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

Caledon Ken said:

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

Have now decided to buy another Sandisk stick w/ 64GB capacity Monday (even though it costs ca. USD$60) that I can use for the Macrium stored image of my total system (C: drive) and still have the other two USB drives (Media Creation Tool/Winx-v1709 + File History) as backup for the Macrium Image. I would keep using the File History to keep it current, and the other two stored untouched for backup when/if needed.

Please advise if this seems reasonable and prudent

Thanks,
Lee



B.t.w., they only sell expensive products from expensive but presumably high-quality companies here (Sandisk is from Huawei I found), another reason most things in this country cost 3x what they do in USA; if people order from the Internet, before they can even receive the item they are charged an additional import tax of ca. 30%!

Ztruker said:

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 .....

Ken I will get a new 64GB USB stick in which to upload the one-time Macrium Image as I decided above and your input confirms that decision. However, I am reasonably organized and have even kept various settings as a document as well as all the setup stubs (which quickly revert to the latest versions) in the File History stick. So this time it only took around 2 hrs to get things up & running to suit my taste after the Clean Install. Nonetheless I am off to get that stick Monday to use as a main backup, with the other 2 to back that up if needed.

HP offers software for your computer that is unavailable on most consumer computers.
It is for their business line and is upgraded software.
On the HP website > software and drivers > enter the computer's serial or product number and view available software/drivers/ firmware etc.
1) Download and install HP Softpaq
HP considers it a better method to get HP drivers/software.
2) Download and install HP performance advisor
This tool has many features that is unavailable on other computers.
For example you can view and modify BIOS settings without having to go into the BIOS
It automatically looks for problems on the computer
It has a block diagram of the computer hardware
It provides all of the configuration information
It generates a report
It has sensors
It has boot options
screen saver
power plan
It has white papers
etc.
Both of these will take time to learn.
Performance Advisor for HP Workstations | HP® Official Site (see video)

Thank you. This is not a commercial or business device and attempting to set up the Advisor caused problems with my system and some elements stopped working. All sorted out now and this time I used my eyes and also saw that the softpaq is also only for commercial business use. Since HP already provides me with EXCELLENT support as it is, through always-on HP Support Assistant and their website, offering diagnoses, fast download & installation of drivers, software, update search, system tune-up, optimization, etc. ... basically more than I need, I will leave all as it was before (have removed all the unnecessary download and Registry entries from my mistaken attempt).

Was my fault for assuming that somehow HP would accept this device as commercial .... but they quickly found out (after my system momentarily screwed up trying to deal with the contradiction).

So thanks again for your good intentions (and all fixed again)

Am sure you are correct. The official HP repair person (who has his own shop and also maintains computer systems for large and small businesses here) did it and used that 16 GB stick. That fit with what I had read that one needed only 4 GB for the Clean Install for 32 or 64 or 8 GB for both. Have zero expertise with PCs and I wisely let him do it. If you peruse this thread you will note that the computer was problematic: he at first thought it was hardware, even when some glitches popped up in the Clean Install, but finally found it WAS a software issue, represented by the fact that after the Clean Install what was finally in C: drive was way less than half of what it was before! (even after re-installing what was on my File History USB backup stick).

When he finished he returned the stick and told me now I have Windows 10 if I needed it done again. I assumed that the stick contained info that allowed a download of some sort. My plan is to get up early and buy the 64 GB stick and follow instructions to download Macrium and store my system's image there. And let him use the stick he returned as a backup for the Macrium image if needed. But if there is a problem he is a nice and experienced person only a few minutes away on my bike; he eats & sleeps this stuff, much more preferable than me trying to find my way through the dark woods (the free one-time Macrium process seems straightforward and simple enough to follow with the clear instructions given in that link).

Sorry, I will not touch that now; if it is needed for another Clean Install I will bring the computer and USB storage device to the HP computer expert/official repairman and let him work with it. However this may help salve your curiosity: after the clean install there was indicated in G: drive "Media Creation Tool". It occupied 4 GB space, the only entry on that drive even when no USB device inserted!; then 2.01 GB when I tried to make the then unusable space smaller. I later followed advice here >

why do 2 Local Disks get isolated? Solved - Windows 10 Forums

to get rid of that and another entry called D: caused when I tried to use/repair/format a broken USB drive (drive stick now replaced and both C: & G. are free and function normally when a USB stick is removed)