Quote from Shivam on 01/07/2026, 14:19

 

Hi spacedesk team,

I’m facing a serious issue that started recently after months of using spacedesk without problems.

 

[Note: i’ve been trying to debug this issue using chatgpt and tried many suggested things as per chatgpt, so here is the summary of what i tried along with what issue is]

My setup:

• Windows 11 PC
• Windows build: 10.0.26100.x / Windows 11 24H2
• GPU: NVIDIA RTX GPU
• CPU: AMD Ryzen 7 7700X
• Main monitor connected directly to the RTX GPU
• Using spacedesk to use my laptop as a second monitor
• spacedesk version tested: latest available version from the official download page, including 2.2.25

Issue:

After connecting or disconnecting spacedesk, Windows randomly enters a broken state where elevated/admin processes stop launching properly.

Examples of things that stop working:

• Task Manager may not open
• Admin CMD does not open
• Win + R → cmd → Ctrl + Shift + Enter shows the UAC prompt, but after clicking Yes, CMD does not open
• Win + R → prefetch opens Explorer but gets stuck/greyed or does not complete
• Some games do not open
• Git Bash sometimes does not open
• CMD commands related to services may hang

Important behavior:

• The PC itself does not freeze completely. Mouse/keyboard/browser can still work.
• The issue happens randomly either right after connecting spacedesk or right after disconnecting spacedesk.
• Sometimes all queued apps suddenly open automatically after around 1–4 minutes.
• This was not happening for months. It started recently.
• Reinstalling spacedesk did not fix it.
• Updating to the latest spacedesk version did not fix it.
• NVIDIA DDU clean uninstall + fresh driver install did not fix it.
• Changing UAC to “Do not dim my desktop” did not fix it.
• Appinfo service was checked and it was RUNNING.

Observed service state:

When the issue was active, I tried stopping spacedeskService from an already-open admin CMD:

sc stop spacedeskService

Output:

SERVICE_NAME: spacedeskService
TYPE : 10 WIN32_OWN_PROCESS
STATE : 3 STOP_PENDING
(STOPPABLE, NOT_PAUSABLE, ACCEPTS_SHUTDOWN)
WIN32_EXIT_CODE : 0 (0x0)
SERVICE_EXIT_CODE : 1378876536 (0x522ffc78)
CHECKPOINT : 0x1
WAIT_HINT : 0xbb8

After this, the CMD window got stuck and Ctrl+C did not cancel it.

I also ran:

sc query spacedeskService

while the issue was active, and the command also got stuck after showing the service in STOP_PENDING.

Task Manager observations:

• spacedesk.exe could be killed from Task Manager.
• spacedeskConsole.exe and spacedeskServiceTray.exe did not end immediately when I clicked End Task.
• After a few minutes, spacedesk disappeared from Task Manager and the stuck Windows/admin processes started working again.

Other Windows logs noticed around the issue:

• DistributedCOM Event ID 10016 involving Windows.SecurityCenter.WscDataProtection
• Service Control Manager error for AMD User Experience Program Data Uploader missing file
• Application Hang involving SystemSettings.exe
• Firefox Default Browser Agent “Access is denied”

However, the issue is reproducible around spacedesk connect/disconnect, and spacedeskService getting stuck in STOP_PENDING seems to be the strongest clue.

What I think is happening:

It looks like spacedesk’s service/display driver cleanup is hanging during connect/disconnect. While this is happening, Windows admin/elevation/process launches get blocked or delayed until spacedesk finishes timing out or cleaning up.

Expected behavior:

Connecting or disconnecting spacedesk should not block Windows admin/elevated processes or cause spacedeskService to get stuck in STOP_PENDING.

Please let me know if there are logs, dumps, or debug builds I can provide. This is affecting my daily workflow because I use spacedesk as a second monitor from my laptop.