Windows 10: Windows hard freezing when left idle.

Give "whocrashed" a try,immediately after a freeze,it seems to be a display driver problem.Whocrashed will give a report on the problem and solutions,if any.A google search will give a safe site for Whocrashed.

 

Doesn't work. Well, the program works, but it's not detecting anything out of the ordinary apparently. It's not really 'crashing', or rather the PC doesn't think that it is, it's a hard freeze and there's no error log being made. The PC locks up and has to be hard reset, but doesn't seem to think there's any sort of failure happening in any of the diagnostics tools or logs.

The only crash that shows up after a freeze is one from a month ago, and my PC has locked up several times just in the last week.

 

It is still freezing just like before BTW, even after running the scans and and double checking all the power settings and whatnot.

 

I once had a laptop that behaved in exactly the same way due to a faulty video card. In 10-15 minutes of inactivity it would attempt to start an OpenGL screensaver, which would cause the laptop to freeze hard. (Only OpenGL screensavers had that effect.)

Playing video usually prevented it from freezing in my case as well since most video playing software is configured to disable screensaver during playback.

 

Was it only the screensaver and everything else was fine?

My rig is a gaming PC and I don't have issues running extremely heavy GPU load games without crashing or freezing, and I run OpenGl applications all the time without problems. I mean stuff that really pushes it too, Fallout 4, Witcher 3, Crysis 3, Wolfenstein New Order/Old Blood, GTA V, etc all modded with huge textures and post processing on Ultra settings that bring the card pretty much to the limits of what it can do over long periods of time without any issues like freezing or crashing.

I'm pretty sure the card is fine as it runs stuff like that without any issues and has for several years now. If it's the screensaver, I'm more inclined to believe it's probably a bug on the Windows side rather than an issue with the hardware, or if it is on the GPU side, it's something with the drivers and not the hardware itself.

I also have screensavers disabled. So it shouldn't be kicking in at all.

I'll try enabling one and see if that helps any and go with something that isn't OpenGl.

Maybe that's the issue? Windows 10 may be trying to kick on a screensaver or something even though I have it set to never do so and that might be causing it to lock up. I'll turn my screensaver on and set the activation time really high and see what happens.

You are right that even though I have it set so it should be disabled, the timer for the screensaver is set to about the right amount of time that it could possibly be the issue if it's not working right.

 

I'm having the exact same problem (my laptop is different specs, but same problem). I had Windows 8.1 on the same build and it ran fine, but 2 months after upgrading to 10, it freezes up completely and frequently- sometimes when just idle, sometimes when doing anything at all (browsing, videos, anything). I've tried most of the "fixes" the OP mentioned but nothing works. Nothing in the event log either. I'll do some more searching and let you know if I find anything.

Or rather, I would keep searching, if my computer didn't freeze every 10 minutes.

 

Does your Reliability History give any indications of problems? The quickest way into it,is to type reliability in the search box.

 

Update: I found a DCOM error in the event log (10010) that seemed like it didn't pertain to the crash, as it only appeared after a hard restart/shut down. The APPID corresponded to Windows Update Agent (which is definitely a possible source for crashes). I searched for solutions to fix it anyway, found one, and have been crash-free for 24 hours. Do you have any such errors?

 

Edit: Not it. Got another hard inactivity freeze again after taking my dog out, followed by another shortly after.

 

Did you notice anything happening with your internet connection as the computer was crashing/right before it froze? This was the case for me- I'd lose it right before it locked up. I am now using a USB WiFi adapter (since the one built into the laptop seemed to be faulty) and have not had any incidents for a week.

Edit: never mind; just saw that you've tried this already.

 

So this just started happening to me about a week ago on my laptop. I know this thread is a couple months old but have we found a solution at all?

I have literally done all that I can do and nothing seems to be working.

 

Fixed. Turns out it was a bad file in my Steam Folder causing defrag to freeze my PC. It was in a game called Wreckfest, which is a driving sim game by Bugbear. I have most of my Steam Folder in its own drive.

I don't think that turning off scheduling works with Windows 10. It was still doing it even if I disabled defragging as a scheduled event. The options are there to turn it off in the system menus, but it was still doing it anyway and locking up the PC in the process. It still tries to do disk maintenance anyway when the system is idle apparently, because I'm certain I disabled all scheduling and settings related to defrag and the issue still persisted.

None of the various scans my PC could do were picking up that there was anything wrong with the file. I did the usual, SFC, ScanDisk, DISM, etc. for each of my drives individually several times and it always came up clean and the scans ran fine. None of them were catching anything wrong with anything on any of my drives. It wasn't a virus or malware either because I was able to recreate the issue by defragging the drive with the game on it manually.

I noticed the Defragger was always locking up at a specific point once I tried to manually defrag after trying to individually defrag each of my drives again [with the exception of my SSD, which I optimized]. It was always freezing at around the same percentage. So I went to a more advanced view and discovered it was always locking up when it reached the same folder, but not always on the exact same file. Verifying the files on the game came up as them all being present, and the game ran fine if I tried to play it. The HDD itself also had plenty of space for a defrag operation, it's only about half full.

The freeze was sudden enough that it was keeping anything from being logged as a crash or failure on any system monitor, there was no unusual hardware activity and there were no error messages, so I actually had to sit and watch for it, which took quite a while. It was a pain, but after a couple of defrag failures it was pretty apparent as the detailed view showed it was left it hanging in the same area each time.

Deleted the game and my PC hasn't locked up since. If you're having the same issue, manually defrag your drives and make note of where it is when it locks up. If it's always in the same folder or file, delete or move the program to another drive and try again. Quick defrags don't work very well for this unfortunately. It would still lock up trying to do that, but was a lot more random about where it locked up and didn't always show the same folder or files.

I now have everything on scheduled defrag again and it's all working fine and has been for several days. Even quick defrag works like it should despite the freeze being more random in nature using that method prior to ridding my system of the offending file. I even left my PC on overnight just to test this and be sure and it stayed unfrozen for the whole night and worked fine in the morning. The issue is probably a bad file that your defrag is hanging up on if you're having the same symptoms as I was.

TLR: A bad file in one of my Steam Games was freezing the defrag operation and disk scans weren't catching it. Windows 10 does not actually turn off disk maintenance when idle no matter how you set the settings for scheduling or defragging. It does the quick scan version in the background anyway when the system is idle, which was causing my freezes despite having everything related to defrag disabled.

 

i also have the same problem what i do is play my music or the radio thru the computer put if i do not this if i leave The computer running it will shut down and tries to restart and restart and restart but never kicks over.

 

Contrabardus - Thank you! I've been dealing with this issue for over a year. I wanted to respond to this post since my issue was solved by manually running a defrag. I've followed this thread and tried many of the suggestions and nothing has worked.

Last night I ran a manual defrag (not letting the system "automatically" perform the operation) and left my machine on over night and throughout the day. Today, getting home from work, almost 24 hours later I'm able to log in without having to perform a hard reboot. As I stated above, I haven't been able to do this for over a year. I'm hopeful but it sure appears to have worked.

Thanks to all who posted the good suggestions.

 

Nice sleuthing!

Now there remain the questions:
Why should a "bad" file or folder cause the defragger (and the system) to hang?
Why does a disk scan fail to find any "bad" files or folders?

Lacking answers to those we all might someday be subjected to this fault, and be left with the devilishly annoying task of fixing it.