Live Protection seems to interact with python to cause system degredation in Win 10
Using Windows 10 with Live Protection enabled, repeated execution of a python interpreter appears to cause various issues to manifest, eventually requiring a reboot.
As python is run more times, various Windows features will stop working, and eventually I'll need to reboot, at which point all Windows features work again. Some of the issues I've seen are the following:
- Windows clipboard does not function correctly, especially in Firefox, although eventually Excel may report not being able to correctly use the clipboard. Other programs can access the Windows clipboard correctly, though (especially those that only copy/paste plain text).
- Trying to launching a processes or open certain files via double-clicking a file in Explorer does not launch the appropriate program or open the specified file. This particularly seems to happen when double-clicking PDF files in Explorer. They will eventually not open in Acrobat Reader via double-click, although drag and drop does appear to work, as does going to the File menu in Acrobat Reader.
- Programs will not launch from the Start Menu.
- Programs will not be able to open new windows.
- The speaker/headphones indicator icon in the taskbar indicates no available audio device, even though at least one is available, and can be used via appropriate programs already open (e.g., iTunes, Spotify)
- The screen blanks out and does not show anything, except an arrow with hourglass pointer (which will move in response to the mouse) for an extended period. I don't know if it would ever recover from this; I always end up rebooting if this happens.
I first experienced these issues while setting up environments using the Mamba package installer, so I initially thought this was a Mamba issue. However, I then started to see the same issues when using Conda, and then when just using a plain Python interpreter.
I mostly use a base conda environment set up with Python 3.9 or 3.10, and I've created environments with Python 3.7 & 3.8 and experienced these issues using any of them, so at least any combination of these Python versions seem to be able to cause these problems.
I have recently disabled Live Protection, and I am no longer seeing these issues.
