PC freezes after being left idle for a few hours

I've been looking into this problem since December and I still can't find a resolution for it. It feels like I'm being gaslighted and I'm going crazy trying to figure out what's wrong with my computer, but your problem sounds exactly like mine. The "symptoms" of these crashes are like nothing I've seen before:

• audio stops
• keyboard input stops but shortcuts still work (for a limited time: Alt+Tab, Ctrl+Alt+Del, Ctrl+Shift+Esc)
• Using Sign Out or power options from the Ctrl+Alt+Del screen just stays stuck on the circle spinner
• Start Menu, taskbar can't be accessed
• Task Manager can be opened but can't be interacted with (frozen static)
• application windows can still be moved around, right click works on application title bars, but sometimes right click menus remain ghosted on the screen
• content stops resizing inside of resized windows (Chrome renders just black when windows are made larger)
• applications slowly become unresponsive one by one until everything freezes
• mouse cursor still interacts with and changes over frozen content

These problems accumulate until everything is unresponsive and the only thing left to do is a hard shut down.

Just another commenter in this thread, I can no longer rely on Chrome Remote Desktop to check on my computer because if left idle it will 100% freeze up on me. I'm also using a custom built PC, and I've updated all my drivers manually to rule out driver issues as a possibility. Running the usual sfc commands turns up nothing.

Today it has even gotten worse and it's starting to freeze even while I'm actively using the computer. There's absolutely nothing logged in Event Viewer and I've been tearing my hair out trying to root out the issue. I also updated to 20H2 in December but hadn't though it would cause such drastic instability. Unfortunately, it's been long past the 10 days available to rollback the update so I can't confirm for sure if it's 20H2 that's causing these issues (but for now it seems like the likeliest culprit).

I was willing to let this slide since I could still get my work done reliably as long as I was by my computer, but now that it's just unstable all the time I can't wait any longer for an update to fix this. Is this problem being looked into further? And has anyone found a fix?

What cooler are you using? I've seen on some forums that its seems to be NZXT Cam causing the issues. I will uninstall mine and see if it resolves the problem

I’m indeed having the same problem! I thought maybe it was Wallpaper Engine but after a while Ive realized it’s not. Only when I’m idle after a certain period of time that it decides to freeze. Just like you I can do some things but I have to force restart my computer. It looks like no one really knows how to fix it?

Hi, did you manage to find a solution, the same thing happens to me.

I kept my task manager open and noticed that when this happens, the readouts mess up, they show -1% usage on the GPU and 0% on all hard drives, my commander pro stops interfacing with the iCUE software, I lose internet access and any video I was playing stops, Wallpaper engine also stops working.

I wanted to know if you found a solution.

Im not sure if this matters but my GPU is connected via a Gen 3 Riser cable, although from the looks of this thread it seems most likely windows is the issue so im not sure if its hardware or software related so I wanted to know if you've made any progress.