Windows randomly freezing and not responding, having to force shutdown


  1. zygoat
    Posts : 17
    Windows 10 20H2(64-bit)
       New #1

    Windows randomly freezing and not responding, having to force shutdown


    From yesterday, my laptop has been freezing at any random moment and I am having to force the laptop to shut down by pressing the power button. Whenever this happens I have noticed that the light on the laptop that shows disk activity goes completely off. (I have attached an image).

    I have done a complete reinstall of Windows and this problem is still persisting. Can I please get any help on how to solve this?

    Thanks in advance!

    My Laptop:

    ASUS TUF FX505DY-BQ002T
    WD Blue SN550 512GB NVME SSD (System drive)
    Toshiba mq04abf100 1TB HDD (Data drive)

    CPU: AMD Ryzen 5 3550H
    GPU: AMD Radeon RX 560X

    Windows 10 64 bit 20H2
    Attached Thumbnails Attached Thumbnails Windows randomly freezing and not responding, having to force shutdown-img_20201231_085025337_1.jpg  
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  3. dalchina
    Posts : 43,014
    Win 10 Pro (22H2) (2nd PC is 22H2)
       New #2

    Hi, as this is a laptop, presumably you are not overclocking. It seems to be only a year or two old- is that correct?

    There are many possible reasons a freeze might occur; unfortunately there usually are no logs produced.

    First thing to check would be your disk, then RAM.

    Simplest would be a portable program you can run on a flash drive, in the hope that this will run before your laptop freezes.
    Try
    Crystal Diskinfo portable
    (Google that).
    This is a simple indication of your disks' SMART parameters. I note you have 2, check both.

    Most tests after that take time, so if your laptop freezes frequently, these may not be possible to run.

    You can try using a different operating environment- I suggest you create e.g. a Linux live boot disk and see if your laptop freezes when booted from that.

    Please confirm you've made no hardware changes- is the RAM in the laptop as bought- or have you added any?
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  4. zygoat
    Posts : 17
    Windows 10 20H2(64-bit)
    Thread Starter
       New #3

    Thanks for the response!

    dalchina said:
    Hi, as this is a laptop, presumably you are not overclocking. It seems to be only a year or two old- is that correct?
    Correct, this laptop is around 1 year and 3 months old.

    I have attached the CrystalDiskInfo screenshots for both the drives.

    dalchina said:
    Please confirm you've made no hardware changes- is the RAM in the laptop as bought- or have you added any?
    The RAM in the laptop is the same as it was before. (8GB DDR4) I have not added any additional RAM.
    Attached Thumbnails Attached Thumbnails Windows randomly freezing and not responding, having to force shutdown-screenshot-1-.png   Windows randomly freezing and not responding, having to force shutdown-screenshot-2-.png  
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  6. dalchina
    Posts : 43,014
    Win 10 Pro (22H2) (2nd PC is 22H2)
       New #4

    That's a good start.. if you look at your Update History, did you receive any sort of update yesterday?

    Suggest you run a RAM check, and try creating and using a live boot disk as I mentioned.
    There are RAM check tutorials in the Tutorial section here.
    However, your PC may not stay stable for long enough.

    Try booting to Safe Mode- any freezes? If not, could try a RAM check in Safe Mode.

    If you can achieve a stable situation you can run stress tests e.g.
    Prime95 - Stress Test Your CPU
    FurMark - GPU Stress Test

    and a driver check:
    Enable and Disable Driver Verifier in Windows 10
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  7. zygoat
    Posts : 17
    Windows 10 20H2(64-bit)
    Thread Starter
       New #5

    Memtest86+ showed no errors on all passes.

    Also tried FurMark and it ran properly for some time till I noticed temps going over 80°C.

    Both seem to be working fine.

    I also wanted to ask if putting "Never" in the "switch off hard disk after" option in the Power Plan options would help. I read this in a TenForums post from around 4 years ago with almost the same symptoms.

    I put Never and I have not seen it hang till now. Why do you think this would be happening?
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  8. dalchina
    Posts : 43,014
    Win 10 Pro (22H2) (2nd PC is 22H2)
       New #6

    Good find - that would certainly be consistent with your initial report about the drive light.

    As to why that has become an issue... hmm.. research needed...
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  9. zygoat
    Posts : 17
    Windows 10 20H2(64-bit)
    Thread Starter
       New #7

    dalchina said:
    As to why that has become an issue... hmm.. research needed...
    Yeah, seems strange to me too.

    Thanks a lot for the help, though! Will update in case anything happens.
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