[Help request:] After some computer uptime all MSI installers and some other things fail.

Hello,
please help me to investigate this issue I have for almost half a year:

I have W10 x64 Enterprise 20H1 (freshly upgraded from 19H2, where I had the same problem).

After some computer uptime (like 1-2 days of PC running) some Windows features stop working:

1. Every MSI installer (of common programs) I run fails instantly.
2. I can't connect to disk service when I run disk manager diskmgmt.msc.
3. Office 2019 C2R update check fails:
OfficeC2RClient.exe /update user updatepromptuser=true forceappshutdown=true displaylevel=true
with error "something didn't work" (translated from cs-CZ).

A reboot always temporarily solves it.
Upgrade to another build doesn't solve it (I did it recently from 19H2 to 20H1).

Please, where I should start investigating (from logs), what is the issue.

https://forums.mydigitallife.net/members/abbodi1406.204274/ please help me too )

 

There are some "bad blocks" for MicrosoftEdgeUpdate, but i didn't find anything, what could be connected to the issue.
Could the Event Viewer reports be exported some easy way?

 

I finally solved it, here is how:

To Increase The Desktop Heap:

Open regedit.exe, and navigate to the following key:
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Session Manager\SubSystems
Then find the following value name:
"Windows“
Open its value for editing and go to this part of it:
SharedSection=X,Y,Z

Where X,Y and Z are the values you'll found there.

For Windows 10 (64-bit) and Windows Server 2019 (64-bit) it will be:
SharedSection=1024,20480,768

The first SharedSection value (1024) is the shared heap size common to all desktops. This includes the global handle table. This table holds handles to windows, menus, icons, cursors, and so on, and shared system settings. It is unlikely that you would ever have to change this value.

The second SharedSection value is the size of the desktop heap for each desktop that is associated with the "interactive" window station WinSta0. User objects such as hooks, menus, strings, and windows consume memory in this desktop heap. It is unlikely that you would ever have to change this value.

The third SharedSection value is the size of the desktop heap for each desktop that is associated with a "noninteractive" window station. If this value is not present, the size of the desktop heap for noninteractive window stations will be same as the size that is specified for interactive window stations (that is, the second SharedSection value).

If only two SharedSection values are present, you can add a third value to specify the size of the desktop heap for desktops that are created in noninteractive window stations.

Typically, that third number is smaller than the second, i.e. the interactive desktop heap is larger than the non-interactive desktop heap.

The solution is to modify that registry setting to increase the third number of the SharedSection parameter, i.e. increase the size of the non-interactive desktop heap.

For example, you should change this default setting:
SharedSection=1024,20480,768
to this:
SharedSection=1024,20480,4096

You must re-boot the OS for the change to take effect.

Warning: if you make one of these 3 heap size settings too small, the OS may not have enough resources to start.

 

"Desktop heap allocation failed." It isn't even an error in Event Viewer, just a small warning. But it causes tons real of errors after it, when things like MSI installers and disk services get terminated, because there are no free resources for them reserved in the OS.

Also MS "nicely" translate these special terms to your language, so when you Google for it, you have your "Papua-New Guinea" error version, which nobody other has. Slight different translation and you will found nothing.

I consider it quite lucky, that I even found it.
Note, that clean Windows reinstall wouldn't solve anything in the long term. With more programs installed the limit would be crossed again after some time.