Windows 10: Random hang/lock/freezing (sort of)

I have read a thread or five via a Google search about random freezing with Windows 10, but none of their symptoms match mine, so I thought I'd post a new thread.

I'm getting random system freezes or hangs which prevent me from opening apps or programs and clicking on the task bar (or even getting it to come out of auto-hide). When it's happened before, I've left the system alone for a while but it never recovers.
If it is of any consequence, things go a bit quieter when this happens and the normal noise that I assume is from the hard drive stops. There's no clicking or anything alarming either before or after the freeze.

When it hangs, what I can still do is:

• Move the mouse
• Move already open windows around, snap to full screen or to the side
• Get the right click menu on the desktop, although it appears verrrrry slowly and nothing can be clicked on it when it appears
• Ctrl-alt-delete and the regular screen pops up
• Open the task manager and the subsequent performance tab which shows no movement across all the graphs

The only thing left to do is a hard restart as, even though the ctrl-alt-del screen still comes up, when I restart via this, it just loops forever with 'Restarting' on the screen.

What I did to get to where I am:

• Installed the Windows 10 upgrade from 8.1 via the Microsoft Win10 media creation tool
• Used the media creation tool to burn a USB stick .iso
• Downloaded and ran a program (Lollipop key finder or something) to find my new Win10 key
• Clean install from my .iso and my new Win 10 key
• Experienced the problem very often (every 15 minutes or so) with a completely fresh install
• Thought it might be hard drive related, so I re-seated my hard drive connectors on my motherboard
• Did a RAM diagnostic, no problems
• Defragmented HDD
• Problem is still present but only every couple of hours now. Nothing specific appears to trigger it, but at least I've been able to install the programs that I regularly use.

I've also done the recommended steps in this thread, to no avail. Disk health is good, no store corruption detected/obvious errors/noises. I even gave things a monthly blast with compressed air whilst re-seating the hard drives but now I'm at a loss.

Any ideas would be appreciated. *Huh

:)

 

Windows 7 to 10 upgrade on a Dell Precision 390?

@HalSchirmer

I also have a Dell Precision 390 running Windows 10, but mine freezes/hangs randomly. The mouse pointer disappears, the screen freezes and the Caps Lock light no longer appears when I toggle the Caps Lock button on the keyboard.

When it is running normally, it is very fast and smooth, but the random hang thing is very, very frustrating.

What graphics card do you have installed ?

Thanks

 

Windows 7 to 10 upgrade on a Dell Precision 390?

Hi Prahalad,

the graphics drivers install without any problems. The random freeze/hang issue is while running Windows 10 with the NVIDIA graphics driver.

Uninstalling the NVIDIA driver and installing the Microsoft Basic Display driver fixes the freeze/hang issue.

Thanks.

 

My symptoms after upgrading to Win10: after 5 minutes to a few hours, Windows will begin to become unresponsive, culminating to the point that a hard reboot is required. A bad-driver hunt did not find a problem. Disabling various drivers did not help. The generic MS display driver still showed the problem.

One early symptom when Win10 starts to become unresponsive was all browsers losing internet connection, even though the computer thought I still had a connection (e.g. pinging a site still worked). So I tried treating this symptom with "netsh winsock reset" from the command window then a restart, as suggested in this thread: Internet connection only on Microsoft Edge!

So far after 8 hours, Win10 is still stable, which is longer than before. Hopefully this solution works.

 

Not running Speccy are you?

 

Sichoy, I tried what you said, no problems - but on doing that, re-booting, opening chrome to the forum and clicking on Banger's reply to quote him made it happen again!

ffs *chuckle

-edit- Oh, yeah - I forgot. Banger, nope. no speccy.

 

I checked the events manager and there is a consistent error roughly around the time of a crash -

"Some processor performance power management features have been disabled due to a known firmware problem. Check with the computer manufacturer for updated firmware."

Hmm. This never happened for me with Windows 7 or 8.1

 

I've had this problem ever since upgrading. Upon attempting to open File Explorer or Settings the task bar and all icons freeze up and any related windows that are open stop until everything blinks out and reboots. Also, the few times I've managed to access File Explorer through Rainmeter it freezes up and everything starts over again if I do anything slightly taxing on the system (such as right clicking a folder).

I opened task manager to watch what happens and I noticed that the CPU usage suddenly shoots up to 100%.

Right now I have sfc /scannow running, which is taxing the Disk pretty hard, and noticed that along with it, something called Windows Modules Installer Worker and Microsoft Windows Search Indexer are using up a massive amount of CPU power (roughly 30-70%) and significantly more disk space than everything else (18-90 MB/s).

 

I don't know what happened, but it seems to have stopped now; I've not had a system hang in about three days.
I thought I'd post about it, just in case anyone may find this useful as I hate finding threads about problems I have with the OP just saying at the end, "Hey I fixed it" and nothing else, thread closed.

I think that it might be something to do with having a hibernate option enabled, but I'm not sure; I was kinda getting to the point where I was wondering if wearing my lucky pants would help when logging into Windows 10...

I was using hibernate as an action when I pressed the power button as this was my preferred method of closing my computer down for the night when I was using 8.1, but the system hangs seem to have stopped after I enabled quick start and set my power button to shut down, not hibernate.

I don't know whether this is the equivalent of some shaman dude shaking his rattling stick thing at my comp to fix it, but hey - idgaf at the moment. Keep your fingers crossed for me.

 

I spoke too soon - the system was okay for a while then it started hanging again. I've gone back to 8.1 as I can't risk losing work as I'm doing it due to having to do a hard reset. Oh well.

 

Okay, sorry for the thread necromancy here but for the benefit of people doing Google searches with the same problem I tried doing this and I have had no crashes -

1. Clean install.
2. As soon as it finishes and goes to the desktop, disconnect from the internet before Windows updates the graphics driver.
3. Search 'Device Installation Settings' > Check 'No' & save changes to prevent Windows downloading manufacturers apps
4. Install graphics driver yourself.