Windows "softlocks"

[TheHaezaert]

So for a couple of months i've had this problem that after a random amount of time windows just seems to go into a bugged state, no programs function anymore, i can't start or close anything. I can't even shut down the computer, I can't choose shutdown on the start menu and even pressing the physical power button doesn't do anything. It always ends up in having to force shutdown.

I have reinstalled windows 10 with every driver 2 times already. Last time i did that was 3 weeks ago. I didn't have a single issue for 2 weeks, but this monday it happened again. The only special thing i did that monday was installing ms teams because i need that for school. Which made me believe that ms teams somehow was the problem. I uninstalled it and today it happened again ... I now recovered my pc to a version from a week ago hoping it would fix it.

I don't really think it's a hardware related issue since i had no problems for a couple of weeks and my pc doesn't actually "crash" and windows still reponds to my mouse and keyboard input. Does anyone know what might cause it?

[SignatureSigner]

Could be a bad drive? Just guessing. 

The second thing to try is seeing if it's a problem that comes up after 2 certain programs are installed as one being installed could cause the other one to 'soft lock' the system.

Just some guesses!

[Husky]

As @SignatureSigner above said, it might be a bad drive. I had a friend who had a damaged SSD witness the same behavior. I would start by trying to use Windows from a different drive.

 

One other thing it could be is bad RAM, I would run memtest86 for at least an hour and check if there are any memory errors.

[Dudis]

I had a similar experience once with a bad drive in my system. Wasnt even the C drive, but some old HDD i had in there, that caused it. 

[TheHaezaert]

That's weird how would a secondary hard drive be able to affect windows?

[TheHaezaert]

18 hours ago, Husky said:

As @SignatureSigner above said, it might be a bad drive. I had a friend who had a damaged SSD witness the same behavior. I would start by trying to use Windows from a different drive.

 

One other thing it could be is bad RAM, I would run memtest86 for at least an hour and check if there are any memory errors.

So i did memtest yesterday with no errors, which is good, just gotta get my hands on a second drive to try and see if i get the same problem. Thanks for the help

[Husky]

2 hours ago, TheHaezaert said:

That's weird how would a secondary hard drive be able to affect windows?

Yes, Windows does this weird thing where the entire system locks up if it can't access a disk for some reason, even if it isn't the disk that Windows is installed to. For example, if I plug in a damaged USB flash drive into my system, Windows locks up, and nothing works when I click on things, as soon as I unplug the faulty USB drive, Windows suddenly opens everything I've clicked on and everything is back to normal.

[Husky]

2 hours ago, TheHaezaert said:

So i did memtest yesterday with no errors, which is good, just gotta get my hands on a second drive to try and see if i get the same problem. Thanks for the help

OK that's great, hopefully it's just a drive because they aren't too expensive compared to some other components in a PC.