Windows freezes randomly

[jnelsoninjax]

15 minutes ago, Joe User said:

Here's a longshot. It's possible something is causing the windows shell to hang.

 

*Warning: Use this at your own risk, make sure you have a backup of everything and a working recovery disk. You are responsible for all changes made and any issues that may arise from those changes.*   While I've never managed to make my computer unbootable via shell extension changes, there's always a first, so please make sure you back up your work, the last thing you want is to lose data. 

 

Nirsoft has a freeware program that I've used to let you see what third party shell extensions you have running. https://www.nirsoft.net/utils/shexview.html. 

Also, run the Windows Task manager and click the startup tab.

See if there's anything in there that doesn't belong. 

 

And lastly, it couldn't hurt to re-install the latest video card drivers.

OK, I will take a look at program. I have already gone over startup using the task manger and Autoruns, and with Autoruns, I found 3 or 4 programs that were trying to load even though they were gone, so I disabled them. If this becomes anymore of a hassle I might just have to do a reinstall, which really does not take all that long, considering all my programs are on separate drives.

[Joe User]

4 minutes ago, jnelsoninjax said:

OK, I will take a look at program. I have already gone over startup using the task manger and Autoruns, and with Autoruns, I found 3 or 4 programs that were trying to load even though they were gone, so I disabled them. If this becomes anymore of a hassle I might just have to do a reinstall, which really does not take all that long, considering all my programs are on separate drives.

While I have seen shell extensions cause issues to this extent, it's not a frequent occurrence. But it is worth looking at just to be sure.

 

Also, at this point, if it were my computer, I would start planning a reinstall. 

 

(Lastly, just a note. I know you understand the risks involved using some of these programs, the warnings are also for the person who finds this thread on Google and accidentally wipes out their OS.)

[jnelsoninjax]

3 minutes ago, Joe User said:

While I have seen shell extensions cause issues to this extent, it's not a frequent occurrence. But it is worth looking at just to be sure.

 

Also, at this point, if it were my computer, I would start planning a reinstall. 

 

(Lastly, just a note. I know you understand the risks involved using some of these programs, the warnings are also for the person who finds this thread on Google and accidentally wipes out their OS.)

I understand, you don't want someone to say @Joe Usersaid to do it that way!

[jnelsoninjax]

Just ran shellX, and I did not see anything that stands out as not belonging, so it is either related to the mysterious Audible for Windows Phone (which as best as I can tell, is installed), the WinRing0 (which the service does not exist, but exe's do) or even Windows Photo, which I uninstalled because I did not need it. So I can spend more time trying to figure out what the exact reason the few programs that are installed, or I can simply reinstall the OS, which at this point might be the simplest method. I am going to attach the report from shellX, perhaps someone can point out anything I might've overlooked. https://pastebin.com/wYfPygXh

[jnelsoninjax]

So I may have fixed the issue. I have a program that does crypto mining, and I started poking around in the settings and discovered that it was allowed to overclock (CPU/GPU) and another Google search pointed me to a suggestion that the freezing could be caused by something using the GPU/CPU at max, and not allowing Windows to have any of it, and it suggested to under clock the GPU or just run it at normal clock speeds, not OC. It has been over 24 hours since I made the change and the system has not frozen. The mining software is supposed to only run when the system is idle, but it has a bug in it where it ignores that sometimes.

[jnelsoninjax]

I'm going to say that the issue had to be the mining software overclocking, since I disabled that I have not had any more freezes

[Joe User]

24 minutes ago, jnelsoninjax said:

I'm going to say that the issue had to be the mining software overclocking, since I disabled that I have not had any more freezes

So, it was the video card, just in a roundabout way.

[jnelsoninjax]

10 hours ago, Joe User said:

So, it was the video card, just in a roundabout way.

I suppose so.

[erpster3]

On 30/12/2020 at 13:04, jnelsoninjax said:

I assuming that the numlock/capslock still toggle, as I can press ctrl+alt+del, but since changing the keyboard, I have not had any more freezes.

ASUS ROG Nvidia GTX 2080

 

other people also have some freezing problems with this specific graphics card.

 

maybe replace it with a different one and also install a higher & stronger power supply unit that can handle more power hungry GPUs

[dadwacker]

So many different factors could be causing this issue. When I disabled the windows defender scheduled scan(in task scheduler) it fixed my mouse/keyboard from freezing up.. Always something with windows lol 

[jnelsoninjax]

1 hour ago, erpster3 said:

 

other people also have some freezing problems with this specific graphics card.

 

maybe replace it with a different one and also install a higher & stronger power supply unit that can handle more power hungry GPUs

That link is over 2 years old, and it does not show any resolution to the problem, and BTW I am having the issue again, completely randomly I can be browsing the web and it suddenly freezes on me. This is a clean <1 month old install

[jnelsoninjax]

58 minutes ago, Sensi said:

So many different factors could be causing this issue. When I disabled the windows defender scheduled scan(in task scheduler) it fixed my mouse/keyboard from freezing up.. Always something with windows lol 

Interesting. I have 127 scheduled tasks, but no defender scan (I disabled defender) but I wonder if that could be the root of the issues (scheduled tasks, not Defender).

[dadwacker]

1 hour ago, jnelsoninjax said:

Interesting. I have 127 scheduled tasks, but no defender scan (I disabled defender) but I wonder if that could be the root of the issues (scheduled tasks, not Defender).

127 is quite a lot of scheduled tasks, have you gone through them and seen anything out of the ordinary?  

This might not be of use to you seeing as you've disabled defender but the location of mine on win10 is:
Task Scheduler\Task Scheduler Library\Microsoft\Windows\Windows Defender then right click "Windows Defender Scheduled Scan" and disable.

[jnelsoninjax]

39 minutes ago, Sensi said:

127 is quite a lot of scheduled tasks, have you gone through them and seen anything out of the ordinary?  

This might not be of use to you seeing as you've disabled defender but the location of mine on win10 is:
Task Scheduler\Task Scheduler Library\Microsoft\Windows\Windows Defender then right click "Windows Defender Scheduled Scan" and disable.
 

Just checked, and it is empty.

[dadwacker]

16 hours ago, jnelsoninjax said:

Just checked, and it is empty.

Ahh, you could try disabling scheduled scans in your 3rd party anti-virus and seeing if it changes anything.. If not, enable it and poke around with other things installed.. Something about windows 10 lately just lags my mouse about and drops my wifi connection, never had these problems with Windows 7 👀

[jnelsoninjax]

OK, so I have isolated the issue down to this: while watching YouTube in Firefox on my second monitor (2K) that is when the random freezing happens, and I have to turn off the system in order to get back in control (start menu, etc  does not work)

[goretsky Supervisor]

Hello,

Only Mozilla Firefox, no other browser causes this to happen?

 

Regards,

 

Aryeh Goretsky

 

[Steven P. Administrators]

I had this as well and it was a bitch to debug, but my first suggestion is to ensure your systems drivers are all correct and up to date, in as far as going to your motherboard support page and installing the latest version of the drivers there and not relying on Windows Update for them. I even have the Intel Driver & Support Assistant installed.

 

You could also give LatencyMon a go to see if there are problems with Video or Audio decoding on your system https://www.resplendence.com/latencymon

[jnelsoninjax]

3 hours ago, goretsky said:

Hello,

Only Mozilla Firefox, no other browser causes this to happen?

 

Regards,

 

Aryeh Goretsky

 

I do not use any other browser, so I can not say for sure

3 hours ago, Steven P. said:

I had this as well and it was a bitch to debug, but my first suggestion is to ensure your systems drivers are all correct and up to date, in as far as going to your motherboard support page and installing the latest version of the drivers there and not relying on Windows Update for them. I even have the Intel Driver & Support Assistant installed.

 

You could also give LatencyMon a go to see if there are problems with Video or Audio decoding on your system https://www.resplendence.com/latencymon

What did you determine the issue was when you had this issue?

[Steven P. Administrators]

30 minutes ago, jnelsoninjax said:

I do not use any other browser, so I can not say for sure

What did you determine the issue was when you had this issue?

I wasn't able to pin it to anything specific, it came and went. I reinstalled Windows 10 twice, all I can say is that I ensured all of my motherboard drivers were installed the last time around and the freezing hasn't come back yet.

[jnelsoninjax]

2 hours ago, Steven P. said:

I wasn't able to pin it to anything specific, it came and went. I reinstalled Windows 10 twice, all I can say is that I ensured all of my motherboard drivers were installed the last time around and the freezing hasn't come back yet.

Here is what I am getting from LatencyMon:

I do not know what to make of it, I am checking for updated drivers.

[Steven P. Administrators]

18 minutes ago, jnelsoninjax said:

Here is what I am getting from LatencyMon:

I do not know what to make of it, I am checking for updated drivers.

Yeah that is not good man. Don't forget to check out the tabs in the LatencyMon app, it will tell you which driver is causing that spike and then you can tell if you need an updated one or something.

 

Here's mine

 

[jnelsoninjax]

33 minutes ago, Steven P. said:

Yeah that is not good man. Don't forget to check out the tabs in the LatencyMon app, it will tell you which driver is causing that spike and then you can tell if you need an updated one or something.

 

Here's mine

 

Mine starts that way, but within about a min of running while watching YouTube, it decides that there's something wrong. According to the Processes, the process with the highest hard pagefaults is svchosts.exe

Here are the Driver and CPU tabs:

 

 

[Steven P. Administrators]

3 minutes ago, jnelsoninjax said:

Mine starts that way, but within about a min of running while watching YouTube, it decides that there's something wrong. Here are the Driver and CPU tabs:

Might want to look into the audio driver for your board, as that has a very high execution. I see you have the latest Nvidia driver s installed so it can't be that. I am no expert on how to read these things but I would definitely start there. Sometimes it might even be better to install a motherboard manufacturer audio driver that is a bit old (but the correct one) rather than letting Windows install the latest generic one.

[jnelsoninjax]

8 minutes ago, Steven P. said:

Might want to look into the audio driver for your board, as that has a very high execution. I see you have the latest Nvidia driver s installed so it can't be that. I am no expert on how to read these things but I would definitely start there. Sometimes it might even be better to install a motherboard manufacturer audio driver that is a bit old (but the correct one) rather than letting Windows install the latest generic one.

I just updated the Realtek Audio Driver as well as the AMD PCI driver and Samsung MVME controller drivers , Nvidia is current. I don't use Windows to install the drivers, I use SDI, I have found it to me be much more accurate.