This browser is no longer supported.
Upgrade to Microsoft Edge to take advantage of the latest features, security updates, and technical support.
![](data:image/svg+xml, %3Csvg xmlns='http://www.w3.org/2000/svg' height='64' class='font-weight-bold' style='font: 600 30.11764705882353px "SegoeUI", Arial' width='64'%3E%3Ccircle fill='hsl(128, 8%, 22%)' cx='32' cy='32' r='32' /%3E%3Ctext x='50%25' y='55%25' dominant-baseline='middle' text-anchor='middle' fill='%23FFF' %3EA%3C/text%3E%3C/svg%3E)
Hi All,
I have an issue with windows 8.1 of which I would like someone to shed some light on for me.
The issue I am having is that every so often since upgrading 8.1 last night it keeps locking up on me for no apparent reason resulting in a a restart by the reset switch, and this never happened with windows 8 but it is annoying how 8.1 is now doing it.
Can anyone help? as I am seriously debating downgrading from windows 8.1 back to 8 as I don't want a system that locks up on me and is unstable all the time due to using my computer to do coursework for college and can't afford to lose any work that has not been saved.
SPECS:
MSI E350DM-E33
AMD E350 X2 @ 1.6Ghz
8GB DDR3
1TB HDD
ATI HD RADEON 6310
Yours Sincerely,
Shane
Locked Question. This question was migrated from the Microsoft Support Community. You can vote on whether it's helpful, but you can't add comments or replies or follow the question.
since I've done that trick I found the system has been running great. I'll repeat it here and then try to scatter it into other replies. People should be made aware of this trick. Go into Task Manager. Right click on Windows Explorer. Click "restart"... then restart your PC... the PC will take awhile to reboot... the Windows system must be "reinstalling" or something.... this reset everything very well, for me....
It is odd that you couldn't run dism /online /cleanup-image /restorehealthhere is a link to the scanner http://www.microsoft.com/security/scanner/en-us/default.aspx If it doesn't work you can search Bing for Microsoft security scanner
Did it give you an error? Maybe it was typed in wrong or you weren't running command prompt as admin. You can copy from here and right click then select paste in the command prompt.
Does dism /online cleanup-image /checkhealth or dism /online cleanup-image /scanhealth run.
One of those will scan the computer for issues and report back if there is anything to fix. The other will the registry and other places to see if Windows set flags which is just its way of marking that there is an issue that needs repaired.
None will try and fix anything but they should run.
Fast Boot has nothing to do with the BIOS, certainly not on my PC. You must be thinking of Secure Boot, which needs UEFI support.
Fast Boot, or Fast Startup, works by saving part of the computer's state in hiberfile.sys, like a partial hibernation, so that the computer appears to boot more quickly, enabling Microsoft to claim that it does, while in fact the normal boot-up time (i.e. the time for a reset, which does a full boot-up in order to finish installing updates) is little or no different from Windows 7. It may be that freezing occurs when the OS is updating the machine state in hiberfile.sys.
The Windows 8.1 freeze may have a number of different causes, including incompatible drivers, the KB2901549 Windows update, and an incompatible combination of machine hardware, but this is certainly one of them. I have had no more freezes since getting rid of hiberfile.sys. That's wtf.
I have a MSI USA Z77A-G45 GAMING and was experiencing this issue after upgrading to Windows 8.1 as well.
What was happening is that after booting into Windows 8.1 the system tray began loading and the system would lock up completely during this process. However what is so confusing is that rebooting my system it would eventually boot into the OS normally without a lockup. It seemed totally random.
I attempted to check the event viewer but each time there was nothing unusual shown because there was nothing to report! It just halted in the middle of loading for no reason. I suspected the motherboard but it was brand new and I couldn't make sense of that, I found it hard to believe it was faulty. I then began thinking the RAM was the cause but it's reliable Crucial ram that hasn't caused this issue in the past. So I went ahead and blamed the SSD which is also Crucial but then I really thought about it awhile and realized when installing Windows 8 and preparing for the upgrade to 8.1 I had no lockups at all. It was happening a lot in 8.1 so I should've had the same experience.
I completely reinstalled 8 and it is fine now, the lockups are gone. However I'd done clean installs from 8 to 8.1 like 3x and it always locksup after that. I cannot use 8.1 it seems, some unknown driver issue is causing it to lockup.
Also this idea Fast Boot is causing the lockups makes no sense, first of all this is a BIOS option not in Power Management so wtf? And secondly my fast boot was always disabled I never used the darn thing.
Another sad fact, I tried narrowing down what drivers caused the lockups but failed, I just have no idea.
Finally all my drivers were up-to-date using Station-Drivers and were the newest available. I know the chipsets etc. of everything on the board. It's a mystery that will remain I am tired of installing Windows over an over, good luck!
I have the same issue with my PC. It seems to me the problem is not the 8.1 update itself, but the KB2901549 Windows update. It was released after I had updated to 8.1.
After I removed KB2901549 everything was fine. When it was installed again the same problem came back immediately.
Try to remove it as a temporary solution.
PS: when windows hangs i can always see a clock icon with the white flag on the bottom-right corner of the screen in the action center area.
