[SOLVED] Random freezing of system for a few seconds

[shmu26]

I am experiencing random system freezing, for a few seconds at a time, it does not seem connected to a specific program or task. This has been going on for years, and I have reinstalled Windows in the meantime, but the issue persists. It can happen a few times an hour, and it can happen every few hours. Very unpredictable.
I tried leaving Windows task manager open on a second monitor, so I could see what is happening during freezes, but I was not able to detect anything unusual.
I am running Windows 10 Pro 1909 x64
CPU is i5 6500, hard disk is Crucial SSD, 8 gb RAM.
I run only light programs such as browsers, MS Office apps, music players, Dropbox, etc.
My AV is Windows Defender.

 

[shmu26]

Bump

 

[shmu26]

It seems that it was a disk access issue, Windows was thrashing the disk, but I couldn't see it on the task manager because the task manager itself was frozen.
I applied the two fixes mentioned here
https://www.dell.com/support/articl...isk-utilization-with-msi-mode-enabled?lang=en
and it seems like this issue is behind me now.
The first fix addresses a known issue with Advanced Host Controller Interface .
After applying the recommended registry hack, the next freeze I got was very short.
Then I applied the recommended workaround, which sets a fixed, large size for the page file. Since then, I have not seen random system freezes!