Windows 10 1709 freeze randomly

UT, CAPS AGAIN:---IF STUFF FREEZES UP, hit CTRL+ALT+DEL & IT SHOULD BRING UP THE blue security screen. Then click on Task Mgr & every thing will unfreeze. Even if you have Task Manager open, it does not matter. That is the easiest quick solution. THAT IS THE EASIEST QUICK SOLUTION.

Unfortunately the problem (for some of us at least) is when it freezes, it freezes. Nothing usually works besides a hard reset, mouse doesn't move and keys don't work. And on top of that nothing appears regarding the error when you check the event manager after the hard reset.  I think some have had this issue to the point of having to hard reset so much that it's damaged their hard drives.

After reading all 17 pages of this thread, it is time for me to chime in on this. I too have experienced, and continue to experience, lockups described here.

I have three machines each of which has 1709 Build 16299.301 on them.

• HP Laptop
• HP Desktop
• Dell Laptop

My husband's HP desktop also has 1709 Build 16299.301 on it. (Hubby also happens to be an IT professional.)

NONE of our machines have AMD processors - we only buy machines with Intel processors. So the issue does not appear to be processor-specific.

My husband's machine experienced these lockups a few weeks ago. He booted into Safe Mode, ran virus scans (i.e., MalwareBytes followed by a full Norton scan,)  and after doing this a couple times, his machine finally booted normally and has been working ok since (knock on wood.) FYI, he just turned off fast startup on it.

My machines were working well until last Thursday (March 22) when I booted my HP Desktop for a video call I had - everything looked normal, but after launching Chrome everything hung as described by everyone here. I let it sit for several hours, no change. Finally did a hard shutdown, and left it until the weekend.

Next, Saturday morning (March 24) I booted my Dell laptop, launched Chrome, and it locked up... Again, I let it sit for several hours - no change. Did a hard shutdown, booted in safe mode, ran virus scans (again MalwareBytes and full Norton,) shut down, rebooted, and it booted normally.

In parallel, we did the same Safe Mode/scan process on my HP Desktop, only it did not boot up normally - it still hung. The following morning (Sunday, March 25,) I tried again and booted it up to see if it would be ok (with the plan to try the Safe Mode/scan process again,) and this time it booted ok. Never hung for the rest of day after I let it sit idle for the entire day.

Saturday I also checked my HP Laptop, and it booted ok, and has done so a couple times since. I hope it continues to work.

Then this morning, I booted my Dell Laptop before leaving for work (as I normally do to check a few things,) and after launching Chrome, it again hung. I let it sit for about a half hour while I did other things before doing yet another hard shutdown. We will try turning off Fast Startup if we can get it to boot normally.

One other issue I noticed a couple weeks ago (i.e., well before learning about this hanging/freezing issue,) that I had forgotten about until just now – and I did not see this issue mentioned anywhere in this very long thread. It may or may not be related but it may offer a clue to what is happening. On my Dell Laptop, about a week ago, I tried to enable the built-in Photo Gallery Screensaver that I had been using several months ago (I had switched to SETI at Home for a while, but decided to stop using it.) When I previewed the the screen saver to make sure it was pointing at the correct directory, my machine WOULD NOT WAKE UP when I moved my mouse or hit the keyboard. I think I finally got it to wake up using Ctrl-Alt-Delete or the Windows key or something - can't remember specifically what worked… But after that, I disabled all screen savers because I didn't want to have to resort to hard shutdowns if it would not wake up. The symptoms I experienced are the same as what we are seeing with the freezes - it is as if the mouse and keyboard are are not connected/inputs are not being recognized...

As an electrical engineer, this makes me wonder if Microsoft programmers did something unintentionally that screwed up the Interrupt Service Routine (ISR) for peripheral interrupts (not sure if these should be NMIs, or non-maskable interrupts, or normal interrupts,) with this update... Wouldn't be the first time an update intended to push out bug fixes and improvements seriously broke other parts of an otherwise working system. And what is most frustrating, it seems to be an intermittent problem that is difficult to reliably reproduce/track down.  Just a thought.

The worst part of this is if you wait more than 10 days after 1709 is forced on you, it won't let you go back to version 1703 (which wasn't locking up the computer).  I didn't even know that 1709 was loaded on this laptop, but I noticed the constant crashing (nothing works, not even the keyboard or mouse so you can't get to the task manager) and finally figured out that my computer was updated behind my back.  Fortunately I have an old W10 backup on hard drive, but I'm going to lose many of my documents and programs if I restore it.  So now I'm caught between a rock and a hard place.  Thanks Microsoft!

Why I'm not risking it. I only wish that they would at least give you 30 days to roll back as it seems like that would be a better time frame if there are any problems like this one. I've been back to 1703 on my PC like four times. I can say that it is not a problem with corrupt files, corrupt or old drivers, or anything. It's something in 1709 that causes it and it's almost always random. I have had no Hard Reset freezes with 1703, not even after I upgraded to 1703 originally.  I went almost a week without a Hard Reset freeze the last time i was on 1709 and I would have missed the rollback after 2 more days. It's also not due to a resource drain because last time it happened the light was out and I'd just stepped away for a second to return to it frozen. From all that I've seen, at least in my cases it seems to happen in the first 10 days after updating.

I just started shopping for a Mac this week. I've had it with Microsoft's lack of responsiveness to many, many issues I see posted on the internet, shared by hundreds/thousands of users. The troubleshooting tools seem to never be of any value. They either don't find a problem, or find a problem but offer no solution. Often links to further information when trying to troubleshoot are no longer valid. Support at MS has really gone downhill. At the same time, the ability to understand and/or make modifications by a relatively experienced user has been reduced, as MS tries to take care of issues automatically, supposedly. I'm really frustrated and disappointed. This seems to be a case of a company and OS that has gotten too big and complex to support or understand. I believe I will be out of the MS community in the coming months.

Hi Juan,

Freezing in Windows 10 may be caused by corrupted system files or hardware issue. We'd like to know if you've tried all the troubleshooting steps provided previously on this thread. How was it?

I have the exact same problem, All drivers checked and fully up to date, all current updates installed, Yet every so often, The entire machine just stops dead, I have to hard reset with power button, Which may i point out is not healthy for a modern hard disk, Get it sorted Microsoft or i will be changing operating systems after being with you since Windows 95.