Windows 10: Windows 10 upgrade - random freezes and PC becomes unresponsive

Hello!

I have checked various threads and solutions but not yet found anything that works and would love a fully-working PC by tomorrow (self-employed/work from home)...!

My situation is this... I upgraded from a fully-functioning Windows 8.1 to Windows 10 this weekend. The upgrade process seemed simple enough, but I am suffering from intermittent freezes which can only be resolved with a full (hardware button) reset.

At a random time - after anything from 5 to 50 minutes - the screen will suddenly power off (the monitor itself will usually tell me it is going into sleep mode). Sometimes I'm in the middle of something; sometimes I've gone away and have returned to an unresponsive PC. Sometimes I will see the mouse cursor and desktop freeze for about a second before the screen goes black; sometimes I won't. If I'm playing music, it will stop. Ctrl-Alt-Delete doesn't do anything - but the hard drive light still flashes, as if Windows is still running. (The error logs don't *seem* to show anything out of the ordinary, other than that I then have to do a socking great reset!)

I've tried various things already - I've made sure the graphics drivers are up-to-date (via an install from scratch); I've disconnected everything from the USB ports; I've booted with everything in Startup set to disabled... But the problem keeps recurring, and I really don't want to have to scrub everything I've got and do a 'nuclear' install. (In theory, I'm dual booting with Windows 7, but have not booted into that for years, probably.)

Safe mode seems stable, as does the screen before you actually log on, so I'm inclined to think it's a driver issue or something, but they're all up-to-date, too. I'm running a single monitor, BTW.

Any ideas, or suggestions where to look in those error logs, gratefully received. Help me, Obi Wan Kenobi, etc.

:)

 

WHY IS WINDOWS 10 RUNNING SO SLOW?

Hi Tanya,



Before we proceed, I need more information to help you better.

1. What is the make and model of the computer?
2. Do you receive any error message?
3. When exactly does the computer freezes? Is it while trying to access any application on your system?

As per your query, your system seems to be hanging and freezing, so we can define four categories of behavior for systems that become unresponsive, as follows:


• Hang: Your PC becomes unresponsive whenever you do a specific set of steps, and you must restart to recover the PC.

• Random Hang: Your PC becomes unresponsive seemingly at random, and you must restart to recover the PC.

• Generic Freeze: Your PC becomes unresponsive for a period of time, and then becomes usable again without taking any action. You don't need to restart your PC for it to be usable again. This behavior seems to affect all apps.

• Single-app Freeze: Your PC exhibits the same behavior as a Generic Freeze, except that it only occurs when running a specific app, such as when playing a game or browsing websites.

I suggest you to run Windows defender and refer to the link below:

Protect your PC:
http://windows.microsoft.com/en-in/windows-10/getstarted-protect-your-pc


Disclaimer: Any data files that are infected may only be cleaned by deleting the file entirely, which means there is a potential for data loss.

Let's try to refer to the link below, to check, if your system hardware is compatible with Windows 10.
Windows 10 Specifications & System Requirements | Microsoft

Hope the above information helps. Reply with necessary information and the result to help you further.

Thank you.

 

Windows 10 upgrade - random freezes and PC becomes unresponsive (monitor goes to sleep) - single monitor

Hello.

I upgraded from a fully-functioning Windows 8.1 to Windows 10 this weekend. The upgrade process seemed simple enough, but I am suffering from intermittent freezes which can only be resolved with a full (hardware button) reset.

At a random time - after anything from 5 to 50 minutes - the screen will suddenly power off (the monitor itself will usually tell me it is going into sleep mode). Sometimes I'm in the middle of something; sometimes I've gone away and have returned to an unresponsive
PC. Sometimes I will see the mouse cursor and desktop freeze for about a second before the screen goes black; sometimes I won't. If I'm playing music, it will stop. Ctrl-Alt-Delete doesn't do anything - but the hard drive light still flashes, as if Windows
is still running. (The error logs don't *seem* to show anything out of the ordinary, other than that I then have to do a socking great reset!)

I've tried various things already - I've made sure the graphics drivers are up-to-date (via an install from scratch); I've disconnected everything from the USB ports; I've booted with everything in Startup set to disabled... But the problem keeps recurring,
and I really don't want to have to scrub everything I've got and do a 'nuclear' install. (In theory, I'm dual booting with Windows 7, but have not booted into that for years, probably.)

Safe mode seems stable, as does the screen before you actually log on, so I'm inclined to think it's a driver issue or something, but they're all up-to-date, too.

Any ideas, or suggestions where to look in those error logs, gratefully received. Help me, Obi Wan Kenobi, etc.

 

Turn off screen savers ,hibernation and monitor sleep timing ,try high performance power setting and never sleep on PC and screen and get back to us if that fixes it we can go from there or you can leave it like that .

Desktop or laptop and if laptop do use it on a battery much ?

 

Hi, a couple of thoughts:
1. try a clean boot into normal mode (i.e. disable all startups) just to see what happens.
2. you might wish to try an older version of your graphics driver if available e.g. Win 8 compatible.
3. I've come across threads (in this forum) about Win 10 erratically going into sleep- if that were your problem. If so, have a look for those threads. But from what you're saying, it isn't actually going into sleep mode.
4. If you're looking for crash report analysis, try Nirsoft's utilities e.g. Whocrashed for drivers to give you a clue.

Also consider your AV/Firewall. The usual recommendation on upgrading is to uninstall that before upgrading.

 

If ran fine in safe mode, then this seems to point to driver or software incompatibility or conflict.
Make sure did update all system drivers from PC manufacturer's site and if they do have them.Disable sleep and hibernate for now if using as already recommended use Power option, high performance.

Another possibility hardware related issues or if corrupt system files or misconfigured system (too many running processes, low resources) As we have no clue to your system specs to know much about them.

 

Many thanks for getting back to me (apologies for not saying; this is a desktop machine). I'm afraid the problem still occurred after making these changes, but I'm very grateful for your reply. Still, some progress seems to have been made (see below).

 

Many thanks for getting back to me. I thought I had already tried booting with all startup programs disabled, but given what I've done this morning) see below, I'm no longer so sure. So I may return to this as I troubleshoot further...

I've not yet rolled back the graphics driver, as it was doing this with an earlier version, but I shall certainly bear this in mind. I think you're right to think this isn't a sleep problem per se (as sometimes it happens mere moments after reaching my desktop), but again I've added it to the list of possibilities. I'll check out that crash report analysis tool, and have made sure my AV program is up-to-date (it looks like the main program wasn't updating automatically, though that doesn't in itself seems to have solved my problem). Of course, in an ideal world, I would indeed have uninstalled before upgrading, but... Ho hum.

Anyway, thanks again for your help.

 

Many thanks for getting back to me (apologies for not adding much to my system specs - I was posting a hurry last night, but have now sorted the specs, FWIW).

I 'chatted' to a MS help desk person last night, and he suggested making a new user account - which might in turn point to a problem with something that I have installed and load by default. I did that this morning, and have not had any problems for about four hours... Which means that I've at least been able to do some work today! So I'm left wondering whether to just migrate all my shortcuts and whatnot from my original account to this one, or to use that account from time to time in an attempt to isolate just what's causing the problem. (I'll probably do a bit of both, to be honest.) Some program or driver is obviously messing with Windows 10, but at least I appear to have a working system. Time for some tidying and/or detective work...

Anyway, thanks again for your help.

 

Ha! I spoke too soon - after about six hours of my new account/logon working without a hitch, I was away from the PC for a few minutes, and returned just in time to see the monitor switching off - and no amount of mouse shaking/keyboard pressing would wake the thing! So, another reset - and back to the drawing board (and some of the other suggestions already mentioned).

Any further thoughts, do let me know, though you've all been most helpful so far.

 

Hi, random thought, if you have any useful crash dumps on your PC, this may help (just been upgraded for win 10- freeware).
WhoCrashed Introduction Target audience

Novice users

Intermediate users

Power users

System administrators

Support engineers

Application developers

Kernel developers Just released: WhoCrashed v 5.50
with support for Windows 10

WhoCrashed reveals the drivers responsible for crashing your computer

Whenever a computer running Windows suddenly reboots without displaying any notice or blue screen of death, the first thing that is often thought about is a hardware failure. In reality, most crashes are caused by malfunctioning device drivers and kernel modules. In case of a kernel error, most computers running Windows do not show a blue screen unless they are configured to do so. Instead these systems suddenly reboot without any notice.

WhoCrashed shows the drivers that have been crashing your computer with a single click. In most cases it can pinpoint the offending drivers that have been causing misery on your computer system in the past. It does post-mortem crashdump analysis and presents all gathered information in a comprehensible way.

 

.. from here
Resplendence Software - Free Downloads

 

And try WinCrashReport - Displays a report about crashed Windows application

 

Thanks for that - just tried it. It reports "Crash dumps are enabled but no valid crash dumps have been found". Which I suppose means, whatever else is going on, it's not, technically crashing...? So, maybe, we're back at some weird power/sleep issue. I don't know... (Currently one hour plus on my old/main account/login. ;-) )

 

As a random thought, try disabling your AV/firewall if you have one, and you can do that long enough to be useful. And anything else you can think of that's not running in Safe Mode. (Internet disconnected, normal mode).

And download and run 'Don't sleep' (easy to find). That should (??) eliminate sleep- unless something unusual is going on. So if hte screen still goes black, then it's probably not a sleep issue.