Windows 10 upgrade - random freezes and PC becomes unresponsive

Hello!

I have checked various threads and solutions but not yet found anything that works and would love a fully-working PC by tomorrow (self-employed/work from home)...!

My situation is this... I upgraded from a fully-functioning Windows 8.1 to Windows 10 this weekend. The upgrade process seemed simple enough, but I am suffering from intermittent freezes which can only be resolved with a full (hardware button) reset.

At a random time - after anything from 5 to 50 minutes - the screen will suddenly power off (the monitor itself will usually tell me it is going into sleep mode). Sometimes I'm in the middle of something; sometimes I've gone away and have returned to an unresponsive PC. Sometimes I will see the mouse cursor and desktop freeze for about a second before the screen goes black; sometimes I won't. If I'm playing music, it will stop. Ctrl-Alt-Delete doesn't do anything - but the hard drive light still flashes, as if Windows is still running. (The error logs don't *seem* to show anything out of the ordinary, other than that I then have to do a socking great reset!)

I've tried various things already - I've made sure the graphics drivers are up-to-date (via an install from scratch); I've disconnected everything from the USB ports; I've booted with everything in Startup set to disabled... But the problem keeps recurring, and I really don't want to have to scrub everything I've got and do a 'nuclear' install. (In theory, I'm dual booting with Windows 7, but have not booted into that for years, probably.)

Safe mode seems stable, as does the screen before you actually log on, so I'm inclined to think it's a driver issue or something, but they're all up-to-date, too. I'm running a single monitor, BTW.

Any ideas, or suggestions where to look in those error logs, gratefully received. Help me, Obi Wan Kenobi, etc.

Turn off screen savers ,hibernation and monitor sleep timing ,try high performance power setting and never sleep on PC and screen and get back to us if that fixes it we can go from there or you can leave it like that .

Desktop or laptop and if laptop do use it on a battery much ?

Hi, a couple of thoughts:
1. try a clean boot into normal mode (i.e. disable all startups) just to see what happens.
2. you might wish to try an older version of your graphics driver if available e.g. Win 8 compatible.
3. I've come across threads (in this forum) about Win 10 erratically going into sleep- if that were your problem. If so, have a look for those threads. But from what you're saying, it isn't actually going into sleep mode.
4. If you're looking for crash report analysis, try Nirsoft's utilities e.g. Whocrashed for drivers to give you a clue.

Also consider your AV/Firewall. The usual recommendation on upgrading is to uninstall that before upgrading.

If ran fine in safe mode, then this seems to point to driver or software incompatibility or conflict.
Make sure did update all system drivers from PC manufacturer's site and if they do have them.Disable sleep and hibernate for now if using as already recommended use Power option, high performance.

Another possibility hardware related issues or if corrupt system files or misconfigured system (too many running processes, low resources) As we have no clue to your system specs to know much about them.

blutos cousin said:

Turn off screen savers ,hibernation and monitor sleep timing ,try high performance power setting and never sleep on PC and screen and get back to us if that fixes it we can go from there or you can leave it like that .

Desktop or laptop and if laptop do use it on a battery much ?

Many thanks for getting back to me (apologies for not saying; this is a desktop machine). I'm afraid the problem still occurred after making these changes, but I'm very grateful for your reply. Still, some progress seems to have been made (see below).

dalchina said:

Hi, a couple of thoughts:
1. try a clean boot into normal mode (i.e. disable all startups) just to see what happens.
2. you might wish to try an older version of your graphics driver if available e.g. Win 8 compatible.
3. I've come across threads (in this forum) about Win 10 erratically going into sleep- if that were your problem. If so, have a look for those threads. But from what you're saying, it isn't actually going into sleep mode.
4. If you're looking for crash report analysis, try Nirsoft's utilities e.g. Whocrashed for drivers to give you a clue.

Also consider your AV/Firewall. The usual recommendation on upgrading is to uninstall that before upgrading.

Many thanks for getting back to me. I thought I had already tried booting with all startup programs disabled, but given what I've done this morning) see below, I'm no longer so sure. So I may return to this as I troubleshoot further...

I've not yet rolled back the graphics driver, as it was doing this with an earlier version, but I shall certainly bear this in mind. I think you're right to think this isn't a sleep problem per se (as sometimes it happens mere moments after reaching my desktop), but again I've added it to the list of possibilities. I'll check out that crash report analysis tool, and have made sure my AV program is up-to-date (it looks like the main program wasn't updating automatically, though that doesn't in itself seems to have solved my problem). Of course, in an ideal world, I would indeed have uninstalled before upgrading, but... Ho hum.

Anyway, thanks again for your help.

jds63 said:

If ran fine in safe mode, then this seems to point to driver or software incompatibility or conflict.
Make sure did update all system drivers from PC manufacturer's site and if they do have them.Disable sleep and hibernate for now if using as already recommended use Power option, high performance.

Another possibility hardware related issues or if corrupt system files or misconfigured system (too many running processes, low resources) As we have no clue to your system specs to know much about them.

Many thanks for getting back to me (apologies for not adding much to my system specs - I was posting a hurry last night, but have now sorted the specs, FWIW).

I 'chatted' to a MS help desk person last night, and he suggested making a new user account - which might in turn point to a problem with something that I have installed and load by default. I did that this morning, and have not had any problems for about four hours... Which means that I've at least been able to do some work today! So I'm left wondering whether to just migrate all my shortcuts and whatnot from my original account to this one, or to use that account from time to time in an attempt to isolate just what's causing the problem. (I'll probably do a bit of both, to be honest.) Some program or driver is obviously messing with Windows 10, but at least I appear to have a working system. Time for some tidying and/or detective work...

Anyway, thanks again for your help.

Ha! I spoke too soon - after about six hours of my new account/logon working without a hitch, I was away from the PC for a few minutes, and returned just in time to see the monitor switching off - and no amount of mouse shaking/keyboard pressing would wake the thing! So, another reset - and back to the drawing board (and some of the other suggestions already mentioned).

Any further thoughts, do let me know, though you've all been most helpful so far.

Hi, random thought, if you have any useful crash dumps on your PC, this may help (just been upgraded for win 10- freeware).
WhoCrashed Introduction

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