Guesses about freezes?

[Craig234]

While I'm using the (Windows 10) PC, it doesn't 'freeze'. But increasingly, not usually but more and more often, when I come back to the PC in 'hibernate', it's totally frozen, requiring a power-off. The usual things to wake it such as alt-tab or ctrl-alt-delete much less just moving the mouse don't do anything.

Any guesses as to finding the culprit, starting with hardware or software? It usually has some 'game launchers' running. A virus monitor has been regularly getting popups claiming it blocked an attempted problem from a background program trying to reach the 'Wargaming' website it seems, if that could be an issue. Naturally diagnostic info isn't clear from 'it hung while hibernated'.

 

[SamirD]

Turn off hibernation and see if that fixes it. If it still hangs after hours of non-use, the problem is definitely not hibernation.

 

[Craig234]

Turn off hibernation and see if that fixes it. If it still hangs after hours of non-use, the problem is definitely not hibernation.

I didn't mean the technical meaning of 'hibernation', I'm not quite sure what that is in Windows and if it's on. I meant how after a while - 30 minutes? 60? the PC has the screen go dark and needs some activity like moving the mouse to bring the screen back. But I'll check on the options. I'm not sure it's a good idea for long, there's a reason the PC has that default behavior.

Edit: starting to look around a little, this is what I meant: an article says, "Hibernate uses less power than sleep and when you start up the PC again, you’re back to where you left off (though not as fast as sleep). "

So, I was probably talking about 'sleep' rather than 'hibernate'; if I knew how to check which is happening, that could answer that.

But the issue could involve 'sleep' instead, and I suspect it does. I've never turned hibernate on if it's not the default.

That affect the suggestion? Any other ideas how to get diagnostics? It's a little trickier because it can go a day or a week without happening to it's hard to tell whether a change prevented it or not.

 

[SamirD]

Gotcha. So then I would check the power options and see what you have it set to. I would change it to 'high-performance' so it doesn't blank the screen or anything and see if it still freezes. Some systems have problems coming out of a power saving mode.

 

[Craig234]

I'll check on that. It hasn't happened in a few days, which is what I mean about it being hard to know if something is preventing it.

 

[Scarpozzi]

What kind of computer is it?

I would verify that you're on the latest bios version and verify that you have the latest hard drive firmware installed.... As well as the latest video drivers.

In my experience, those low-level pieces of code are usually what causes freezing rather than blue screens and error messages. If you have a Dell or HP laptop/desktop....bios updates should be the first thing you check.

 

[Craig234]

What kind of computer is it?

I would verify that you're on the latest bios version and verify that you have the latest hard drive firmware installed.... As well as the latest video drivers.

In my experience, those low-level pieces of code are usually what causes freezing rather than blue screens and error messages. If you have a Dell or HP laptop/desktop....bios updates should be the first thing you check.

Custom built; I could check that but it seems like any time I touch the video drivers they're fragile, so I usually leave them.

 

[Scarpozzi]

Custom built; I could check that but it seems like any time I touch the video drivers they're fragile, so I usually leave them.

Check versions and see how far behind you are on versions....you can always search the bug fixes and see if freezing or memory leaks are something the updates are supposed to fix.

 

[Craig234]

Check versions and see how far behind you are on versions....you can always search the bug fixes and see if freezing or memory leaks are something the updates are supposed to fix.

This didn't happen for a year, without any changes other than 1. if hardware started to go bad or 2. I ran some different programs or combination of programs. For example, I didn't play world of tanks for a couple years, and have been leaving it running around the same time I notice this.

 

[VirtualLarry]

Check Reliability Monitor and the System Event Log. See if they can help you pin it down to one app or driver.

 

[Steltek]

Since, I haven't seen this suggested, what antivirus are you running? If you are getting warning alerts, it might be a good idea to install Malwarebytes Anti-Malware and run a scan to see what might be going on, followed by an update and scan by your antivirus. An active malware infection can cause all sorts of system glitches (especially with some of the nasty stuff that is out there now - it is easy to pick it up from a drive-by download even on a legitimate website).

If that doesn't find anything, try to run SFC /Scannow from an elevated command prompt to check your system files for integrity violations.

If that scan doesn't indicate a problem, also run CHKDSK/F from an elevated command prompt (it may prompt you to reboot to run) to check the hard disk file system for corruption.

Though it isn't currently blue screening, it also probably would be a good idea to go in to Startup and Recovery under "View Advanced System Settings" and make sure the system is set up to write a kernel memory dump in the event of crashes. That way, if it does eventually start bluscreening, you can use something like Whocrashed to evaluate the dump files for potential causes. This won't help you now, but it may in the future if the problem progresses.

 

[Craig234]

I have malewarebytes premium; it finds nothing. Recently iobit was upgraded in version and found one item it removed. SFD /scannow found no problems.

 

[Steltek]

Check Reliability Monitor and the System Event Log. See if they can help you pin it down to one app or driver.

This is a very good suggestion, if you haven't tried it.

When you look view the Reliability Monitor report, set the report to display by days. Then, locate each day with a Windows critical event where Windows was listed as not being shut down properly - those should correspond with each of your lockups where you had to force a restart. On each of those days go through the listed application failures, windows failures, the miscellaneous critical failures, and the warnings in the report to see if you can find a commonality.

I'm also assuming CHKDSK didn't find any file system corruption?

 

[Craig234]

When you look view the Reliability Monitor report, set the report to display by days.

It showed events 2 or 3 times a week. I set it to weeks, and saw that the pattern started at a certain point in December, with nothing before that. Wish I knew what changed.

I'm also assuming CHKDSK didn't find any file system corruption?

I didn't run that as I don't want to reboot - but the problem hasn't happened in over a week now.