Windows 10 or 11 keeps "freezing" while using it

[High___SKY]

Hi everyone,

 

Yesterday I made a post about needing advice buying a second hand laptop, and the "Asus Zephyrus G14" was the one I went with.

The laptop is in good shape. I ran "Crystal Disk Info" & "Crystal Disk Mark", "HW monitor" to check the temps while running the "PowerMAX" CPU and GPU from "CPUID".

 

All tests ran good. After I bought it and came home, I've made a windows 10 media installation tool on my USB using another PC to format and install windows 10 instead of the 11 it came with.

The installation ran fine, booted into windows and everything still ran fine. I used a USB to copy over the WiFi/ network drivers and installed them, after which I let windows updater do it's thing and install all the other drivers..etc.

 

Once that has finished, I went into the windows apps and started deleting all the pre-loaded apps windows comes with (One drive, Outlook...etc)

After that I've installed Chrome & "Geforce Experience" and downloaded and installed the latest drivers.

 

This is when the problem starts happening, this laptop has the "Armory Crate" button, when pressed it asks you to install "armory crate" (takes you to ASUS), after downloading and unzipping, it installs via the Microsoft Store.

I've never had it actually install because of the freezing issue (more on the issue later), after hard shutting down and powering it on again, everything runs fine. I've tried deleting the AMD software thinking maybe it is causing

the issue (nope), I tried deleting all apps/ files associating with Armory Crate (nope).

 

The issue is that after powering on the laptop, booting into the desktop. About 5-12 minutes in is when the "freeze" happens. By "freeze" I mean the mouse nor keyboard work but the keyboard is still lit + the monitor is showing picture. And it does not "unfreeze", the only way out is just to hold the power button and force it to shut-down.

 

After a lot of back and fourth and googling "solutions" nothing worked and I made a new media tool but this time with windows 11 on it.

And again after all the drivers and stuff, the "freezing" problem appears again.

 

How do I find out what is at fault here? Is it software, hardware?

 

My first suspicion was "Amd Radeon" then "Armory Crate" then "Nvidia Geforce" then "File explorer" and now I'm thinking maybe it's some other software related issue.

I can provide any type of screenshots, videos or do any tests...etc. Please help me with any advice you might have.

 

(I'm currently running MemTest86, just finished the first pass, onto the second one with zero errors, so I don't think it's a memory issue, I really don't think it's a hardware issue.)

 

SPECS:

 

asus rog zephyrus g14 ga401qh-211.zg14bl

 

Ryzen 7 5800HS

GTX 1650

16Gb ddr4 running at 3200MT/s (dual channel)

1tb nvme pcie 3.0 (kingston but not sure)

 

[Tetras]

6 minutes ago, High___SKY said:

This is when the problem starts happening, this laptop has the "Armory Crate" button, when pressed it asks you to install "armory crate" (takes you to ASUS), after downloading and unzipping, it installs via the Microsoft Store.

I've never had it actually install because of the freezing issue (more on the issue later), after hard shutting down and powering it on again, everything runs fine. I've tried deleting the AMD software thinking maybe it is causing

the issue (nope), I tried deleting all apps/ files associating with Armory Crate (nope).

Afaik armory crate has to be disabled in the BIOS or it will keep trying to reinstall itself, but if you have that option with a laptop, I don't know.

[High___SKY]

There a no "yellow !" on any device in "device manager", BIOS is updated to the latest version.

There are no other "system updates or driver updates". When I was testing the laptop at the guy who I bought it from the laptop ran fine.

This whole freezing problem started after I formatted and installed a fresh copy of Win 10. I'm thinking driver issues but how do I find out what driver exactly?

 

Do I just re-install windows 11 again? But the "windows updater will install everything again and I'm probably going to end up with the same problem, the 3rd time now.

[High___SKY]

3 minutes ago, Tetras said:

Afaik armory crate has to be disabled in the BIOS or it will keep trying to reinstall itself, but if you have that option with a laptop, I don't know.

The only thing it let me disable in the BIOS was the start-up sound for the ROG logo, but there was nothing like you mentioned...

[nether1234]

Am I reading that correctly? Do you have Radeon software installed with an Nvidia card?

[PDifolco]

24 minutes ago, High___SKY said:

Hi everyone,

 

Yesterday I made a post about needing advice buying a second hand laptop, and the "Asus Zephyrus G14" was the one I went with.

The laptop is in good shape. I ran "Crystal Disk Info" & "Crystal Disk Mark", "HW monitor" to check the temps while running the "PowerMAX" CPU and GPU from "CPUID".

 

All tests ran good. After I bought it and came home, I've made a windows 10 media installation tool on my USB using another PC to format and install windows 10 instead of the 11 it came with.

The installation ran fine, booted into windows and everything still ran fine. I used a USB to copy over the WiFi/ network drivers and installed them, after which I let windows updater do it's thing and install all the other drivers..etc.

 

Once that has finished, I went into the windows apps and started deleting all the pre-loaded apps windows comes with (One drive, Outlook...etc)

After that I've installed Chrome & "Geforce Experience" and downloaded and installed the latest drivers.

 

This is when the problem starts happening, this laptop has the "Armory Crate" button, when pressed it asks you to install "armory crate" (takes you to ASUS), after downloading and unzipping, it installs via the Microsoft Store.

I've never had it actually install because of the freezing issue (more on the issue later), after hard shutting down and powering it on again, everything runs fine. I've tried deleting the AMD software thinking maybe it is causing

the issue (nope), I tried deleting all apps/ files associating with Armory Crate (nope).

 

The issue is that after powering on the laptop, booting into the desktop. About 5-12 minutes in is when the "freeze" happens. By "freeze" I mean the mouse nor keyboard work but the keyboard is still lit + the monitor is showing picture. And it does not "unfreeze", the only way out is just to hold the power button and force it to shut-down.

 

After a lot of back and fourth and googling "solutions" nothing worked and I made a new media tool but this time with windows 11 on it.

And again after all the drivers and stuff, the "freezing" problem appears again.

 

How do I find out what is at fault here? Is it software, hardware?

 

My first suspicion was "Amd Radeon" then "Armory Crate" then "Nvidia Geforce" then "File explorer" and now I'm thinking maybe it's some other software related issue.

I can provide any type of screenshots, videos or do any tests...etc. Please help me with any advice you might have.

 

(I'm currently running MemTest86, just finished the first pass, onto the second one with zero errors, so I don't think it's a memory issue, I really don't think it's a hardware issue.)

 

SPECS:

 

asus rog zephyrus g14 ga401qh-211.zg14bl

 

Ryzen 7 5800HS

GTX 1650

16Gb ddr4 running at 3200MT/s (dual channel)

1tb nvme pcie 3.0 (kingston but not sure)

 

 

I'm puzzled here when you say

"Amd Radeon" then "Armory Crate" then "Nvidia Geforce"  ??? WTF ? NEVER install AMD and NVidia drivers, only the one for the GPU you have !!!

And NEVER install Armory Crap, disable it in BIOS

[High___SKY]

6 minutes ago, nether1234 said:

Am I reading that correctly? Do you have Radeon software installed with an Nvidia card?

Yeah, I guess windows update installs it automaticlly with all the other drivers because the ryzen CPU has on-board graphics. Also on the Asus' drivers for this model they also provide a link to download the software. But I've deleted it anyway. The problem still happens with or without the software installed.

 

There is currently a few background processes that run with AMD in the name:

 

AMD crash defender service

AMD external Events client module

AMD external events service module

[High___SKY]

1 minute ago, PDifolco said:

 

I'm puzzled here when you say

"Amd Radeon" then "Armory Crate" then "Nvidia Geforce"  ??? WTF ? NEVER install AMD and NVidia drivers, only the one for the GPU you have !!!

And NEVER install Armory Crap, disable it in BIOS

Windows installs it automatically and ASUS also recommends to install it. But again the problem happens with or without the AMD software.

I have armory crate on my ROG Strix G15 and it runs fine, I like using the software for fan control (silent, performance, turbo).