Windows 10 Question

[Hawaii Hiker]

Sometimes when on the computer, it will just freeze (using Windows 10), then i forced to shut it off the old fashioned way, turn the power surge button off/on....I know of no other way to deal w/a computer freeze.....Can't figure out why it happens, computer is only 2 years old (i bought a faster computer this time 8GB), and Windows 10 has updates often so I'm always led to believe these updates fix whatever glitches, but they don't...

Anyone else having this similar issue w/their Windows 10?

[rock]

1. Are you browsing the Web at the time this happens?

How long do you wait to see that the freeze is "permanent"?

[bitterross]

2. I do software support for a living - Hate Win 10

I provide customer support for a widely used project management and accounting software package. We have more problems with Win 10 and its constant updates than with Win 7. It seems to crash parts of our software randomly across our customer base.

As for the freezing up issue you describe, I do not see that in our installed base or on my own personal laptop.

It would be helpful to know what you are doing at the time the machine freezes. Are you surfing the web? Streaming videos, playing games, using Word/Excel?


The problem very well could have to do with the software you are running at the time the machine freezes. Is it up to date? Is it supported on Windows 10? Not everything that you were running on Win7 is actually supported on Win 10.

[Hawaii Hiker]

4. I don't play any video games, and don't use Word/Excel

Now sometimes i have a bunch of tabs open at one time, and I do watch alot of things from You Tube?....Also, I've watched some movies (mostly older movies) on the computer, but its never froze while watching a movie....

Most time it freezes with no rhyme or reason....

I got my current computer in summer 2015, can't remember when Windows 10 took over the Windows 7....

[MuseRider]

3. It is interesting.

Some people have a lot of trouble with 10. It has worked better for me than any of them before and I am an idiot on this box.

[demmiblue]

5. Every once in a while when I am on the internet...

my computer freezes momentarily and then is slow as molasses.

I have go to the task manager to end my connection to Firefox (memory is at 99%).

My computer is much older than yours, though.

[blogslut]

6. Probably all those damned updates.

I had it for a while on a tablet but I stopped using that tablet. As I recall, you can't stop it from updating but you can set it so that you can choose when to update.

[Fla Dem]

7. What I founf with W10 is it won't let me use Google Chrome as a web browser.

I always used google chrome as my web browser, but since a few windows updates ago, whenever I try to use it, it ends up freezing on me. Have no problem using Windows Explorer. I think there was something in the updates that affects google chrome. They want us to only use Win explorer.

[mythology]

9. I have two instances of Chrome open (for different profiles) and haven't had any issues.

[left-of-center2012]

8. Had a similar issue with Firefox browser

Finally switched to Chrome and am 'loving it'.

[tandem5]

10. Does the mouse arrow freeze too?

[Hawaii Hiker]

11. Yes

[tandem5]

12. What you're describing is indicative of a hardware issue...

At the very least it's indicative that you need to rule that possibility out before you waste time looking for a software solution. Computers can fail for a lot of reasons regardless of age. Hardware problems can be very intermittent and fleeting under normal use and so you can get a false sense that a problem is resolved with a setting change or driver update only to have it return again later. There are some alternate courses of action depending on if you have a notebook or desktop, but common to both and probably the most essential is stress testing. You need to use a program like memtest or prime95 to try to force a hardware failure. If either of these programs report errors or cause a freeze or random restart this will be confirmation of hardware instability. You need to let these programs run for hours to get an accurate assessment. In the case of memtest, let it perform 2-3 full tests.

If everything checks out then you can be fairly assured that there's a software issue or software/hardware incompatibility. If these tests do force an error there are a number of things you can do to isolate and identify the hardware. If you're uncomfortable or unfamiliar with working with computer hardware, you'll have taken a considerable step in helping a professional repair person get to the root of the problem.