Question Windows 7 freezes ~10 mins after startup

[cosmic_beast]

Hi everyone

I've been having an issue with my PC for the past couple of months. It starts up normally, but after around 10 minutes (this varies from 5 to around 15 minutes) it freezes up and becomes completely unresponsive. The only thing that works is to restart it using the Power On/Off button, after which it will freeze again. It runs fine in Safe Mode. I've already run CHKDSK on all drives and it came back clean.

The PC specs are:
Operating System
Windows 7 Professional 64-bit SP1
CPU
Intel Core i7 2600K @ 3.40GHz 43 °C
Sandy Bridge 32nm Technology
RAM
16.0GB Dual-Channel DDR3 @ 798MHz (9-9-9-24)
Motherboard
Intel Corporation DP67BG (CPU 1) 38 °C
Graphics
DELL U2211H (1920x1080@60Hz)
1023MB NVIDIA GeForce GTX 550 Ti (CardExpert Technology) 39 °C
Storage
111GB INTEL SSDSA2CW120G3 (SATA (SSD))
1863GB Volume0 (RAID )
Optical Drives
Optiarc DVD RW AD-7280S
Audio
High Definition Audio Device

Any help would be greatly appreciated!

 

[PC Tailor]

Have you also run:

• SFC/ Scannow
• DISM /Online /Cleanup-Image /RestoreHealth

in an elevated command prompt?

Slow downs can be a multitude of things from software to hardware. It's a case of eliminating the causes, if the slow down doesn't occur in safe mode, it's more likely to be a third party driver loading up that's causing the issue.

Rather than just safe mode, perform a clean boot and see if the issue persists see how to here:
https://support.microsoft.com/en-gb/help/929135/how-to-perform-a-clean-boot-in-windows

 

[cosmic_beast]

The computer does not recognise the DISM command.

The SFC/scannow comes back saying it 'found corrupt files but was unable to fix some of them'.

I've looked at the article about performing a clean boot, and it says it could make the computer unusable. How likely is this to happen? I don't want to do something that would break the computer completely!

 

[PC Tailor]

I've looked at the article about performing a clean boot, and it says it could make the computer unusable. How likely is this to happen? I don't want to do something that would break the computer completely!

It's not a likelihood thing - all Clean Boot is disables all third party services from starting up but otherwise Windows operates normally. It's saying if you have some network security in place (I.e. in a workplace where there is an admin putting in policies on your network) then some may cause conflict as the network policy may misbehave with the boot configuration.

I've never experienced a clean boot that has made a PC unusable. All it's doing is preventing third party softwares from starting when you login. Then you can revert it in a couple button presses.

HOWEVER, the SFC finding errors but being unable to fix them is another matter. That's suggesting you've got core OS file corruption somewhere, the fact that you're on W10 means you can't run the DISM which would otherwise rectify it.

i know they backported scan health so try:

• DISM /Online /Cleanup-Image /ScanHealth

If this cannot operate then you may need to perform a system restore or OS repair as the corrupt files could certainly be the cause to the freezes - no guarantee there, but could be.