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I've had this issue on and off since Windows 10 went live and I'm finding a few others with similar symptoms via Google with no conclusive solution. The only semi-consistent clue I'm seeing is Windows Update potentially installing drivers prior to the issue starting. I've also had the issue with both the Developer Preview and Windows 10 Pro. It's also happened on 2 of my 3 computers.

Experience/Observations:

Normally Windows 10 will run fine for a while after a fresh install. Then at some point (days or weeks after a fresh format/install) the symptoms will start and after which it'll happen frequently. What happens is that Windows 10 will suddenly slow to a crawl over the course of about 15 seconds. During this time audio becomes distorted, the cursor becomes jumpy and keyboard input is lagged. After ~15 seconds the audio freezes on a single (generally annoying) tone, the cursor won't move and I can't interact with the computer in any way and I have to resort to a hard reset. Usually all monitors are still displaying fine, however, a couple times two of the three have went black.

Usually the issue occurs randomly but multiple times a day under light or heavy load, however, yesterday this started again and started occurring within minutes of a reboot every time. Prior to this (minutes before the initial freeze) I did notice a toaster notification after a reboot that Windows Updates were completed.

Twice this issue has resulted in partition corruption on my main drive (which I managed to recover from using dd and TestDisk the first time), however, the second time (on a fresh re-partitioned/formatted drive) the primary partition was lost and unrecoverable. This was when I upgraded to a new SSD thinking it might be the SSD's doing (both effected machines had OCZ Vertex drives at the time). However, the problem still persists after upgrading to a Samsung 850 Evo. I did some debugging yesterday which included unplugging internal/external drives, uninstalling applications and changing my swap to a second drive, however, after 5 attempts I ended up with Filesystem corruption from, presumably, the hard resets and Windows 10 would not boot.

In addition I've installed Windows 7, after the initial partition corruptions, onto my old Vertex 3 in order to recover the primary drive and have had no issues what so ever while in it. It's completely stable and after more than a month of on and off use I'm fairly convinced it's a Windows 10 issue. Also the exact same symptoms are presenting themselves on two of my three computers which is making me feel less like its hardware failure and more to do with the OS/drivers. And since it's happened on some fairly clean installs I doubt its software related.

Specs:

Computer 1:

  • CPU: Core i7-4790K
  • Graphics: ASUS GeForce 770 GTX and EVGA GeForce 970
  • Audio: Onbaord Realtek ALC1150
  • Motherboard: ASUS Z87-Delude/Dual
  • Drives: Samsung Evo 850 500gb, Vertex 4 250gb, Vertex 3 250gb and a 3TB Seagate

Computer 2:

  • CPU: Core 2 Duo
  • Graphics: EVGA GeForce 560 TI
  • Audio: EVGA GeForce 560 TI
  • Motherboard: Asus P5N-D
  • Drives: Vertex 3 128gb

Computer 3 (which works fine):

  • Make: Dell XPS 8700
  • CPU: i7-4770
  • Graphics: GeForce GTX 650 TI
  • Motherboard: ??? OEM
  • Drives: Samsung Evo 840 256GB and 2TB Seagate Barracuda

Things I've tried:

  • Replaced my SSD (Vertex 4 256gb with Samsung Evo 850 500gb).
  • Replaced my Video Card (ASUS GeForce 770 to EVGA GeForce 970).
  • Unplugging fans, USB devices and peripherals to see if the problem was tied to power consumption/faulty hardware or devices to no avail.
  • Disabled devices in BIOS (such as thunderbolt and onboard nics).
  • Clean install of Windows 10 Pro (several times on both machines).
  • Installing Windows 10 Mother Board drivers manually via ASUS's website instead of relying on Windows Update. (Note: I did not disable driver installation via Windows Update)

Suspicion:

Its driver related, specifically one installed during a Windows Update. During the developer preview I had issues constantly with Windows replacing up to date drivers (mostly my NVIDIA drivers) with broken ones which forced me to reinstall them after every reboot, however the symptoms were usually less severe than this. I can't confirm that this is the current problem though as I don't know what driver's, if any, were installed prior to the problem during the update process or that it is really the update process to blame.

Also the only common hardware link that isn't, at least partially ruled out by the working machine, is that the Motherboard in both machines are manufactured by ASUS but are several generations removed. The fact that the graphics chips are made by NVIDIA is slightly suspicious, however, since the computer not presenting these symptoms also has an NVIDIA card it makes it seem less likely that that is the issue.

Finally

Any help resolving this would be appreciated. As it stands I think I may have to roll my computers that are presenting this issue to Windows 7, which isn't a huge issue really but I do like Windows 10 for its multiple desktops and quicker performance. Next I plan on reformatting and re-installing Windows 10 Pro tonight and disabling automatic driver installation from Windows Update (https://windowsinstructed.com/disable-automatic-device-driver-download-in-windows-10/). I'll have to wait and see if the issue crops back up since I'm shooting in the dark at this point.

Update 1

After the most recent hard reset my NTFS was corrupted and chkdsk was unable to correct all of the errors. I've re-installed Windows 10 and followed directions provided by L. J., however, I had an unexpected response from Windows Update when I did... Initially I installed Windows 10 but didn't configure the network to avoid a Windows Update before I got the configuration changed. I then did as suggested and disabled driver downloads via Windows Update and rebooted my computer before configuring my network for good measure. Then I checked for updates; low and behold among the first updates it installs are NVIDIA drivers. I double checked the configuration option and it was still set to not to install drivers via Windows Update. So I'm not confident that Windows 10 is staying true to that configuration option unfortunately. With luck display drivers may be the only drivers exempt from that option but we will shall see.

Update 2

It's been about a month and a half since this post so for anyone else experiencing this issue I'll provide an update.

My second computer, where I did not disable driver updates via Windows Update, started showing these same symptoms again a couple of weeks ago. As with my previous experience the problem is surfacing more and more often and is getting to the point where I feel I need to format again just so it's usable.

My first computer, where I did disable driver updates via Windows Update, has yet to show symptoms and, considering my past experience, I would have expected to see them by now.

So, until I start seeing symptoms on my first computer, I'm going to assume Windows Update installing bad drivers is indeed the culprit and I've went ahead and accepted L.J.'s answer as the solution.

3 Answers 3

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Your issue does seem quite mysterious, although I would suspect the problem to be driver-related. You could 'try and disable Windows Update's automatic install of drivers for a few days to see if the problem stops.

Right click the Start > System > On the left panel click "advanced system settings" > click on Hardware tab > Device installation settings > Select No, let me choose what to do, "Never install driver software from Windows update", leave the last box checked.

p.s. I used to an acer laptop and when upgrading from Win7 to Win8.1, acer didn't provide the win8.1 ati radeon drivers for my card and windows update was automatically installing the latest ones, which overrode my existing drivers leading to blue screens etc. I would have to perform the above, and then uninstall the new drivers and reinstall the old Windows 7 Acer provided graphics drivers again. Hope this helps.

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  • I think you're right. Unfortunately after my last hard reset the file system was corrupted and even after chkdsk corrected the errors the drive was unbootable.
    – Bradley
    Nov 5, 2015 at 14:46
  • I've reinstalled Windows 10 and followed your suggestion, however, it didn't seem to work as expected. See my update for the details.
    – Bradley
    Nov 5, 2015 at 15:00
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Before you go batty making changes that in the end yield no positive result try the following:

First look at the Windows log to see what happened when the computer crashed. If this yields no answer it probably isn't a software problem or a driver problem.

It is probably a power management problem. It would seem that Microsoft added CPU power management to the power management program in Windows 10. It seems that many processors are unhappy with the default 15% minimum power CPU setting.

Go into power management then into advanced settings. You should find a drop down box that allows you to manually adjust many parameters. Go to CPU and set minimum power to 100%. Maximum should be set to 100% by default but take a look to confirm. Apply the new setting. Hopefully that resolves the problem.

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Try to check the memory/RAM stats when Windows 10 freezes. There is an update that makes Windows consume 99% of your RAM.

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  • 3
    Hi Lordie, in your answer can you include your steps to 'check the stats' and what exactly we should be looking for. Thank you! Dec 29, 2015 at 0:37
  • Unfortunately it's impossible to check the memory or CPU usage as the computer becomes unresponsive when the problem arises. To answer projectdp's question. To see your memory/cpu usage hit Shift+Ctrl+Esc and click More Details. You'll be able to see the memory/cpu usage of each process and under the Performance tab you'll be able to see metrics on totaly CPU, Memory, Disk and Network usage.
    – Bradley
    Jan 5, 2016 at 18:31

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