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#1
Freezes but mouse cursor and keyboard still work - must reboot
Greetings,
I have what I think is a pretty unusual freezing problem on my Windows 10 machine that I'm hoping someone can help me with. This only started happening after I upgraded from Windows 7 64-bit to Windows 10 64-bit last fall. I did a fresh install on a brand new Samsung 860 SSD.
Here's what happens: At random times, the computer will freeze. But it freezes in a very particular way. I can still move the cursor around with the mouse. In whatever window was active at the time of the freeze, I can click around and do things, execute parts of the program, etc. I can click into other windows if they're on the screen but not from the taskar. Once I'm in those other windows, though, I clicking with the mouse does nothing.
The keyboard, however, works fine. I can use Alt-Tab to move between windows. If I can figure out the keyboard commands, I can do things in those other windows. And I am able, by clicking the Windows button and tabbing around, restart the computer.
From what I can tell, it's random when it happens. Sometimes I'll get a freeze and then after rebooting, the freeze will re-occur. But not always. I've gone weeks between freezes, but sometimes they're very frequently where I have several in only a few days.
Here's what I've tried to do to fix this but didn't help:
- Swapped out my mouse with a wired mouse
- I reseated my GPU into another slot months ago hoping that would solve this. It did not.
- After I installed Windows, there were no chipset drivers listed on the Asus website under Windows 10, so I installed the versions for Windows 8 64-bit. For reference, here is the support website with drivers listed: SABERTOOTH 990FX R2.0 Driver & Tools | Motherboards | ASUS USA
- BIOS is up-to-date and has been this whole time (version 2901).
- No problems noticed with overheating. I have good airflow through my case and check temperatures regularly.
- My virtual memory is custom set with initial size 3954 MB and maximum size 35850 MB. The C-drive is a 500 GB SSD.
Event Viewer - I don't notice any errors associated with the freezes. Like none at all. I do have quite a few DCOM errors, but they don't co-occur with the freezes. This one, for example, happened almost 10 minutes before the freeze:
The application-specific permission settings do not grant Local Launch permission for the COM Server application with CLSID
Windows.SecurityCenter.WscBrokerManager
and APPID
Unavailable
to the user NT AUTHORITY\SYSTEM SID (S-1-5-18) from address LocalHost (Using LRPC) running in the application container Unavailable SID (Unavailable). This security permission can be modified using the Component Services administrative tool.
I also don't notice any additional errors in the Reliability History.
My suspicions from googling (though this is a hard one to google for):
- Something PSU-related. Would there be a good way to look into this more beyond getting a new one?
- I got my motherboard and CPU way back in 2014. Is it possible these just aren't compatible with Windows 10 and I'd need to upgrade?
- My previous computer was also an Asus motherboard, and at the time there seemed to be compatibility issues with Samsung SSDs that manifested in weird audio pops, not freezing. I thought these issues had been resolved, but I'm wondering if there might be more Asus-Samsung compatibility issues that have sprung up.
- After I upgraded to Windows 10, I noticed that Windows wasn't showing my full RAM. I have four sticks of RAM installed. I had to swap them around (basically reverse which slots the two pairs were in), but Windows then did see the full amount.
- I've seen mention of disabling C-states in my BIOS, but I don't want to mess with that unless I think it could work.
I appreciate any help you can all provide me. Now that I'm working from home, having a computer I can rely on is a lot more important, so I'm hoping to get this figured out.
Thanks in advance!!