Windows 10 Becoming Unresponsive

[Astandane]

Hello everyone,

I'm here trying to address an old and in-depth issue I'm having with my computer, my set up being as follows:

Packard Bell iXtreme
Windows 10 Pro
Intel Quad Core 2 @ 2.5GHz
4GB DDR2 RAM-Under a month old
750W Supernova PSU
Nvidia GTX 460
HDD 1 with System Files is 250GB Seagate.
HDD 2 is original system disk, formatted for general storage, Western Digital of around 500GB

My PC is around 5 years old. Sometime back I started having issues with Windows 7 becoming unresponsive to the point where no programs would respond. The PC 'worked' but nothing would start...well one or two programs such as Chrome might. If I had a game up already, it would continue to run.

I initially thought my HDD was the problem and asked a friend to supply me with an old second hand one. He installed Windows 8.1 on for me as I had prematurely formatted my original HDD and was unable to recover my genuine copy of Windows 7.

Throughout this time, I believe I still had the issue. I upgraded to Windows 10 some months back and the issue still persisted.

I replaced the RAM a month ago as this had failed completely and the issue seemed to improve, however I am now back to square one.

For example:

My PC has been running for about an hour, where I was downloading pictures to sort them out into folders for coursework. I took a break to have lunch, and came back around 30 minutes ago. The file explorer window I have open now no longer refreshes automatically when I download a file into it, nor does the system respond when I ask to create a new folder.

I have also had trouble installing updates and new software, such as Java releases. The error for this in particular was that an installer was already running-there should not have been.

My PC has no issue, to my knowledge, of over-heating, and I have run numerous diagnostic tools such as Glary Utilities. There appears to be no serious issues I can identify.

Further, the PC will NOT shut down. The shutdown screen will appear, and it will remain 'shutting down' for eternity. I have tried disabling quick start and a Verbose command in the file directory but to no avail.

At this point, task manager will not open. There is also no HDD activity that I can hear audibly, as one would expect both upon opening a program or during shut down, except for the odd brief flash of disk activity every now and then.

I am desperate for a solution now, please help!

Jon.

 

[Lutfij]

At this point with your hardware and the age of the rig, I'd suggest not to drop any more money into it as the eventuality if it came to be would be that the cost of replacing each and every part spec for spec right now would almost equate to a new current gen systembuild. The second suggestion would be to re-install your copy of Windows 7 and then proceed to install Windows 10 via the upgrade. I assumed it was via the upgrade path as you've stated in your post above. Third suggestion would be to see if you have driver updates for your system off of their support site inclusive of any BIOS updates that might have been needed at the time for Windows 7 and while you're around downloading/updating drivers for your devices look into Nvidia's download site for their latest drivers prior to moving onto 10. You can try and install Windows 10 from scratch and use your WIndows 7 activation key during installation to move onto the next step.

As is, If you can manage to get into OS without much complications then try and perform a repair install and see if the issue is ironed out. I must also ask, that Packard bell system doesn't look like its been that way since purchase...did you add on hardware while you were on Windows 10?

 

[Astandane]

Thanks for the reply I will get on with the options you have listed.

As for adding hardware, I only ever replaced an older PSU and the RAM as I mentioned in my post. In short, there hasn't been anything new added to my PC during the time Windows 10 has been installed, and I'm unaware of having the issue when upgrading graphics cards in the past.