My last hope was refreshing my PC which restores windows to the default state and only keeps personalization, it kept freezing randomly which made me really upset.

My graphics driver is up to date.

System info

Thanks Paul strok for your reply;

I have two HDDs, tried to update their drivers but it's already the best driver software for them.

Sometimes, the PC works fine for three continuous days with no problems & sometimes less than a day, all the temperatures are just fine and below average.

Hi,

Please, test your computer RAM. There may be a faulty RAM chip around.

Google for memtest86, you download the ISO, burn a CD and boot it.

It'll run an exhaustive memory test.

If it finds any error, you should think about replacing your computer's RAM

Thanks Sebastian, I ran memtest86 and it couldn't find any errors in the RAM.

The freezing happens VERY randomly, and I may have a full week powered on without freezing, but when it freezes, it's always very disappointing.

• Edited by MahmoudEzzat Monday, December 03, 2012 4:36 PM
• Marked as answer by MahmoudEzzat Tuesday, December 25, 2012 9:48 PM
• Unmarked as answer by MahmoudEzzat Tuesday, December 25, 2012 9:49 PM

Is a hard reboot necessary to recover this hang status?

Usually, a computer can appear to hang (stop responding) in the situations of insufficient system resources, high CPU usage, high disk usage, deadlock in kernel mode or key system processes, or hardware problem.

You can check if this hang issue usually hangs when high load, that may points to a resource issue, enable perfmon log to located which process caused that.

Regarding to the deadloack issue, based on my experience, most of these issues caused by the outdated driver, refer to the following action plans:

==========

1. upgrade all the hardware driver, firmware, BIOS.

2. upgrade the AV software.

3. Run disk check, if there is build-in hardware health Diagnostics Utility, also r

Thanks Kevin for your reply, I am not so sure about the meaning of hard reboot, but when it freezes, I have no option but to cut off the power. The freezing happens randomly independent on high loads on the resources, it sometimes happen when the computer is nearly idle with so little background processes. 

I believe my drivers are up to date, for now I think I can be sure it's a hardware problem, I ran memtest86 which indicated no errors, I ran disk check which requires no reboot ( from properties, tools, error checking), it found no errors, I use dskchk /r through cmd which scheduled a scan on reboot, so at reboot, it really took much time, so I slept & came over the next day to find it finished and already logged into windows but I actually couldn't find its results through event viewer.

hard reboot is the same meaning as manually cutting off the power. From your discription, it looks this issue caused by the hardware related issue.

You can backup your computer, and install a new OS to check if this unstable issue still occurs.

• Edited by MahmoudEzzat Thursday, December 06, 2012 7:27 PM

from the software level, it is hard to determine wich hardware problem caused the unstable issue, it is suggest to run the hardware daignostic tool to check if any hardware problems, or engage the hardware support to perform a hardware health check.

Before that, please go ahead to upgrade all the hardware firmware/BIOS/drivers, there are helpful for the hardware unstable issue.

Okay, through all the previous procedures and sugessions, I was led to believe it's a software problem then it changed to be hardware problem.

But wait, I've upgraded all the drivers & ran all hardware tests and diagnostics & nothing is bad there...

So my latest attempt is to have a clean install of windows, I did it, the computer ran for nearly a week with no trouble, so I assume it maybe solved by now.

I did mention before that I tried refreshing my PC, it didn't help and I really couldn't think of the difference between refreshing and having a clean install, but okay, it seems to be quite a difference, it's all better now.

Thanks to all of you guys.. even if it freezes again, I'll try to live with it and I'm considering this case closed :)

farewell

• Marked as answer by MahmoudEzzat Tuesday, December 25, 2012 9:48 PM

I have the exact problem! Works most of the time then randomly the PC just freezes. Mouse cursor moves but but nothing changes on the screen. I have noticed that the HDD drive light starts flashing at a slow and consistent rate soon as this happens.

I have a SanDisk SDSSDX120GG25 120GB drive currently on Firmware version R112. About to upgrade to R211 so fingers crossed!

Andrew

• Edited by Lyubo Delev Wednesday, January 09, 2013 11:58 AM

Same here.  I get random freezes.  Loss of mouse interactivity varies.  Sometimes you can launch Task Manager by right clicking in the SysTray of the classic Desktop.  I have hard disk light on, intensive disk activity, little or no CPU activity or RAM use.  If you Google or Bing "Windows 8 freezes" or "Windows 8 hangs," you will find lots of people experiencing this issue - and Microsoft is clueless!  Some of the threads suggest it's a problem with a network driver.  My computer is a 2009 Dell XPS-1340 laptop.  Dell has no interest in providing Windows 8-compatible drivers for a computer this old (that's still perfectly good).  You go to a site like NVidia, they advise you to get the drivers from Dell rather than use a generic NVidia driver because Dell system are often fairly customized.  For a while, I had a dual boot system, my old 64-bit Win7 and my new 64-bit Win8.  Only Win8 was freezing (still is).

Seems like another issue like upgrading from your existing Windows 7 install that's not going smoothly for many people and making Windows 8 into the new Vista with a bad rep.  Microsoft should solve its upgrading to Windows 8 and its Windows 8 freezing problems before it's too late

Freezing here too, just thought i'd leave a mark for MS. Some reports have been sent, but most my crashes didn't leave any report of why and what hapend. One is for sure, it's not system overload... as one word doc is not loading anythng that hard to freez it up.

For me it seams that it's related to internet connection, no difference if using IE or Mozilla, it occurred once with dropboxs, but that too has to do with internet connection, had turned wifi off at that time hoping to make it more stable. And when it happens it happens in bundles, 5 times in a row, then an unexpected running smooth will come (holding my breath like watching a horror movie).

I got Win8 Pro- 64bit, might that be the incompatibility that keeps crashing this thing, windows update utility check compatibility with the old system (ran it with 32 bit XP Pro, lappy was built for Vista 32 or 64bit) and would have downloaded win8 32 bit, I went against it and now I'm to deal with that unholy deeds backfire? NVidias (win8) driver from their site crashed it to looping startup, and forced to go back to restorepoint, so that has made me cautious of downloading any drivers, as the only ones I can get from HP site are for Win7, should I give them a go? I did install it on new (intel 330) SSD, firmware updated, had some Intels tool chek it, all seemed to be working right.

I may come out of the closet and say it out loud, I sincirely like Win8 and I want to keep using it, hoping badly this freeze thing to blow over!

I have the freezing problem with a brand new Dell XPS 12 - Windows 8 64 bit.   The problem seems to occur only with xbox games apps.

Machine is fully updated and satsifies all Dell diagnostic checks.  I agree that this is something MS need to resolve.

What if you do the following:

xperf -on latency -maxfile 256 -filemode circular

xperf -d trace.etl 
xperf trace.etl

Also, this suggestion looks good:

Hard system freezes (where you can't use hotkeys like CTRL+ALT+DEL) are caused by hanging drivers,
so you will have to either replace the device or update the driver. Troubleshooting can be done:

1. Download the setup from Windows Performance Analysis Tools for your Windows version.
2. Install the software on your system.

3. Open a command prompt as administrator, and copy paste the next command:

   xperf -start perf!GeneralProfiles.InBuffer && timeout -1 && xperf -stop perf!GeneralProfiles.InBuffer myTrace.etl
   

4. Press <kbd>ENTER</kbd> once to start the command, now you will have to wait till your system hangs.
   You can do whatever you want to. Please no heavy activity like gaming or private things...

5. Right after your system stops hanging you go to the console and press <kbd>ENTER</kbd>. 
6. After waiting some time a log file myTrace.etl will be produced, compress this to a zip file.
7. Put this compressed version of the file somewhere online (perhaps 2shared).
8. Share the link here, I will do an attempt to find and show you the cause of your problem.

Again Dell XPS 13 freezing.

Windows 8 64 Enterprise.

My guess is the SATA or video driver.

• Edited by dragos3 Friday, February 08, 2013 10:48 AM

I had the same problem! Now it is solved!!!! I have disabled dynamic tic. to do this follow this procedure

1. go to your start menu, then type cmd.exe and run it as administrator.

2. then type "bcdedit /set disabledynamictick yes"    without double quotation.

3. after it is done just make a restart. and you are done!!!

I have the same issue and also it seems to have something to do with the storage drivers (I have HDD). It only happens to me after leaving the computer idle for a while (random timings). If I leave an online streaming radio playing before it crashes it will continue playing in the background after it has crashed (it has a very small buffer so it is obviously downloading), the monitors will turn on but with a frozen lock screen (no date, time or notification icons) and both the mouse and keyboard will continue to be responsive but her comes the weird thing: no hard disk I/O on the main disk. This of course means that after the freeze every device is working but the main hard disk resulting in anything but what is already in memory being able to be loaded. Definitely this has something to do with storage. The HDD is perfect according to S.M.A.R.T. records and works perfectly with Windows 7 and other operating systems. Also the computer is more prone to have this behaviour after hibern

I have the same problems too.  3 week old 2000$ computer with  BSOD's and random crashes, kinda wish i had stayed with 7.  Win 8 has been a huge disappointment.  I guess MSFT are charging us the consumer, for their beta testing.  I still have a 7 license somewhere, it this keeps up, im done, keep my 16$ MSFT

I have the same problems too.  3 week old 2000$ computer with  BSOD's and random crashes, kinda wish i had stayed with 7.  Win 8 has been a huge disappointment.  I guess MSFT are charging us the consumer, for their beta testing.  I still have a 7 license somewhere, it this keeps up, im done, keep my 16$ MSFT

3 week old 2000$ computer

I guess MSFT are charging us the consumer, for their beta testing.

I have the same problems too.  3 week old 2000$ computer with  BSOD's and random crashes,

I am experiencing the same problem.

My system boots from SSD, data is on HDD. As long as I permanently use the system, it works fine. Whenever I stop working (start a time consuming upload or have dinner or breakfast, take a coffee break...) the system freezes. Moving the mouse works fine, clicking something does nothing (apps become 'not responding', buttons are pressed but not perfomed). After a few clicks, the system locks up but the mouse is still happily moving around. The only way out is power off.

Bios, drivers and firmwares are upgraded to the most recent versions.

Microsoft, solve this!

The same situation here. Windows 8 on Lenovo laptop with Kingston SSD disk drive soon after logon freezes and only mouse stays active.

Seems the ssd disk is causing the problems. After ssd firmware update the problem disappeared.

For that I had to open the laptop, take out the drive and attach it to another desktop computer. Then I had to keep resetting the drive to unfreeze the desktop system by reconnecting the power cable until I managed to backup some important data and to start the firmware update procedure. The FW update was very fast and the drive didn't hang during it neither after it anymore.

There was some bug in the firmware that was making it hang. The loaded in memory Wndows 8 was expecting some data to be exchanged with the drive at that time and to assure the process was freezing everything except the mouse.

First I tried to check the drive for bad sectors with MHDD and among many unsuccessful starts, finaly I got it checked to find it clean from bad sectors. Then I checked the RAM, also OK. Then I loaded external Windows PE from Hirens boot CD and discovered that it also freezes. Then I went with the firmware update.

Same issue 8.1 pro. What I discovered is when I would open up the games app after a reboot the last game played always seamed to be Microsoft taptiles (which I don't play that often). When I would check the Microsoft taptiles app amazingly it was active, booting up with restart I guess. I would close the app and things would appear to return to normal. Now for me I have just uninstalled the app & am having no problems so far. It may be a different app that is causing your problem? Apps trouble shooter did not find this problem, nor did any diagnostic features in windows. Scans of 16.0 GB ram and Standard hard drive came back OK. 

Hope This Helps

Good Luck