB

Solution

If the problem is a bug with the Atom software that you use, in that case you should rather address the developers than us here.

If you suspect a crash, there should be an indication in the Event Viewer. Check also if .dmp files exist in the folder %LOCALAPPDATA%\CrashDumps. If such dumps do not exist, ensure that the registry key HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\Windows Error Reporting has a sub-key called CrashDumps. If this sub-key is missing, create it and wait for the problem to happen, then check the above folder for dumps. The dumps will be named for the crashing program and you will also find that registry sub-keys have been added to CrashDumps that give information about the crashing program. The dumps can be analyzed or, better, sent to the developers.

If after all this no dumps can be found in the above folder, then this is a software problem that has to do with the software you use. You can only locate it by selectively avoiding using some of your products in order to locate the problematic product.

In the meantime, keep all your software updated to the last version, in case this bug is solved in the near future.

Also, in case of a software conflict of Atom with another product, you could try and selectively disable other products that might conflict. A prime candidate would be your anti-virus product.

Comments

[Admin]

pretty old question by now, but still see the same problem. for me its win10 with crashes of Atom and Spotify so far.

[Admin]

Yeah it happens to my Atom and Spotify too. Still haven't found a solution.

[Admin]

Check your storage and memory for errors, using the maker’s tool/Memtest86.

[Admin]

@Mr_CryptoPrime The answer may be within this thread so check it out and hit my back if you find any of that useful in troubleshooting or resolving. Be sure to read all the threads but if you can provide the logs as mentioned here in your environment, that may be helpful to better determine if it's the Core Atom app or one of its extensions. You may want to go ahead and test with the install of the Visual Studio Code with the vscode-go extension as mentioned there to determine if that resolves the issue for you. Happy to add more detail and as an answer if this helps any, just let me know.

[Admin]

Oh, the link would be nice too I suppose: github.com/atom/atom/issues/14066 @bln-tom

[Admin]

I just installed vscode with go extension, but it feels weird to me to need another application to fix that problem for atom. On a sidenote, I just finished a small project in go without a crash, whereas in other projects I had regular crashes. The only difference that I can see right now is that the last project didn't use tests...

[Admin]

Try not to install it but download Atom from Atom GitHub release page. For 32bit the package is atom-windows.zip and for 64bit atom-x64-windows.zip. Extract it with 7ZIP.

[Admin]

@Biswa I installed already, so I'm not sure if my test would still be meaningful. Aside of that, I tried the atom beta release too, and it crashed as well. not sure how much new stuff would be in the github release.

[Admin]

Any interesting error messages in the Event Viewer?

[Admin]

@bln-tom Building on what harrymc said, are there any Application Error events (or Windows Error Reporting events mentioning "APPCRASH") in the Application event log?

[Admin]

@harrymc I checked the event log and found nothing there at the time of the crash

[Admin]

@McDonald's I will check the colons thingy, but can exclude git from the list of causes. In one of the crashing projects I didn't have a git repo setup and just one or 2 very small go files.

[Admin]

@McDonald's after reading the colons issue, I doubt, that its the reason. There, an error message popped up, whereas in my case, the atom window is just gone without any message whatsoever. Another assumption could be more windows related and less atom related, as the original question already indicated.

[Admin]

It was worth a shot at least just in case. Turning on verbose logging at the app level (maybe if applicable at the OS level too) could add some clue. Perhaps you need to get as granular as a memory dump analysis or something. Having performance counters logging and see if there are any anomalies with system resources may hold a clue at the time of occurrence.

[Admin]

Perhaps on Windows there is a common DLL the app utilizes and there's a memory crash issue there with incompatible or buggy code perhaps. Need to troubleshoot with advanced logging or system stats I would think or a memory dump to see what's going on; otherwise, I would think it'd just be a guess and I bet I could make a few worthy ones if I wanted still. Good Luck! If you believe in magic!!

[Admin]

If you can work for some time in Safe mode (or Safe mode with Network), this will tell if the cause is some installed product.

[Admin]

@harrymc it crashed for me in safe mode too

[Admin]

Check and report if .dmp files exist in folder %LOCALAPPDATA%\CrashDumps. If not, ensure that the registry key HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\Windows Error Reporting has a sub-key called CrashDumps - create it if missing and check again the above folder after the problem occurs.

[Admin]

@harrymc I bet the answer will be in the logs of such a dump file which can be analyzed easily. This is a nice suggestion and would be the very thing I would do if I were experiencing this problem to troubleshoot.

[Admin]

I'll only be able to test that tomorrow, but I'll let you know asap.

[grackkle]

created the subkey, but no crash since then

[harrymc]

Might need some more time, or maybe (if you are lucky) some software update fixed the conflict. Small remark: Your bounty will be lost in 21 hours.

[grackkle]

I'm using it right now in the setting that crashed from time to time, so lets see what happens

[grackkle]

Just crashed again without a dump... A Subkey named "CrashDumps" of type REG_SZ was correct? Ah, and there are other dmp files, just none of Atom. I assume, this means that it is an Atom-internal error.

[grackkle]

Just rewarded the bounty to you for bringing this as far as possible.

[harrymc]

"CrashDumps" is a sub-key, not item and has no type. It is created in the left pane of regedit and not on the right. Verify also the registry key LocalDumps as described here. You might also find dumps in the folders C:\Users\All Users\Microsoft\Windows\WER\ReportQueue` or in C:\Users\username\AppData\Local\Microsoft\Windows\WER`. Crash dumps are something of a mess in Windows.

[Mr_CryptoPrime]

I've checked all the various locations for crash dumps and I'm not seeing anything? Has anyone made progress with this issue? Now my keyboard has started to randomly become unresponsive, forcing me to unplug/plug it back in to get it to work. I suspect that Windows is randomly closing processes (since no error logs) - including my keyboard driver now apparently?