Question Laptop suddenly freezes

[algran]

Hi, I have an issue I hope I could receive some help with. I have a laptop Asus ROG with 5800H, 16 GB RAM, 1 TB SSD and RTX 3060 which is experiencing occasional Windows freezes (both mouse and keyboard become unresponsive and the laptop has to be shut down from the power button). The frequency for these events is between several days and several weeks. All the advices I found on the Internet basically amount to take the entire software apart, which is not exactly helpful in this case. Is there a way to better identify what is causing these freezes? (I tried to look into the Event viewer, but I saw no suspicious error messages at the moment when the freezes occurred).

At first, I had some suspicions about the cause related to the wireless card: when I originally installed my OS, the driver for wireless did not install automatically through the Windows Update, but I had to search it on the web and download it manually. I thought it was a faulty driver, because, if I am not mistaken, the Windows freezes occurred when the laptop was not connected to the internet by cable. But I did a complete Windows reinstall and the laptop froze again (and needed a restart from the power button) 10 days later.
I cannot be 100% sure, but the freezes seem to occur while browsing on the Internet, in wireless mode.

Does anyone have any suggestion how to identify the cause? Since the freezes are random and occur at long intervals, the typical advices which a Google search gets you (which basically amount to taking the machine's operating OS apart, software by software and driver and by driver) are not really viable.

 

[Tech Junky]

I had an issue with the pointer on my laptop going nuts and refocusing / clicking on things on its own for ~2 months or so. I suspect it was either a driver issue or a physical connection inside the laptop. I couldn't figure it out but, going from needing a hard reboot several times a day or every 24 hours it's been stable for the last week or two.

I thought maybe it could be a temp issue as well but, it just didn't make sense but, in the past I've had some odd issues with Windows that were not present in Linux. This pointer thing though followed across OS's though but, as much as I wish there was a BIOS update to resolve it the issue has subsided for the time being. Then again I've cracked open the laptop case a couple of times recently to swap the WIFI to a different card and more recently to scrape the thermal paste off and put in graphite pads instead (36 hours ago).

At one point I went reseating everything inside just to make sure but didn't find anything out of the ordinary while poking around. When I removed the paste though I did find one of the screws around the CPU heat sink to not be torqued like the others... didn't affect anything though. I did start using IOBit systemcare though instead of dealing with Windows Update a little while back though and cleansed all of the windows settings with it. Whether this played into resolution or not I doubt it.

Just make sure all of your drivers are up to date / maybe run DDU to purge the video drivers and reinstall. Anything come to mind for changes you made since this started?

 

[georg34]

It seems you have tried most of the software part troubleshooting. My laptop often freeze as long as I do not run the Windows update.

After updating the Windows, it works fine for a reasonable period. So, my vote goes to issues with Windows.

But you have reinstalled the OS and still the issue there.

So, check for the hardware side. Check the RAM. A faulty RAM module can cause random system hanging.

 

[igor_kavinski]

If it's possible, wipe Windows and install Pop!_OS by System76 on it (good for gaming) and try tolerating it for a few days and see if the freeze happens again. That would help you rule out an OS issue.

 

[algran]

I would prefer if I could find some software which could tell me the issue. For instance, I once had a BSOD problem with an old desktop more than 6 year and I was able to find out (in the event viewer, I think) that it was caused by an oudated graphic driver.
With all due respect, "Checking the hardware side" is easier said than done and not everyone has the ability or the means to take a laptop apart - and sometimes is not even possible. How could anyone "check the RAM" if it is soldiered on the motherboard?

As for "wipe Windows and install Pop!_OS by System76 on it (good for gaming) and try tolerating it for a few days and see if the freeze happens again", here is what I said in the first post: "The frequency for these events is between several days and several weeks". I would need to tolerate it for at least month to be (relatively) sure that the problem does not happen again. I repeat again, advice of the sort "pull out X/Y/Z piece of hardware/software and see what happens" is simply not feasible when a problem occurs randomly and at long intervals, of weeks or more.
What I need if someone could indicate if the source of the problem could be found out via the Event Viewer or something like that.

If it helps, the freezes seem to occur while browsing the internet in wireless. Since they are not triggered by a particular event, I cannot tell for sure, but I had around 7 or 8 freezes over the whole year and, at least the last 5 (when they started to catch my attention and I recall exactly what I was doing), happened while browsing the net in wireless mode. The model of the laptop is an ASUS ROG G513QM. I already mentioned the specs and I was using Edge. My wireless drivers are up to date. Could it be because my laptop is WiFI 6 and my router is WIFI 5, perhaps?

 

[igor_kavinski]

Could it be because my laptop is WiFI 6 and my router is WIFI 5, perhaps?

That would be a ridiculous source of the freezing issue but stranger things happen in the PC world.

I will tell you my personal experience dealing with an issue on my 4th gen ASUS laptop (N550JV). Sometimes, it would go to sleep and refuse to wake up and there would be no solution but to do a hard shutdown, which was very annoying because at the time, I was using an HDD in the laptop and a restart would take almost 15 minutes for the HDD activity to calm down enough for the laptop to be usable again. This would happen multiple times a month. I suffered this issue for almost two years.

One day, I probably lucked upon entering the correct keyword for my issue in Google and happened upon a forum post about someone having the same issue with a different ASUS laptop model. Guess what the source of the issue was? It was the damn touchscreen digitizer (possibly the driver for it)!

Solution was to go into Device Manager and disable the touchscreen device (I hardly ever used it) and the issue never happened again.