Windows 10 random freezing; have to hard reset

[Cla55clown]

About a month ago my desktop computer [windows] started freezing randomly with the spinning blue circle and mouse clicks not doing anything. The mouse cursor remains functional. Ctl-Alt-Delete does nothing and the only way to get out is to hold the power button and do a hard reset. Boots up fine and works normally...until it happens again randomly and I repeat the cycle. I'm not getting any error messages or blue screens or anything.

I'm running Windows 10 64-bit OS with a dedicated AMD Radeon graphics card and a intel i5 CPU.

Any help would be appreciated as this is getting pretty annoying.

 

[Jasjar]

http://appuals.com/windows-10-freezes-randomly/

 

[Cla55clown]

http://appuals.com/windows-10-freezes-randomly/

Thanks, I checked out the guide you linked and it had a lot of useful information. Tried a few including updating my Asus BIOS version since I discovered it was about 10 versions outdated! I also turned location services off in Windows. Seems to have stopped the freezing for now.

Thought I was gonna have to revert back to Windows 7 to get rid of this.

 

[Cla55clown]

Crap, did it again with the infinite spinning blue circle. Had to hard reset. Any other suggestions? My computer was literally running flawless a month ago on the same windows 10 software.

 

[Jasjar]

http://windowsreport.com/random-freeze-windows-10/

 

[Cleitus]

I have been given a ASUS, Q551LN Laptop to fix. It that has been locking up, or freezing. The interesting thing it is not like most hangs as the mouse moves, windows explorer is still working but no new applications can be opened. Before I saw this type of freezing issue I assumed it was a overheating or hard drive issue.
I finally got it to boot to safe mode after skipping the chkdsk operation; I saw that it would run great in safe mode; no crash/freeze.
I ran Seatools on the hard drive - passed.
I ran SFC /SCANNOW, no problems or missing Windows files.
I had read many forums indicating that this could be a driver issue after upgrading to Windows 10.
I reinstall all drivers with current OEM drivers; still freezing.
I restored OS, no luck.
I reset windows back to windows 8.1; still freezes during OS install setup.
I did not install updates and was able to get to the desktop before it froze.
I checked box in MSCONFIG for base video, restarted and windows runs fine, NO FREEZING!!!!!

At this point, I am starting to realize it is display adapter problem. This particular ASUS has a Ge-force 840M and Intel integrated graphics as well; hmm. I searched the forums for GPU problems most did not apply but fortunately the topic of one thread was about games freezing randomly due to problems with NVIDIA GPU's. One post indicated that settings for NVIDIA Physx could be the problem.

I check the NVIDIA control panel and found that Physx was using the integrated GPU by default.
I changed this setting to use the Ge-Force GPU. Laptop FROZE.
I decided to disable Intel(R) HD Graphics Family completely through the device manager(in Safe Mode).
I change BIOS settings to only use minimal memory for integrated graphics. (32MB)

Rebooted laptop and everything is working great! No Crash, No Freeze, No partial hang.
The lesson I learned and will hopefully help others is to:
Determine what type of hang the computer is experiencing. If mouse moves but no HD activity and no new windows will open check the Display Adapters/GPU software settings.

Physx and 3D settings along with the upgrade to windows 10 contributed to this problem. I'm not sure what the long term fix should be but hopefully this post saves someone else the days I've worked on this.