Windows 10 hangs for 5-10 seconds during normal use

infinityring · 19 May 2016

Specs:

Dell Inspiron 3531 running Windows 10 Home 64-bit (free upgrade from 8.1)
Intel Celeron N2830 2.16 GHz, 4.00 GB RAM
Intel HD Graphics

For a few days now, I have noticed that my laptop hangs for about 5-10 seconds at a time. If any audio/video was playing, that freezes; the cursor freezes, etc. This happens multiple times in an hour.
At the time of the freeze, I haven't been playing games, playing large video/audio files, etc.- just regular browsing and some Word files for homework.
I have updated all my drivers- including the display driver- and checked the Event Viewer for errors. For some of the occurences, it tells me the display driver crashed; for most of them it says nothing. (Seeing as I updated my display driver, I'm not sure why this is happening.) It's a problem that I could technically just ignore and deal with, seeing as it unfreezes in a few seconds, but the underlying cause might be bigger than that and I'd like to know what's going on.
Feel free to ask me for more information; I will provide is as best as I can.

EDIT: Just happened again and I got a notification in the action center: "Display driver igfx stopped responding and has successfully recovered." The screen had gone black for a second and reappeared.

EDIT: Now it's happening during bootup as well. Sometimes it freezes completely and I have to hard reset.

marsmimar · 20 May 2016

Did the freezes start after you updated your display driver? If yes, try rolling back to the previous driver.

Windows 10 hangs for 5-10 seconds during normal use-driver.jpg

infinityring · 20 May 2016

I suspected that that might be the case, so I rolled it back and checked again. The freezes continued.

In fact, when starting up my computer about an hour ago, I experienced a hard freeze (didn't unfreeze itself even after 5 minutes). I had to do a hard reboot. It is working now, but I am confused as to why that happened.

marsmimar · 20 May 2016

I'm wondering if any system files became damaged or corrupt in some way. Try running a System File Checker scan. Open an elevated command prompt. (Right click the start button and select Command Prompt (Admin) or hold the WinKey + X.) A new window will open with a black background and white letters. At the flashing cursor type in sfc /scannow (note the space between sfc and /scannow.) The scan takes about 20 minutes on my machine so be patient. Hopefully you will see "no integrity violations found" when the scan finishes.

SFC Command - Run in Windows 10 - Windows 10 Forums

infinityring · 20 May 2016

marsmimar said:

I'm wondering if any system files became damaged or corrupt in some way. Try running a System File Checker scan. Open an elevated command prompt. (Right click the start button and select Command Prompt (Admin) or hold the WinKey + X.) A new window will open with a black background and white letters. At the flashing cursor type in sfc /scannow (note the space between sfc and /scannow.) The scan takes about 20 minutes on my machine so be patient. Hopefully you will see "no integrity violations found" when the scan finishes.

SFC Command - Run in Windows 10 - Windows 10 Forums

Yep, "Windows Resource Protection did not find any integrity violations." Does this mean the problem is more superficial?

marsmimar · 21 May 2016

I can appreciate your frustration. This is definitely weird. You might be able to get a clue by looking at your Event Viewer. To open Event Viewer, right click the start button and select it from the pop up menu. Once in the viewer open "Custom Views" and then "Administrative Events". This is where you will need to go the next time your computer freezes.

At the next freeze, note the exact time it happened. Once the computer unfreezes and gets going again, go to the Event Viewer > Custom Views > Administrative Events and look for events that happened just prior to the freeze.

The events can be a bit cryptic and hard to understand but they might give you some idea what is going on. By opening the event, you can usually also click on the link that says "Event Log Online Help". Not all log events will come up with an "answer" from Microsoft but some of them do.

infinityring · 21 May 2016

marsmimar said:

I can appreciate your frustration. This is definitely weird. You might be able to get a clue by looking at your Event Viewer. To open Event Viewer, right click the start button and select it from the pop up menu. Once in the viewer open "Custom Views" and then "Administrative Events". This is where you will need to go the next time your computer freezes.

At the next freeze, note the exact time it happened. Once the computer unfreezes and gets going again, go to the Event Viewer > Custom Views > Administrative Events and look for events that happened just prior to the freeze.

The events can be a bit cryptic and hard to understand but they might give you some idea what is going on. By opening the event, you can usually also click on the link that says "Event Log Online Help". Not all log events will come up with an "answer" from Microsoft but some of them do.

Thanks for the help so far, anyway. :)

I checked the Event Viewer and found that most of the events before the crash were what one would normally expect- various components starting up, etc. There was one Warning:
"The embedded controller (EC) returned data when none was requested. The BIOS might be trying to access the EC without synchronizing with the operating system. This data will be ignored. No further action is necessary; however, you should check with your computer manufacturer for an upgraded BIOS." (Event 15)
After the freeze and the hard reset (which occurred about 10 seconds after the computer powered on), there was a Critical event:
"The system has rebooted without cleanly shutting down first. This error could be caused if the system stopped responding, crashed, or lost power unexpectedly." (Event 41)
^That is self-explanatory, but I'm not sure what Event 15 means and what (if anything) it has to do with the crash.