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Solved Random freezes and programs not responding, including task manager and windows explorer

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Since about yesterday my laptop started randomly freezing during ordinary use (no demanding things). On top of these freezes, programs start not responding (e.g. google chrome or steam). Often, when I then open the task manager to shut the programs down, task manager takes AGES to start up, and when I try to use it, it stops responding itself! I was able to check for any excessive memory or disk usage, but it showed nothing out of the ordinary. One thing that struck me was that the desktop would often turn completely black (displaying zero shortcut icons, just completely black) when I would switch over from e.g. chrome to the desktop, only to return to normal after some while. Windows explorer itself is also very slow during these lag episodes, almost unusable even.

When this happened I had to shut down my laptop manually, because eventually simply nothing responds anymore. After a reboot everything seems to be OK, but it just happened again so it was not a one-time thing. Is this a windows-related problem? Maybe it is related to hardware (one of my disks)? Any advice / suggestions on what to do would be really helpful.

Vaad.
 
Welcome to PCHF Vaad,

Download then run Speccy (free) and post the resultant url for us, details here, this will provide us with information about your computer hardware + any software that you have installed that may explain the present issue/s.

To publish a Speccy profile to the Web:

In Speccy, click File, and then click Publish Snapshot.

In the Publish Snapshot dialog box, click Yes to enable Speccy to proceed.

Speccy publishes the profile and displays a second Publish Snapshot. You can open the URL in your default browser, copy it to the clipboard, or close the dialog box.
 
Spotted two issues in Speccy straight away, one an easy fix the other will take you some time to sort out.

Power Profile
Active power scheme: Gebalanceerd You need to change this to High Performance in the Windows Power Plan or your notebooks GTX 1050 will not get the extra power that it needs.

Windows is well out of date and while it is your are wasting your time with troubleshooting and for the reasons explained below regarding being low on free storage space on the C: partition where Windows lives.

Partition 2
Partition ID: Disk #0, Partition #2
Disk Letter: C:
File System: NTFS
Volume Serial Number: 4EDC58FC
Size: 117 GB
Used Space: 103 GB (87%)
Free Space: 14,8 GB (13%

For Windows to be able to run efficiently and to be able to update you need to have between 20 and 25% of the partition or drive available as free storage space at all times, if you don`t you risk Windows becoming corrupt or not being able to update which puts you at risk of malware attack.

Data only storage devices should not be allowed to get any lower than 10% of free storage space of the full capacity of the drive/partition on the drive, this also to avoid data corruption.

Please note that storage devices can physically fail if the amount of free storage space is allowed to drop below the required 10 or 20/25% minimum.

Uninstall as many unused programs, games, videos and music files as you can and get yourself another means of backing up to, post back when you have between 20 and 25% free storage on the C: drive/partition and we can go from there.

Going offline now but will be back in the morning UK time.
 
I freed up a large portion of my C drive, (my bin alone had around 6GB of junk) and haven't had any issues since! I'm definitely gonna keep that 25% free from now on. Thank you very much! You may mark it as solved.
 
Glad we could help and thanks for the follow up Vaad (y)

Final nag from me, make sure that you create a new system restore point now that the computer is running stable.
 
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