Question Windows freezing once a day (during writing/buffering?) I'm stumped. Help.

[Mugsy]

About once a day, Windows will suddenly "freeze" so badly even an Alt+Ctrl+Del won't work. I must hit the Reset button & reboot.

It happens most frequently when I'm watching Live TV on my PC, but it has also happened while playing an audio podcast or simply loading a website (making me think it's a disk write/buffering issue.)

I'll be watching TV when suddenly the last second of video starts looping over & over. I can't close the window, run anything else, or even open the Start Menu (mouse still works, but that's it.) The 3-finger salute has no effect. My only resort is to hit the Reset button & Reboot.

The problem does NOT occur when running Linux (dual-boot Win11/Ubuntu), suggesting a driver issue. But I haven't installed a new driver in over a year (and Windows hasn't successfully completed an update in over a month, so that probably isn't it.)

I even tried a BIOS update but it didn't help (natch since Linux is unaffected.) I'm stumped.

Any ideas? TIA.

 

[Lutfij]

I'd open up Device Manager and see if anything is flagged with a yellow exclamation mark. You might want to also see if your motherboard BIOS is pending an update.

 

[Mugsy]

Thx for the reply.

The driver for my old BluRay burner (yes, I have one still in my PC) seems to be disabled, but that shouldn't have any impact on this issue (I haven't used in in so long I didn't even realize it wasn't working.)

New wrinkle: I was just watching some Live TV when it happened again. But this time, I was recording in the background and the crash didn't occur until I tried watching it. The (one hour) program was nearly over and I was watching the last 20 minutes when the computer suddenly crashed.

I rebooted and checked the video. The recording was fine all the way to the end (up to where I had to reboot). I don't know if the crash was triggered by my watching the video, or the recording failed towards the end, but it's interesting that it didn't crash until I started watching it (after about 5 minutes.)

I'm more apt to suspect the problem is audio related than video, since it crashed once while playing an audio podcast. (I use the RealTek on board audio and have never had a problem before. Nothing flagged on the driver and no updates in years.)

Any ideas?

 

[Mugsy]

I'd open up Device Manager and see if anything is flagged with a yellow exclamation mark. You might want to also see if your motherboard BIOS is pending an update.

More info. I just noticed in the DevMgr an entry for "Other Devices" with a "?" on it. One of the entries is "Microsoft GS Wavetable Synth". (I tried deleting the entries and rebooting, but they just came right back.)