Windows 10 freezes randomly

Grzegorz said:

So, freezes keep on appearing, although I feel like less often and they are generally "less frozen". I encountered 2 freezes and did manage to "normally" restart during the second one (task bar was frozen, but laptop shown me the lockscreen after pressing ctrl-alt-del, and restarted correctly after selecting this option. During the previous freezes I either couldn't select restart option, or it was entering the blue restarting screen and getting frozen in there).
As before, no entries in event log for the period between the freeze and the restart.
So it seems better, but not good, still...
What I could still do is to go one-by-one with drivers, as suggested before, but I feel more and more demotivated and missing my stable, reliable, no-problems-making Window7... :/


As to whitelisting - for some parts of hardware HP implements "whitelisting", which in practice means that only the hardware listed would be accepted (thus - working) by BIOS. I am not sure if it applies to WiFi card on 2570p, anyhow, Atheros seems as a fully acceptable alternative to the current Broadcom (?).

At this point, it's either going to be one of four things... It's either a driver, a BIOS update is needed, a hardware failure (such as RAM), or a failing/faulting HDD.

The HDD is easiest to rule out and in order to do so, you'll need a Linux live CD that contains smartctl

• Once you're booted into the Linux Live CD, open a terminal and issue the following:
  
  1. ls /dev
     
     • You should see the HDD(s) listed as sda, sdb, sdc, etc.
       
       • For each HDD, issue:
  2. smartctl -a /dev/sda
     
     • Repeat for each HDD, replacing the third letter, a, with the appropriate letter for the next HDD.
       
       • Depending on the Live CD utilized, you may get told the command must be ran as root, and if this is the case, first issue the command su and if that doesn't work, use sudo in front of the smartctl command
     • Please copy and paste the information into a text file in the root of one of your HDDs
       
       • This can be accomplished two ways, either select all output in the terminal and right click, and paste into a new text file; OR
       • Use the cat command; however, you will have to know the mount point of the HDD you want to save it to, which can be discovered via the mount command, which will list all mount points.
  3. cat smartctl -a /dev/sda > /mnt/sda1/smart-sda.log
     
     • Where 1 represents the appropriate partition #
       
       • Repeat for each HDD, then please paste the output into a new document on pastebin.com, ensuring you remove the serial #'s for each drive, and provide the link pastebin.com provides

I'll do some research on my end about your specific PC model when I have some time later on today, to try and determine if there's other reported issues with Windows 10 for your model. I doubt this will show up with any concrete reasons, but there is the chance it falls into the minute percentage category of PC's with motherboards that require a BIOS update for Windows 10 to function properly.

I don't recall if you mentioned this or not, but if you haven't already ran DOS hardware diagnostics, I would recommend to run the full test, which will take 2+ hours to complete and before bed is a great time to run it. Your PC should have come pre-installed with diagnostics, and there should be a few different ways to access it. Your OEM may have a specific key you hold down prior to turning on the power to the PC (for example, on Dell PCs/Laptops, holding down the function, FN, key will auto boot the PC into DOS diagnostics if held down while the PC is turned on), there may be a specific F key you can press during POST, or you should be able to access Diagnostics via the boot menu (hold down F12 throughout POST, and at the bottom of the boot menu, there should be an option named "diagnostics").

• If your PC didn't come with diagnostics pre-installed, this complicates things a bit and I'll need to do some research on either how to install them onto your PC, or if they can be booted from a live CD (Hiren's Boot CD comes to mind).

Generally, the types of freezes/hangs you're describing, if not software attributed, are usually the cause of a failing/faulting HDD, memory, or other hardware component. Other rare cases are overclocking of the CPU, GPU, or RAM, and/or running RAM that isn't fully compatible with the motherboard (I did come across a few threads about this occurring on your PC model the other day, however if you haven't changed your RAM from the modules that your PC shipped with, this isn't the cause).

As to the wifi card, you should be fine with the Intel 7260ac... just ensure you buy the right interface format (either Mini-PCIe or M.2). The whitelisting seems to be a reference to what cards the PC could originally have shipped with, sort of like how Dell recommends Dell certified RAM. My personal experience is Intel is the best component manufacturer for WiFi cards, due not only to high quality products, but more importantly, support, as they release driver updates at least once a month. Intel also provides ways to directly contact their tech support departments and always respond in a timely manner.

Just before I try what you wrote, a quick recap:

1. BIOS has been updated to the latest version (as published by HP). It improved the situation - before this update there was totally no option to work on Win10, less than 2 minutes to freeze.
2. Memory is not original. It is Kingston HyperX HX316LS9IBK2/16
3. SSD is not original, it is Crucial MX200. SSDHealth shows full healthiness...