W10 Freeze and crash randomly but infrequently

Hello,

I will first describe my situation. I have a Panasonic toughbook CF-19 Mk6 with i5-3rd gen core + 16GB RAM. The machine has been in my hands for a few years now and it used to act as a mobile wifi server using Windows 7 Pro or linux and has never had any issues. The computer is designed to have very easily swappable 2.5" HDD/SSD and I have the following:

1TB Windows 7 Pro HDD
500GB Linux SSD
500GB Windows 10 Pro SSD

As I previously stated on Windows 7 and Linux, zero problems.

Now, on Windows 10, the computer randomly freezes then crashes. I've checked the event scheduler and event logs to find out the clues to what's causing the crash and I haven't found anything useful in the log other than an error message that the computer shut down unexpectedly.

It's not a regular event either, the computer would stay on perfectly fine for 40 days then suddenly freeze then crash when I open up google chrome. Or when I turn on VLC to open a video in a few minutes after reboot.

I am 100% sure that this is not a hardware issue because again, everything checks out on the other drives and the SSD has been tested several times and no error found.

I have tried using chkdsk, memory tests, sfc, drivers are all up to date PCIE power saving disabled, fast startup disabled, reset winsock, tried rescue disk (no error found).

It's certainly not malware/virus as the computer is well protected behind firewall and AV/AA services of the stationary server.

One finnicky part is that before I installed the W10 as it is, I actually had W10 installed on a platter HDD. I used AOEMI backer upper to clone the platter HDD to SSD and aligned it to SSD. Nothing noticeable went wrong during the cloning but on another computer I had to reinstall a W10 after cloning process even though its linux counterpart was cloned without any issues.

The only solution to the above was to reinstall W10, and I am getting close to reinstalling W10 Pro on my toughbook to ruleout problems during cloning.

Is there anything else I should try before I do that? I may take the opportunity to upgrade to a larger SSD.

Paul Black said:

Hello @SJLPHI,
Welcome to TenForums.




Have you tried [ from an Elevated Command Prompt ] => Dism /Online /Cleanup-Image /RestoreHealth

Thank you for the welcome and yes, I failed to mention that one and I have tried but nothing significant.

Does Reliability History have any entries covering the freezes?
In the search box,type in---dxdiag---and on the Display page,note the driver details.Visit the maker's site only and download that driver,or later if available.
Use Display Driver Uninstaller,[DDU] in Safe Mode,if possible,then install the downloaded driver.Check the driver package for unwanted components first.
Perhaps you could also check the Timeout Detection and Recovery [TDR] setting is at default,which is 2[two] seconds,given in milliseconds.
Found in---hklm\system\control set 001\control\graphics driver
Display adapters can be frustrating at times.

joeandmarg0 said:

Does Reliability History have any entries covering the freezes?
In the search box,type in---dxdiag---and on the Display page,note the driver details.Visit the maker's site only and download that driver,or later if available.
Use Display Driver Uninstaller,[DDU] in Safe Mode,if possible,then install the downloaded driver.Check the driver package for unwanted components first.
Perhaps you could also check the Timeout Detection and Recovery [TDR] setting is at default,which is 2[two] seconds,given in milliseconds.
Found in---hklm\system\control set 001\control\graphics driver
Display adapters can be frustrating at times.

Reliability Monitors Misc failure: Windows was not properly shut down on Dec 20, Dec 27, Jan 4th -these are the times when the computer freezes and I force reboot with power button. Which seem ironically almost weekly periodic on Wednesday. Is there a way to get the Task Scheduler to show what events are scheduled on Wednesdays?

I haven't found the TDR setting in hklm\system\control set 001\control\GraphicsDrivers
If you meant hklm\system\control set 001\control\GraphicsDrivers\DCI\Timeout, the value is 7

As for Display driver, it's a simple Intel HD 4000 integrated driver version 10.18.10.4358 from 2015-12-21. It's the same one in the W10 driver repository and the manufacturer only offers driver for Windows 7.

The Intel HD 4000 is too old for Win 10,from around 2012 and driver development has stopped.
As Win 10 keeps growing,the chances of older hardware performing flawlessly falls away.
If you decide to stick with it,then performance problems will become routine.
Best of luck.

joeandmarg0 said:

The Intel HD 4000 is too old for Win 10,from around 2012 and driver development has stopped.
As Win 10 keeps growing,the chances of older hardware performing flawlessly falls away.
If you decide to stick with it,then performance problems will become routine.
Best of luck.

This isn't the only machine I have with W10 and Intel HD 4000 iGPU though and I have no performance issues at all. I doubt the performance really will be an issue anytime soon but I do want to fix the freeze and crash

The performance issues already exist,freezing and crashes.
Try going back into Reliability History and right click on the ---critical event--- listed.This should give you---view tech details---in a dark background box which ,when selected,will give a log.
If it doesn't then Event Viewer is probably the next best place to look.
With respect to TDR,try---hklm\system\current control set\control\graphics drivers
Don't open any further than that.TDR should be in the right hand pane with the default setting of 2 seconds.
If it isn't,then you can create the key for it,I'm not helping there,one wrong move and the OS is stuffed.
Any change to the default setting is changed back automatically with updates.
Working with old hardware may be fine,for awhile,but not forever.Win 7 installation by DVD,Win 10 by 8GB stick and the minimum default ram is now 2GB.
If you used DDU in Safe Mode,then all I can suggest is a clean install,Display Adapters can be a pain.

joeandmarg0 said:

The performance issues already exist,freezing and crashes.
Try going back into Reliability History and right click on the ---critical event--- listed.This should give you---view tech details---in a dark background box which ,when selected,will give a log.
If it doesn't then Event Viewer is probably the next best place to look.
With respect to TDR,try---hklm\system\current control set\control\graphics drivers
Don't open any further than that.TDR should be in the right hand pane with the default setting of 2 seconds.
If it isn't,then you can create the key for it,I'm not helping there,one wrong move and the OS is stuffed.
Any change to the default setting is changed back automatically with updates.
Working with old hardware may be fine,for awhile,but not forever.Win 7 installation by DVD,Win 10 by 8GB stick and the minimum default ram is now 2GB.
If you used DDU in Safe Mode,then all I can suggest is a clean install,Display Adapters can be a pain.

The critical even log literally tells me that the system as shut down unexpectedly and nothing more... Also this is not a performance issue it's a stability issue possibly caused by a botched cloning process. I have other machines with Intel HD4000 without the issue.

Regarding TDR, it is not there for my regedit.