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?

Hi and thanks for reaching out. My name is Bernard an Independent Advisor and a Windows fan like you. I'll be happy to help you out today.

I actually have the same problem as before and by following the steps provided below fixed my issue, I hope this works for you as well.

Method 1. Do clean boot:

A “clean boot” starts Windows with a minimal set of drivers and startup programs, so that you can determine whether a background program is interfering with your game or program.

• In the search box on the taskbar, type msconfig and select System Configuration from the results.
• On the Services tab of System Configuration, select Hide all Microsoft services, and then select Disable all.
• On the Startup tab of System Configuration, select Open Task Manager.
• Under Startup in Task Manager, for each startup item, select the item and then select Disable.
• Close Task Manager.
• On the Startup tab of System Configuration, select OK. When you restart the computer, it's in a clean boot environment.

troubleshooting reference: https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/help/929135...

Method 2. Run memory diagnostic tool: Memory diagnostic tool is a RAM test to check if there is any issues with RAM.

• Press Windows key + R then type in mdsched.exe hit OK then restart the device.

Method 3. Set the PC to best performance:

Press windows key + Pause/Break (or go to file explorer and right click This PC and click properties)

click on Advanced system settings> Under Performance click settings> Click Adjust for best performance and click OK

Note: this will reduce all appearance settings you have but will optimize the performance of the PC.

Let me know how does it goes and I hope that helps.

Bernard

Independent Advisor

I have the same random screen freezes along with random resets. 

This never happened in windows 7, and only started in late 2020.

I have swapped SSD's and RAM and video cards; done device driver uninstalls for previous video cards.

I have updated windows 10 until I'm blue in the face.

I'd better finish this before my computer crashes.

Should I try Linux?

I have never used Linux but have heard positive things about it.

Type into your search bar on windows 10 " Reliability History" it will show you any critical problems/services crashing on your OS. Mine showed corsair link 4 services were crashing constantly before my PC would freeze. I just uninstalled corsair link to see if these crashes continue, so far no crashes since uninstalling it. 

Will know more tomorrow.