New Win 10 install-computer locks up

I recently took an Asus K73E laptop and installed a new clean hard drive and a fresh install of Windows 10 Pro. With no other software installed, and nothing running, if I leave the computer on and idle, after a while it will lock up and I have to perform a hard power off and on to restart. Most of what I've read suggests that the problem is BIOS or drivers. My last update was KB4093110 on April 12, 2018.

Any suggestions on troubleshooting this? Prior to installing Win 10 it did not lock up the way it is now, so I believe is it software/firmware issue. I did install more RAM during this process, but I've tested the memory and it checked out.

It could well be a driver issue. You could check the power plan settings and see if the lockup occurs when the laptop enters sleep mode. Might be worth altering the settings to 'never sleep' and seeing if that gives any clue.

Always worth checking device manager to see if anything has any yellow exclamation marks against it indicating a possible non recognised device or other issue.

It may be also be worth trying the Asus site and seeing what drivers are available. Typically video drivers and Wi-Fi and network adapters are the most troublesome.

Its a process of elimination really. Hopefully others will have some more advanced tips you can try.

I have the power setting to never sleep or hibernate; it's plugged into power all the time. Everything in the device manager is ok. I have looked to Asus for different drivers, but have not been able find anything different. I am sure the display adapter is up to date.

Thanks for the response; I'll keep looking.

Would looking in 'event viewer' or 'reliability history' show give any clues I wonder ?

When you clean install W10 it will automatically check for driver updates. If you clean install again you could try initially not connecting to a network and just seeing if the problem occurs with the default drivers installed.

New HDD. Could there be any driver or other issues there ? Do you have the original W10 installation on the old drive. If so then you could look and see what drivers are actually installed.

See what the others think :)

I haven't been able to learn anything by looking in the event viewer. I have disable Windows driver update, so eventually I'll try some other drivers and see what happens. I've also disabled both network adapters for the time being so no updating for now.

It is a process of elimination I'm afraid. Sorry I can't suggest anything more useful.

Rolling back the Intel HD 3000 graphics driver to an earlier version and disabling the Windows driver automatic update seems to have fixed this problem.

That's interesting. My Dell laptop uses Intel graphics and I found that I need to disable a couple of options in the graphics options for it to run correctly on battery. If I don't then the screen goes into distorted horizontal/vertical lines rendering everything unreadable. The image seems to fold over onto itself as well.

After a lengthy period trying to get this computer to stop locking up, I thought I had solved the problem by blocking driver updates, and that did in fact work; it did take weeks to get to that point, but it was working. Eventually, my Windows got updated again, and it ignored my driver update instructions and installed a new Intel HD 3000 graphics driver which completely fixed any graphics issues, and no freezes. I'm happy to have it all working, but still, it took much too long.

Pleased to hear that you have it all working now. Perhaps Windows has updated you to the latest W10 version that started rolling out from the second week in May.

Good to know its working.