Total system freeze/lock-up consistantly after 5 min idle

Big adventure, nervous but this HP official repair guy from hi-tech India is super! And like many here, he was pretty sure it was a hardware problem. So while some glitches showed in the process he again thought "hardware".

Nope. You folks were right ... all fixed with Clean Install. Media Creation tool (in his shop), cleaned out SSD, etc. and put in 1709. He told me he had just installed v1709 on a whole floor of biz computers and no problems. I could set up everything, downloaded from File History USB drive many GB of files, incl. setup stubs. Found out that this used -- I mean pre-owned -- EliteBook was originally expensive enough that it doesn't need a Product Key, included in the price I guess.

While downloading some driver updated via HP it looked like it froze .... but it only got "struck" for a few moments and continued on its own. I made a test (after creating a Restore Point) and it went into Sleep at the right time.

Everything works better, faster and smoother and WinX doesn't make beeping sounds every other second "hey, working on it, give me a break" sounds. Testing Audacity (home recording studio) to set up latency, etc., from before, even the test recording came out super clear, unlike what happened over the last months: I was thinking it was from unshielded cables ... no, just "dirt" in the SOFTWARE!

Am now a very tired but Happy Camper .....

Thanks to all for the great advice, and so far I suppose that v1709 seems fine

Lee

Excellent. Clean installs are good for the soul.

Thanks for posting fix.

Most welcome and thankful!

Interestingly enough, as a likely indication of what was involved in the freezing issue (contributing or total cause), the used space in the (C: ) drive, the only one in use, where WinX and my files reside, is approx. 1/3 the size it was before the Clean Install! And the elements of Document files (two and sometimes more side-by-side identical entries with same name except installation date) somehow got often doubled in this .... and still there is less garbage in the software to get wrapped up in itself (I picture a pile of stuck-together wet spaghetti)

Excellent, really. Long battle, you won. Please make an Image with a tool like Macrium Reflect. This is a great point to restore from.

Ken

Kari put together our tutorial on Macrium.

Backup and Restore with Macrium Reflect

No it does not go on USB although you can put the boot portion on one. (I guess if you Image requirements were small and your USB key big then it could.)

What you will see some of the members do is split that C: drive into two or buy another drive. Then one drive is the OS and one is data. That way when you re-install the OS the data is out of the way. Handy for Window Resets as well. Then using Macrium you image every thing or just your OS. We have tutorials on how to move data libraries written by Brink to connect to your data on another partition.

Windows System Restore does work but the reliability is something up for discussion. Some use it all the time. Others use a third party product like Macrium or Acornis or ......

Depending on your program requirements a 200GB OS drive is usually more than enough. I ran on a 120 GB SSD but I'm not a gamer and I don't experiment on my main machine.

Having images or multiple images means you can fall back to a point in time where things were right and then attempt again. Keeping an Image from a clean install right after programs were install is also nice to create a clean system with little effort.

Ken

You are going to need an external USB hard drive. You install Macrium Reflect Free to your Windows 10 system then you run it to make an backup image of your entire Disk 0, System Reserved and Disk C:. The image will be written to the external USB hard drive. Looks like it will take somewhere around 40 to 50GB so you could get away with a 64GB USB flash drive, but you can get a 1TB USB External drive for aroung $60 now days.

You can get a 64GB USB 3.0 flash drive for $16 at Walmart.

I picked up two Toshiba Canvio USB 3.0 external driver for $50 each about two years ago,. Here is one for $49.99 with free shipping:
Toshiba Canvio 1TB Basics USB 3.0 Portable HDD - Black

Here is a video tutorial for Macrium. A bit dated but still helpful:

Imaging with free Macrium

Edit: I like Kari's tutorial better so use that one.

I laughed at your quote

I am not now in USA and can only buy things with cash here and only from stores (i.e., no credit card or PayPal, etc.).

The 256GB Sandisk I bought for File History cost USD$129- at a DISCOUNT store and the 16GB Sandisk on which we put the Media Creation Tool with WinX v1709 cost ca. USD$20- from another store. Had I bought the 256GB Sandisk at a more typical store it would have cost USD$149- (read 150). I was looking today and I think I can get a 64GB Sandisk for ca. USD$60- or so. Since I am not working, nor able to work here, have NO source of income and only a little savings left I would prefer not to needlessly spend money.

Are you absolutely sure that another Clean Install using the Media Creation Tool with WinX v1709 wouldn't do the same thing if needed? Of course as I now did, install the separately stored File History after such a new Clean Install. Or could I somehow combine that Macrium Image on the same 256GB USB device along with the so-far 25.3GB File History? B.t.w., I will NOT try to clear a drive again, deleting the contents, as my before attempts killed an expensive USB drive, why I had to spend that USD$129- today!

My point here is that I already have Media Creation Tool with WinX v1709 stored on the 16GB USB drive in conjunction with USB drive stored File History and according to the official HP repair/expert the EliteBook does not need Product Keys for Windows (to get later versions I suppose). Further, he would put in a new Winx for only USD$150- (instead of the normal price here of USD$259-) if that Product Key situation should change in the future.

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