Windows Randomly Soft Freezing

[Kyousak]

So my Windows has some weird issues like since a Month and it as i call it Softfreezes. The weird Freeze freezes my Clock and everything i dont know how to describe it properly. It doesnt have the normal type of freezes i can still move my mouse and click on stuff but nothing will open.

 

[Originality]

Does your device run on a hard drive?

Giving the specs of your device would answer most of the basic questions. You can use an app like speccy to make gathering your specs easier.

 

[Costello]

as odd as it may seem I have experienced something like that before, it was caused by some bad driver or something that was installed by an app (can't remember which one)

what I did is I used a restore point from a while back. That fixed it. Seriously, give it a try.

But of course if it's a hardware problem loading a restore point won't help.

 

[Kyousak]

Does your device run on a hard drive?

Giving the specs of your device would answer most of the basic questions. You can use an app like speccy to make gathering your specs easier.

I will try to give you the Specs if it wont freeze on me again

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as odd as it may seem I have experienced something like that before, it was caused by some bad driver or something that was installed by an app (can't remember which one)

what I did is I used a restore point from a while back. That fixed it. Seriously, give it a try.

But of course if it's a hardware problem loading a restore point won't help.

I already tried that it wont change anything

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Does your device run on a hard drive?

Giving the specs of your device would answer most of the basic questions. You can use an app like speccy to make gathering your specs easier.

Okay so here are the Specs
OS: Windows 10 Pro N 64-bit
CPU: Intel Core 2 Duo E7300 @ 2,66GHz Wolfdale 45nm Technology
RAM: 4,00GB Single-Channel DDR2 @ 333MHz (5-4-4-14)
Motherboard: FUJITSU SIEMENS D2740-A2
Graphics: 1024MB NVIDIA GeForce 210 ( Gigabyte)
Storage: 232GB Seagate ST3250310AS ATA Device ( SATA)
Optical Drives: Optiarc DVD RW AD-7200S ATA Device
Audio: NVIDIA High Definition Audio

Yes i know its not that good but it doesnt matter cause i only use it for work

 

[Originality]

It’s an old PC but it’s well above Windows 10 minimum requirements.

Soft freezes like you’re experiencing are usually due to IO errors. This could be caused by bad drivers as Costello mentioned, but I’ve found it’s usually caused by a bottleneck in the hardware. The hard drive is the first place I look because of there are too many access requests at the same time (e.g anti virus, Windows updates, a big program like excel, etc) then it will freeze the system until it gets through the backlog of access requests. Fragmentation on the drive can make things worse as it has to search up and down the drive for each access request. This is one of the reasons why it’s recommended to upgrade to a solid state drive as a Windows drive in any desktop or laptop - the difference is like night and day.

Other possible bottlenecks are the CPU and memory, and the principle is the same as with drives. If there are too many system calls on the processor, it will try to offload some to the memory to help it process the queue. And with the memory, if it gets full, it will try to dump the older memory pages to the swap file on the hard drive. Each time data is moving from one medium to another (especially from fast media like the processor cache, to medium speed like RAM, to slow speed like the drive) it can potentially cause a freeze until the hardware sorts out where it’s putting all its data.

A couple more things you want to check are what the real time usage is for your CPU, memory and drive at the time of these freezes. Press ctrl+shift+esc to open the task manager and click on the performance tab. Keep an eye on the graphs when it freezes to see if anything is at 100% at the time. You will also want to check the SMART readings for your hard drive (also available in speccy) to check if it may be failing.

Also, since you say it started around a month ago, do you remember any changes around that time which may have caused this? E.g a Windows update or installing a new app?

 

[Kyousak]

So now i am sure its a hardware problem because i installed a new never used hdd and installed windows and it still occurs

 

[JellyPerson]

So now i am sure its a hardware problem because i installed a new never used hdd and installed windows and it still occurs

Happened to me. What are your specs? Be extremely specific

 

[Kyousak]

Happened to me. What are your specs? Be extremely specific

My specs are a few posts up

I will try to give you the Specs if it wont freeze on me again

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I already tried that it wont change anything

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Okay so here are the Specs
OS: Windows 10 Pro N 64-bit
CPU: Intel Core 2 Duo E7300 @ 2,66GHz Wolfdale 45nm Technology
RAM: 4,00GB Single-Channel DDR2 @ 333MHz (5-4-4-14)
Motherboard: FUJITSU SIEMENS D2740-A2
Graphics: 1024MB NVIDIA GeForce 210 ( Gigabyte)
Storage: 232GB Seagate ST3250310AS ATA Device ( SATA)
Optical Drives: Optiarc DVD RW AD-7200S ATA Device
Audio: NVIDIA High Definition Audio

Yes i know its not that good but it doesnt matter cause i only use it for work

 

[Kyousak]

I just thougt about all this stuff and i had an idea. Maybe my power cable for my pc doesnt give it enough power and it freezes because of that. Is that even possible?

 

[JellyPerson]

I just thougt about all this stuff and i had an idea. Maybe my power cable for my pc doesnt give it enough power and it freezes because of that. Is that even possible?

It's a combination of your old CPU and your RAM.

 

[Kyousak]

It's a combination of your old CPU and your RAM.

But then why does it not work now it worked years without problems

 

[JellyPerson]

But then why does it not work now it worked years without problems

You probably had an older version of Windows installed then.

 

[Kyousak]

You probably had an older version of Windows installed then.

No i always had windows 10 on this pc

 

[TotalInsanity4]

It may honestly just be that they're starting to fail. I don't know that I've ever watched a CPU fail in real time because most people upgrade before that'd ever happen or kill them instantaneously doing something stupid, but the clock freezing and programs refusing to open could be explained by something like that

 

[ThoD]

Do something, leave the Resource Monitor running in the background and as soon as it freezes, wait until it unfreezes and take a look there, it will be clear what caused the freeze if it was a bottleneck from hardware as it will show unusally high usage for the problematic component (eg: it'll show it just had a spike where it was 100% usage for CPU), really simple way to troubleshoot things. Also, make sure you don't have any bad background processes (eg: I've had something similar caused by a "mole" spyware years back). Another thing to try is the moment it freezes, assuming it freezes for a while, just pull any network cables out, this may be very rare, but sometimes the network itself has an issue that just freezes the computer as a whole or individual programs (or rarely cause bottlenecks, but more commonly the stupid "PID 4 System.exe drawing 100% of HDD speed" that old computers very ofter get these days).

 

[Kyousak]

Do something, leave the Resource Monitor running in the background and as soon as it freezes, wait until it unfreezes and take a look there, it will be clear what caused the freeze if it was a bottleneck from hardware as it will show unusally high usage for the problematic component (eg: it'll show it just had a spike where it was 100% usage for CPU), really simple way to troubleshoot things. Also, make sure you don't have any bad background processes (eg: I've had something similar caused by a "mole" spyware years back). Another thing to try is the moment it freezes, assuming it freezes for a while, just pull any network cables out, this may be very rare, but sometimes the network itself has an issue that just freezes the computer as a whole or individual programs (or rarely cause bottlenecks, but more commonly the stupid "PID 4 System.exe drawing 100% of HDD speed" that old computers very ofter get these days).

The Problem i have is that it wont unfreeze i have to force shutdown my pc with its power button

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-snip-

It cannot be because of the HDD or Software because i recently installed a unused HDD to see if my HDD was broken or something so i think it should be my RAM or CPU thats Dying

 

[TotalInsanity4]

Try replacing your CMOS battery. It sounds dumb as all getout, but they're super cheap and may potentially solve your problem

 

[ThoD]

Try replacing your CMOS battery. It sounds dumb as all getout, but they're super cheap and may potentially solve your problem

If something so farfetched could be the issue, just taking it out would fix it, no need for full replacement. Computer works fine without it, just BIOS settings are lost, big whoop Just pull out, if you get freeze again, it's not that. This will also indirectly ensure it's not something caused by misconfigured BIOS as the settings will revert to default.

 

[TotalInsanity4]

If something so farfetched could be the issue, just taking it out would fix it, no need for full replacement. Computer works fine without it, just BIOS settings are lost, big whoop Just pull out, if you get freeze again, it's not that. This will also indirectly ensure it's not something caused by misconfigured BIOS as the settings will revert to default.

Fair point. I'm just wondering if somehow the charge is so low that the RTC is losing charge during operation somehow and bugging the entire system out. I know it's a SUPER long shot, but I've heard weird stories of PC problems occuring due to a dead battery before

 

[Kyousak]

Try replacing your CMOS battery. It sounds dumb as all getout, but they're super cheap and may potentially solve your problem

-Accidently double posted cause of lag-

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Try replacing your CMOS battery. It sounds dumb as all getout, but they're super cheap and may potentially solve your problem

Okay im gonna try that when im back home im gonna update you if something happens