Windows 10 freezes randomly

Micboule said:

Hi,

Here is probably my final update with the conclusion that: **PROBLEM SOLVED** I dont have the problem anymore.

I saw that someone in the thread said that Acronis was making the problem... he was right... but when I saw that, I uninstalled Acronis True Image 2014 and I was still getting the problem of freezing randomly.

I thought maybe it was drivers, Windows 10 problem... etc. But seems not.... I had to revert back to (before installing Acronis True Image 2014) Lucky enough, I was having a SSD image backup before the install of the Acronis... It seems that Acronis True Image 2014 damage the Windows 10, because even if you uninstall, it wont solve the problem.

Recommendation: Dont install an old version of Acronis True Image on Windows 10 and you should not have any problem.

Again, if you already installed Acronis before and have uninstalled it, you will still have the issue. You'll have to reinstall Windows 10.


Hope this helps...

Have a nice day....

I want to add my experience to reinforce the revelation of Micboule. I read more than 20 pages of this thread while trying to solve my problem and came back to this post after trying many recommendations that seemed like more plausible solutions. The advice to UNINSTALL Acronis True Image 2014 was THE CHANGE that returned my system from freezing within 5 minutes from reboot to functioning continuously for more than 48 hours now including several sleep/reawaken cycles. Thanks to Micboule and previous posters who ran this to ground and took time to post their findings.

Backstory:
In what I expected to be a simple operation running in the background, I planned to upgrade my mechanical 1TB drive to a Crucial MX200 1TB SSD. My HDX18 "laptop" has 2 internal bays so I planned to remove my media drive and temporarily install the SSD in the 2nd bay for a cloning operation that could happen while I continued to work. TI 2014 failed gave me an error code 10 'File system error is found' with extended code: 458,777 'File record corrupted'. I received this error with both attempting to use the interactive clone process running Windows 10 and also using the process booting from a prepared TI 2014 USB where my source drive would not be in use for the OS. With no findings from ChkDsk and no help from Acronis forums, I took the long path of making a full system backup onto external disks and then restoring onto the internally mounted SSD in bay 2.

I chose every validation and verification option available for the creation and restoration. This plan seemed to work well with the following exceptions:

1. The backup of 640GB, with chosen setting of max compression, ended up spanning more than 800GB and requiring me to add a 2nd external disk. Acronis, I believe during verification needed help finding a 2nd volume it placed on the 1st external disk but accepted my selection and continued when it stopped and waited for me to browse to the location. (After all operations completed, inspection of external disk shows that only half the space was used even though during operations it was shown to be full.)
   
2. I believe for verification of restore, operations stopped with progress bar showing 19 hours more. Message explained that restart was required and if I would choose Cancel instead that restore would be undone. I was expecting this issue from reading Acronis instructions to make sure at no time there would be 2 bootable drives installed (I presumed during boot). This led to anxiety of how the remaining 19 hours of operations would continue after restart because I would have to remove my source drive and this was the location of the Acronis software being run to perform operations. Not knowing what else to do, I selected restart and planned to watch for the correct moment to force a power off and remove the source drive.
   
3. I tired of watching after a few hours of seeing a blue screen with message 'Operations are in progress. Windows will shut down after operations have completed." At least this message gave me some confidence that I would not have to spring into action upon observing the power cycle. After waiting more than 24 hours with very little disk light activity, I forced a power off and removed the source drive and then learned by BIOS messages that I needed to place the SSD in bay 1. Without confirmation that any of the remaining 19 hours of restore activity transpired, my system booted on the SSD and quick investigations revealed my files seemed intact.
   
4. After about 10 minutes, I encountered my first freeze where an application would not close and the start menu was unresponsive. I spent hours experiencing these every 1 - 10 minutes while trying to characterize the problem and investigate solutions. Eventually, I turned to investigating on another machine and found this thread.
   

I attempted many solutions from sfc to DISM to a minor registry edit with no success. I updated SSD firmware to mu03 and still had freezes. Eventually, I called Crucial tech support and was pleasantly surprised to connect to a very confident and clearly spoken tech. He explained that my system is likely suffering from too many copies spanning too many years as I navigated from Vista through Windows 7 and from a 500GB drive through a mechanical 1TB drive. My system image was copied using the originally specified 512B blocks eventually onto an SSD that likes 4KB and it is likely that some corruption occurred along the way that results in random freezes and other troubles. Just before switching back to my source drive and continuing use of it until I could find time to build and populate the SSD from scratch, I deleted TI 2014 and was rewarded with the solution to the freezing problems. I am now studying how to create my various desired backup solutions using Windows tools. I don't plan to upgrade to TI 2016.

JW0914 -- Thanks for your detailed response. To add a little more information to my lengthy backstory, I have had this HDX18 operational without rebuilding for about 5 years. It is way overdue for a fresh start and I am hoping to make time for that this summer. I installed Acronis TI 2014 in 2014, after upgrading to Windows 7 and before upgrading to Windows 10. This install likely occurred to support conversion from the original 500GB OS drive to a mechanical 1TB. I do not recall how I accomplished this and what problems I faced. I would have to say that Acronis succeeded in making that transition somehow else I would not have been using it for this recent upgrade to SSD. Ultimately, I feel fortunate that I am able to be using this unrebuilt HDX18 to be writing this now. Amongst feelings of frustration and at times, despair, Acronis did succeed again. Nevertheless I don't want to take any more chances with it, especially after reading your response to me.

Some things I wish:

1. I wish I had access to your knowledge before attempting this upgrade to SSD.
2. I wish Microsoft would package the variety of native Windows 10 capabilities of Backup and Restore into a comprehensive, easy to follow GUI interface driven set of solutions capturing each of the variety of needs spanning from the convenience of continuous backup of selectable included and excluded drives, folders, and files to the protection of system images to the functionality of cloning for upgrades. Explanations for which operations can be accomplished during boot and which must be safely accomplished outside of boot should be provided via link at obvious places in the GUI. This does not sound like it would be in the hard pile and would be a most valuable resource serving and protecting their customers.

I am currently backing up my media drive (D:) using a scheme I composed in the native Windows 7 based Backup and Restore utility. This is copying data from my 2nd internal drive to an external drive so it can be accomplished during boot. While this completes I will package knowledge of DISM tools beginning with what you provided in your previous post in preparation for initiating a practice of regular image backups of my OS drive (C:). I feel I should prepare to become an evangelist for those I know who are currently operating Windows systems without secure protection from unintended file deletion, system corruption, or drive loss.

On behalf of the hours I have spent trudging through finding some solutions and those who come across this thread in search of answers, I thank you for taking time to write your knowledge into this forum.

No problem at all =]

I know why end users choose Acronis and similar programs, whether it be adverts for those products, no knowledge of the command line, or simply never been told there's a far easier way to do so that's natively built into Windows and is free.

• Acronis' continuous backup feature backs up an entire partition or folder and checks for changes every 5 min, and while it looks great, it's buggy. The Windows equivalent is File History, which can be accessed in Windows 10 via Settings App - Update & Security - Backup (or Control Panel: Control Panel\System and Security\File History​)
  
  • If you utilize a second drive/partition for media and storage, do not turn it on until after you've configured the folder locations and/or partitions to be continuously backed up by clicking on the More Options below the slider. That should open up to a page with how often to backup the locations (every 10 min - 24 hours), how many backups [versions of files] to keep, and the locations to be backed up. If you've moved your user folders and/or OneDrive folder to another partition/drive, ensure you remove the applicable default locations.
• Acronis' regular backup feature does have appeal due to the full, differential, and incremental backup option configurations, since Windows only does differentials (IIRC) via System Restore; Full backups would be capturing a WIM. WIMs can also be combined: say you have two backups of the same partition done 2 weeks apart; you can combine these two WIMs and only the differences from the second WIM will be added to the new WIM that's created, which will be assigned an index #, rising in chronological order. Capturing a WIM means it's index is 1, and if you choose to combine, or add, additional WIMs to the original, each will be assigned the next chronological # (2, 3, etc.). Say you want to apply the 2nd WIM you combined into the first WIM earlier, you would simply specify it's index # within the command (i.e. /index:2 )

There are some free programs out there other users have built that incorporate DISM into it for capturing and applying images, however it takes less time to simply type out the command, making a program GUI inefficient. DISM is an extremely powerful program with a variety of uses, some critical, with image management being just one, which is why a GUI has never been built for it. A GUI would literally make it far more complex, however PowerShell ISE has a command library in GUI one can choose from.

If you're interested in that [PowerShell cmdlets], I would first recommend learning how to operate the DISM image commands from the command line prior to learning the dism cmdlets for powershell. You can use the dism command line arguments in PowerShell or PowerShell ISE, and I would recommend using PowerShell ISE since it's quite handing and is more friendly to those not as experienced with the command line. PowerShell also affords you the ability to automate the entire capture process since tons of scripts exist in the community of users and IT professionals that you could adapt to fit your needs.

For those who have Acronis software, note that the uninstaller can leave behind low level disk drivers which are very hard to remove. The presence of these may affect your installation. See my post and solution at Solved Safe Removal of Acronis True Image Drivers

I don't use Acronis software anymore due to their poor software engineering which does not completely uninstall Acronis programs.

Hello,
I also have some problems with freezes.

My Notebook is a Packard Bell TS11HR:

Motherboard:
BIOS Version V1.20
CPU Typ Intel Core i5-2430M
Motherboard Name Packard Bell SJV50_HR
Motherboard Chipsatz Intel Cougar Point HM65, Intel Sandy Bridge
Arbeitsspeicher 8043 MB (DDR3-1333 DDR3 SDRAM)
DIMM1: Kingston 99U5428-042.A00G 4 GB DDR3-1333 DDR3 SDRAM (8-8-8-22 @ 609 MHz) (7-7-7-20 @ 533 MHz) (6-6-6-17 @ 457 MHz) (5-5-5-14 @ 380 MHz)
DIMM3: Kingston ACR512X64D3S13C9G 4 GB DDR3-1333 DDR3 SDRAM (8-8-8-22 @ 609 MHz) (7-7-7-20 @ 533 MHz) (6-6-6-17 @ 457 MHz) (5-5-5-14 @ 380 MHz)

Anzeige:
Grafikkarte Intel(R) HD 3000
Grafikkarte NVIDIA GeForce GT 540M (2048 MB)

Multimedia:
Soundkarte Intel Cougar Point HDMI @ Intel Cougar Point PCH - High Definition Audio Controller [B-2]
Soundkarte Realtek ALC269 @ Intel Cougar Point PCH - High Definition Audio Controller [B-2]

Datenträger:
IDE Controller Intel(R) Mobile Express Chipset SATA AHCI Controller
Massenspeicher Controller Broadcom Memory Stick
Festplatte WDC WD6400BPVT-22HXZT3 (596 GB, IDE)
Optisches Laufwerk Optiarc DVD RW AD-7585H
S.M.A.R.T. Festplatten-Status OK

Eingabegeräte:
Tastatur Standardtastatur (PS/2)
Maus ELAN PS/2 Port Smart-Pad
Microsoft Comfort Mouse 4500

Netzwerk:
Netzwerkkarte Broadcom 802.11n-Netzwerkadapter (192.168.0.5)
Netzwerkkarte Broadcom NetLink (TM) Gigabit Ethernet

Peripheriegeräte:
Drucker Epson Stylus SX510W(Netzwerk)
1.3M WebCam

I have a freeze once a week or so, regardless what I am doing: surfing, Windows Explorer, Music or just overnight in idle.
There aren't problems listet in the eventmanager in the time of the freeze. I don't have BSOD.

I haven't follow the install order in this post. So maybee I have to reinstall.

But before I'd like to know if there are other known problems with my hardware configuration. For example I've read about some problems with the Broadcom Wifi drivers under Windows 10 (on page 26).
Is there something I can try before reinstall?

I've also installed the IMEI driver (11.0.0.1158) from the Intel website instead of the one from the OEM site. Can this also be an issue?

So no one has found a solution to this dumb shit?
I recently bought this computer and it freezes like after every 1-2 hours.

I have the same problem as most of you, my pc freezes, the screen locks up, the mouse will no longer respond (90% of the time) and no response from my keyboard, it can happen after 5 min or after 8 hours, only solution is harrd reset.
but the sound keeps playing for 30 sec - 2 min before that locks on something and keeps playing the same 0.2sec of sound
this did not happen before my update to windows 10, my drivers are up to date and there is no overheating
could someone please help me?

these are my desktops specs:
Computer Type PC/Desktop
System Manufacturer/Model Number Lenovo
OS Windows 10
CPU i5 6400
Memory 8GB
Graphics Card GTX 960

Keyboard Razer Blackwidow Tournament Edition
Mouse Razer Naga Hex Wraith Red
Internet Speed 200 mbps
Browser Chrome
its an Acer Predator G3

and it is completely random, I can be playing gamet that are heavy to run and be fine for hours,
or I can have only fb open and freeze in 5min

I came here trying to find a solution to this problem because my husband is running Windows 10 and is getting very annoyed with the fact that his computer keeps freezing and the only way to get it working again is a hard reset. It doesn't look as if there's any solution but if it makes anyone feel better, I'm running 8.1 and IE constantly stops working. The only plus to this happening on my Windows 8.1 computer is the fact that it will occasionally start working again on it's own or if it won't start working, I can usually open the task manager and force IE to stop working and then just open it again.