In late April 2008 the Windows XP machine used here had to be rebuilt. This was reported on this site on Portfolio Page 1. After a few weeks of use, it was noticed that the process NMIndexStoreSvr was causing Windows shutdown to hang. A few other problems had also been noticed such as failed writes to CDs and other removable media and Internet activity persisting after closing all other programs. Digging into this problem and solving it was the inspiration for this web page.
The first step was to identify the process. The following is a partial report generated by
one of the tools we use and includes only new entries. This tool generates a system report and automatically sends it to
Notepad for ease of access.
Running processes:
C:\Program Files\Nero\Nero 7\InCD\NBHGui.exe
C:\Program Files\Nero\Nero 7\InCD\InCD.exe
C:\Program Files\Common Files\Ahead\Lib\NMBgMonitor.exe
C:\Program Files\Common Files\Ahead\Lib\NMIndexingService.exe
C:\Program Files\Common Files\Ahead\Lib\NMIndexStoreSvr.exe
From this report it was clear that the offending process had been loaded when installing the Nero 7 Essentials Suite that came with the new optical drive that was installed during the computer rebuild. This was a cause for concern, since we have been installing this suite on our customers computers. Searching the web for these items revealed that the bottom three of the running process list are part of Nero Scout and have not only been known trouble makers are also resource hogs.
As it turns out, Nero Scout is a media indexing tool. Unless you want it to do its job this program can easily be disabled. Find Nero 7 on your Start Menu. Vista users will need to open the Nero 7 folder while Windows XP users wait for the cascading menu. Next open or cascade the Tools folder then click on Nero Scout. This opens the Nero Scout options window which varies either with differing version numbers of the Nero suite or with differing versions of Windows. What ever causes the difference in the Nero Scout Options window, the check box circled in this graphic seems to be in the same place and is checked by default. To disable Nero Scout and the resource hungry associated services simply click the check box to remove the check then click the "Apply" button at the bottom of the screen followed by clicking the "OK" button.
Changes made on the Nero Scout Options screen do not take affect until your system has been restarted. After a reboot you will find that after this one setting adjustment the processes NMBgMonitor.exe, NMIndexingService.exe and NMIndexStoreSvr.exe have been eliminated from the list of running processes. This definitely cured the shutdown problem it will take time to discover whether the other problems mentioned were cured.
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