Computer non-responsive. No BSOD or visible error. Mouse still moves

Hi Folks,

I've had Windows 10 for a while now, and i've had this problem the entire time. I am having trouble finding a trigger, so this may be a little vague and I apologise for that in advance.

My main purpose for my machine is Photoshop and Lightroom, as I am a photographer. Parts are as follows;
Motherboard: Gigabyte (Will come back with model number)
CPU: i7 4790k (Not overclocked)
RAM: 32gb of 1600Mhz (will come back with brand)
Video Card: Asus GTX960 Turbo 2gb
HDD: 1x Samsung 850 EVO 250gb SSD , Seagate Barracuda 2tb, 120gb SSD (will come back with brand) note: issues were apparent before 120gb HDD was installed.

Essentially, the issue is described as in the title. At seemingly random intervals, my computer will not respond to any inputs. The mouse still moves freely across the screen, however there is no reaction to anything else. Additionally, Photoshop will, seemingly at random, slow down to an absolute crawl (this is usually followed by the non-responsive state).

In checking, my drivers are all up to date and after other checks with programs like CCleaner, CHKDSK, Ram Check, and even Kaspersky, there are no issue with my machine.

To my great frustration, I don't know enough to know if there is anywhere that will give me a report on what the issue(s) may be, except to say that I had this set up (ex the 120gb SSD) running on Windows 7, and it was immaculate.

DarethMortuus said:

Essentially, the issue is described as in the title. At seemingly random intervals, my computer will not respond to any inputs. The mouse still moves freely across the screen, however there is no reaction to anything else..

Hi,
I could be absolutely wrong but to me it looks like a hardware or RAM-related prolbem, rather than a Windows issue. It could also (highly improbable, but who knows) be the incompatibility of your PS version with Win 10.
Finally I would use Kaspersky Rescue Disk to check if a malware ddn't do any harm to your OS.

Do you use any USB hubs?

Unfortunately, I only have access to a Macbook Pro on the network.
I've done the built in windows RAM check, there are no issues with the RAM. Two separate hard drives are also showing the same issue.
I had the issue last night and I was clever enough to have task manager up and waiting when it happened. There was movement of processes up and down for memory usage (my selected sort field), nothing was using more than 10% CPU time at worst and total RAM usage was at around 20%, which makes sense as I had Lightroom open, culling down photos.

Probably just coincidence, but it sounds exactly like an intermittent problem I've had since installing Win10 (followed by a couple clean installs). An already running application (like a browser or email client) will usually continue running, but will once in a while get sluggish and eventually freeze. No new applications will start. Ctrl-Alt-Del is ignored, but if the I was smart enough to have started Task Manager prior to the hang-up it continues working and shows nothing unusual.

If I have enough patience to wait, eventually everything goes back to normal - sometimes in less that 5 minutes; sometimes more than 30 minutes. At that time all the applications that I tried starting (by clicking desktop icons, for instance) start up.

So just out of curiosity, have you waited to see if it would free up?

No, that is a good idea. Though, usually when it happens, I am in the middle of editing photos or the like for a client, which cannot wait.

I just recently found a tool that might help shine light on out problems (even if they are totally unrelated).
Process Monitor

It monitors and logs all I/O and registry activity. Unless you are really up on Windows internals (which I am NOT), the data collected may not be at all meaningful, but it will show what activity is going on while you are locked out. (Unless, of course, it is also locked out and won't let you view and save the log.) It maintains an in-memory log - minimum 1 million records, default 199 million records. The amount of time that represents varies widely depending on the activity, but I'm seeing from 5 to 20 minutes of activity with the "History Depth" set to 1,000,000.

I have no idea if this can be set to run automatically at startup (I don't see why not.), but I have confirmed that the history depth setting is saved so you don't have to remember to set it each time you reboot.

The obvious downside is that this utility must have a significant impact on performance.