Three computers running Windows 10 2004, serious stability issues

Apocalypsing · 01 Nov 2020

Hey all,

I currently have Windows 10 version 2004 (build 19041.610 to be specific) running on three different computers in the house. Two of these computers are mine, with the third being a sibling's computer.
On my main computer, I recently reinstalled Windows 10. Previously I was running Windows 10 LTSC 2019 (aka version 1809), but since that build was getting a bit long in the tooth, and that I was missing out on some supposed benefits like Ryzen CPU scheduler fixes in newer version of Windows, I decided to ditch LTSC completely and go back to the mainstream channel that almost everyone else is using day to day.

Due to what I suspected have been hardware issues (possible, gradual motherboard failure), my main computer is currently out of commission for now, and I have had to go back to my previous, much older system. In doing so, I also ditched LTSC on my old system for 2004 as well. This reinstallation on my older system happened only just recently, on the 28th of October.
Not even a week in, and I am already seeing serious problems when running this version of Windows. Less than an hour ago I went to shut down this older computer of mine, with the plan of bringing my newer system back onto the desk for further hardware troubleshooting, only to find my older system wasn't responding to my shut down requests. I could click on restart or shut down through the start menu and not see any response whatsoever. Even critical system shortcuts like CTRL+ALT+DELETE were not responding. I then noticed UAC prompts completely died too, so I could no longer run administrative software elevated under my separate admin account. As I was scrambling to find another safe workaround to shut the system down, suddenly I heard a bunch of system sounds, followed saw a brief error message, and less than a second later I finally saw the shutting down screen. But it remained stuck there, and I still had no choice but to reach for that power button.

Now, this isn't the first time I have experienced this in the past 24 hours, either. I recently got a refurbished Dell OptiPlex for one of my siblings who was real overdue for a complete system upgrade. I very recently ran into the exact same problem where I went to shut that system down having just finished setting up everything for them, and I soon ran into the same issues of system unresponsiveness in the start menu. I had only just booted up that sytem an hour prior to work on it, so the very short time it took for the system to crap out like this is really alarming.

On my new computer that I've suspected of having hardware problems, I have had what now appears to be the same problem too, where over time, there's a good chance that system responsiveness will fall off a cliff. In these situations I've seen things such as the task manager failing to refresh the process list, the start menu freezing, the Explorer shell freezing completely, task manager being unable to restart these processes in attempts to recover, and even certain programs like Chrome freezing up as well. At this point I'm not even sure if this is hardware related anymore, as I wasn't experiencing anything this serious when I was running LTSC previously on that system.

I'm at the point now where I have done the good old /sfc /scannow in an elevated command prompt, and Windows has found no system integrity issues, but these installations of Windows are very fresh so I'm not surprised it didn't find anything of violation. I'm almost tempted to go back to LTSC again, as I have been burned in the past by standard Windows 10 having serious stability issues. The only reason I installed a mainstream version recently, aside from the age of LTSC and what other improvements I mentioned above, was that my last experience with regular Windows 10 was in 2016, quite a long time ago. I had hoped things had improved since then with regards to stability and was willing to give it another chance, plus I figured version 2004 has been out for many months now and has had plenty of time to mature and stabilise, but my experience on three different systems in this very short time frame, with different hardware and software configurations, now leads me to believe otherwise and I'm not really sure what else to do from this point on. I definitely feel like I've been burned and I feel I'm very much SOL here, but if anyone has any good pointers as to what might be wrong exactly here, and the possible solutions, I'd very much appreciate the help.

System summary (my newer computer)

Self-built system dating back to 2019
CPU: AMD Ryzen 7 2700
Memory: 32 GiB of DDR4 (max clock of 3200 MHz, but presently running at stock 2133 MHz as I've been troubleshooting things)
Motherboard: Asus B450i-Gaming
Boot drive: 250 GB Samsung 970 EVO Plus (NVMe)
Additional drives: 1 TB Samsung 860 EVO, 2 TB WD green (HDD)
Graphics: none at the moment (temporarily moved to my older system)
Power supply: Corsair SF600 Platinum (600 W, 80 Plus platinum model)

System summary (my older computer)

Self-built system dating back to 2012
CPU: Intel Xeon E3-1230v2
Memory: 16 GiB of DDR3 (running at 1600 MHz)
Motherboard: Gigabyte GA-Z77X-UD3H
Boot drive: 1 TB Samsung 860 EVO (SATA)
No additional drives aside from the DVD drive
Graphics: EVGA GTX 1660 Ti at present. Prior to this GPU swap I had my old Gigabyte GTX 970 installed here.
Power supply: Corsair TX750M (750 W, older 80 Plus bronze model)

System summary (sibling's computer)

Dell OptiPlex 9020 (small form factor model)
CPU: Intel Core i5-4670
Memory: 8 GiB of DDR3 (running at 1600 MHz)
Motherboard: standard Dell SFF OEM board
Boot drive: 500 GB Samsung 860 EVO
No additional drives aside from the DVD drive
Graphics: integrated Intel HD 4600
Power supply: standard Dell SFF OEM power supply (255 W, 80 Plus gold)

joeandmarg0 · 03 Nov 2020

The Long Term Servicing Channel [LTSC] can be sometimes useful and equally useless,unless you are an absolute expert,which excludes me.
With the problems you listed,then the most reasonable solution would be to download Win 10,Home or Pro,on another pc,then carry out a clean install on one of the affected computers and see how that works out.
Avoid the temptation to fiddle around and leave the OS as is.
Given the relative newness of the hardware,it is unlikely to be the root of your problems.
If none of the Win 10 built in troubleshooting tools,e.g. Reliabilty History,sfc,dism ,fail to show a problem/solution,then this post is as far as I can go.

Apocalypsing · 13 Nov 2020

joeandmarg0 said:

The Long Term Servicing Channel [LTSC] can be sometimes useful and equally useless,unless you are an absolute expert,which excludes me.

With the problems you listed,then the most reasonable solution would be to download Win 10,Home or Pro,on another pc,then carry out a clean install on one of the affected computers and see how that works out.

Avoid the temptation to fiddle around and leave the OS as is.

Given the relative newness of the hardware,it is unlikely to be the root of your problems.

If none of the Win 10 built in troubleshooting tools,e.g. Reliabilty History,sfc,dism ,fail to show a problem/solution,then this post is as far as I can go.

LTSC is definitely a double-edged sword. I've noticed a fair amount of people giving it praise on various online communities without disclosing the potential drawbacks that come with running it.

As for tweaking around with the OS and such, I have made the mistake of doing that in a careless manner in the past in certain instances, and broken certain things, using unofficial tools that are often, once again, praised in certain online circles. All a learning experience, and now I'm at the point where if I have a genuine need to disable something, I do so through group policy objects (GPOs) now. In other words, I do it the way Microsoft intends it be done just to be safe.

Something I forgot to mention in the OP was the potential issue of instability from hardware overclocking on my two systems, although this is something I have also tested and found to have not made any difference in stability here. Not just CPU overclocking, but also memory overclocking profiles like XMP that are very common.

Looking back, it's now been about two weeks since I last witnessed this issue. I had my main computer sitting under my desk during that time, as I was using my older computer. During this time I continued running version 2004. Although I haven't witnessed anything unusual since. I did find myself rebooting that computer about once every two days for unrelated reasons, so it's possible that those reboots masked the issue I've been facing here.

Although I would not class this as being anywhere near solved yet, and your acknowledgement in your knowledge being limited here, I appreciate the help you've offered here.

I've since gone back to using my newer computer, and after much thought I decided to update Windows 10 on it to 20H2 and see how things go. In the two weeks I was using my older computer, I felt burnt out and wasn't really in the mood to deal with this, but I have more energy and patience again.

joeandmarg0 · 13 Nov 2020

Hope it works out O.K.
Overclocking can and does cause serious overheating and instability problems.
If I ever feel the need to fiddle,rare these days,then I check Macrium images.An excellent computer lifejacket.

Apocalypsing · 19 Dec 2020

After about six weeks of trouble-free computer use under 20H2, I've started running into this problem again. I had my system soft hang twice yesterday when browsing the Internet with Chrome. After more thought, on the three computers where I've experienced this issue, it's all come about as I've been using Chrome, and I seriously started to wonder if a recent version of Chrome was to blame. But as of tonight I'm not so sure about that, as I had another soft hang just an hour ago as I was using Firefox. Although I did have Discord running, which I'm aware is Electron-based. If this is more a Chromium-specific issue rather than a Chrome one, then I'm really screwed here as I do rely on a few of these Electron applications (Visual Studio Code being the other one).

The only other thing I can think of that all three computers share in common is the SSDs I have inside them. All three systems have Samsung SSDs, almost all of them being SATA (a mixture of Samsung 860 EVO 250 GB, 500 GB and 1 TB drives), while I also have an NVMe boot drive in my main system (Samsung 970 EVO Plus 250 GB).

I then thought about the possibility of bad sectors or other issues in one of the drives. I've done a scan of the sectors on my NVMe drive, which appear to be all good, and I'm still in the process of scanning my 1 TB 860 EVO drive. From my most recent soft hang I also ran into a first case of some data corruption, as my Firefox profile seemed a bit messed up when I booted my system back up again. From past experience I've found that Firefox doesn't take too kindly to unexpected shut downs, but after I rebooted my system to update the firmware for my NVMe drive, Firefox seemed to start up and load my profile successfully as if nothing had ever happened.

sdowney717 · 19 Dec 2020

Apocalypsing said:

After about six weeks of trouble-free computer use under 20H2, I've started running into this problem again. I had my system soft hang twice yesterday when browsing the Internet with Chrome. After more thought, on the three computers where I've experienced this issue, it's all come about as I've been using Chrome, and I seriously started to wonder if a recent version of Chrome was to blame. But as of tonight I'm not so sure about that, as I had another soft hang just an hour ago as I was using Firefox. Although I did have Discord running, which I'm aware is Electron-based. If this is more a Chromium-specific issue rather than a Chrome one, then I'm really screwed here as I do rely on a few of these Electron applications (Visual Studio Code being the other one).

The only other thing I can think of that all three computers share in common is the SSDs I have inside them. All three systems have Samsung SSDs, almost all of them being SATA (a mixture of Samsung 860 EVO 250 GB, 500 GB and 1 TB drives), while I also have an NVMe boot drive in my main system (Samsung 970 EVO Plus 250 GB).

I then thought about the possibility of bad sectors or other issues in one of the drives. I've done a scan of the sectors on my NVMe drive, which appear to be all good, and I'm still in the process of scanning my 1 TB 860 EVO drive. From my most recent soft hang I also ran into a first case of some data corruption, as my Firefox profile seemed a bit messed up when I booted my system back up again. From past experience I've found that Firefox doesn't take too kindly to unexpected shut downs, but after I rebooted my system to update the firmware for my NVMe drive, Firefox seemed to start up and load my profile successfully as if nothing had ever happened.

SSD , are not the end all are they. last 3 of mine just bought in last 2 months have had major problems.
I have an old optiplex 755 SFF and it is now working really good with an evo 860 ssd (for the moment anyway)

Easiest way to refresh os and it wont take long, is download and run the media creation tool, and upgrade this pc, it will download windows 10, check for needed updates, and then ask if you want to save you files, and programs, say yes and it will write a fresh copy of windows on your drive. It will also repair all windows partitions. system, reserve etc...

The new version of the tool does this, in a little different order from this video, but it will work and save all your folders too
https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/vide.../embed/RE201WL

You wont lose activation even if using volume licensing through your organization by doing an in place upgrade install, it will though upgrade you to the latest version of windows 10

Apocalypsing · 20 Dec 2020

sdowney717 said:

SSD , are not the end all are they. last 3 of mine just bought in last 2 months have had major problems.

That's a very unlucky experience right there. In the >8 years I've been using computers with SSDs, I've never had such a drive actually fail on me. I still have my drives from back then working fine, in fact. Even my old Samsung 840 Pro (256 GB) from 2013, which used to be in my old gaming system, is now in my home server (running Linux). I think that drive has about 30-35 TB written to it at this point.

I've since finished scanning all the drives in my system, and they're fine. Although I did start to take the Nvidia drivers into consideration when I woke up this morning. Just as I was about to downgrade to a previous driver version I was running some weeks ago, I had another soft hang. Before the downgrade I was running Nvidia driver version 460.89, and I downgraded to version 457.51. But given how illusive this soft hang problem is (not being immediately obvious, plus the lack of blue screens etc), I might just go down the media creation tool and OS refresh route and see how that goes.

sdowney717 · 20 Dec 2020

Apocalypsing said:

That's a very unlucky experience right there. In the >8 years I've been using computers with SSDs, I've never had such a drive actually fail on me. I still have my drives from back then working fine, in fact. Even my old Samsung 840 Pro (256 GB) from 2013, which used to be in my old gaming system, is now in my home server (running Linux). I think that drive has about 30-35 TB written to it at this point.

I've since finished scanning all the drives in my system, and they're fine. Although I did start to take the Nvidia drivers into consideration when I woke up this morning. Just as I was about to downgrade to a previous driver version I was running some weeks ago, I had another soft hang. Before the downgrade I was running Nvidia driver version 460.89, and I downgraded to version 457.51. But given how illusive this soft hang problem is (not being immediately obvious, plus the lack of blue screens etc), I might just go down the media creation tool and OS refresh route and see how that goes.

It is easy to do that refresh.

With these SSD's they can fail even at 99% life left and then hide the failure instantly by their firmware. So if a bad block appears and wipes out the data, it cant fix the lost data, but it can fix the interior drive integrity silently and no one will ever know what happened, just that your data is gone cause the drive screwed it up momentarily and all scans will show green blocks. Maybe spinner Sata drives do that too, dont know. I do know spinners hide bad blocks from the OS.

I give SSD's 2 major fails-crashes, then they got to be changed.
Here is a blog on their fails
Why SSDs Die a Sudden Death (and How to Deal with It) | ElcomSoft blog

- - - Updated - - -

one of the worst SSD is Samsung EVO 840, data just goes away on its own due to leaky TLC cells.
Samsung 840 EVO - how to easily lose your data forever - PC-3000 Forum

No personal experience though with those ssd.