i'm trying to repair my friend laptop. after powering it on

it freezes within a couple minutes. mouse moves but that is it.

i have looked at so many blogs and tried several thing to resolve

the issue nothing i do seems to help.

Windows 8.1

Hi Hawk,

Could we logon the machine now? Have you made any modifications to the machine before the issue? Which step will the machine freeze in, the Windows logo, logon screen, the desktop?

We can unplug all the external devices to have a check.

To troubleshoot whether this issue is caused by the third party service, we can perform a clean boot to have a troubleshoot.
How to perform a clean boot in Windows
https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/kb/929135
If the issue disappared in clean boot, we can enable the serivce one by one to find out the culprit.

We also can try to logon with another account or create a new one to verify whether this issue only occurred with the specific account.

To troubleshoot this issue deeply, please check the Event Viewer for any error or warning information.

Event Viewer\Windows Logs\Application, System ,Security

Best regards