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I've been struggling with some very strange windows freeze for over a year now.

The Issue occurs once/twice a day, but if the system is idle, it may not happen for a week or so (but still freezes in the end).

First of all, it's a "hard" freeze, i.e. the system is totally unresponsive, keyboard, network, etc... everything is dead.

I've tried to generate a crash memory dump by enabling RightCtrl+2xScrLk combination (which works when the system is not frozen), and through PowerButton, but nothing works, so I can not debug it.

What's interesting about this freeze is that it "survived" total hardware upgrade (MB/CPU/GPU/RAM) and Windows 10->11 upgrade. I've tried to disconnect all external devices, disable drivers, but nothing helps.

Obviously I've been monitoring memory/cpu/logs, but there's nothing unusual there. At this point all I can think of is a total reinstall of everything, but given the amount of legacy software installed it'll be a very lengthy path.

I would appreciate any idea on how to investigate this.

DavidPostill
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Gena
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    Have you found something in the event viewer? – mashuptwice Feb 19 '22 at 09:50
  • The only other option, is to try and setup kernel debugging over say the Network or a Serial interface. You will need another computer. The hope being that you can break in and run .crash from the remote WinDbg to force the bugcheck. If you've setup the computer for an active/complete dump, then at least you have that. – HelpingHand Feb 19 '22 at 10:22
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    The only other time I've seen a computer freeze, but unable to force a bug-check with the keyboard/remote kernel debugger, was when a process was attempting to scan the memory of another process (audiodg.exe). The process being scanned had memory that was mapped to the audio device. This was very hardware specific, the on-board sound card specifically. Even using Task Manager to create a dump of the process caused the same issue. So it's you're really struggling, you could try dumping the process memory of each process with Task Manager to see if the hang occurs. – HelpingHand Feb 19 '22 at 10:30
  • @Gena It would be recommended to run hardware diagnostics (diagnostic utility is usually accessible via the BIOS/UEFI firmware settings or the BIOS/UEFI firmware boot options), and if it passes, it's more efficient to simply clean install Windows; it takes ~2.5hrs to reinstall Windows, install the requisite drivers, and reinstall software versus far longer to troubleshoot this type of issue. It's recommended to capture a WIM of the OS partition from WinPE prior to reinstalling via a clean install (Shift+F10 to access a terminal in WinPE) – JW0914 Feb 19 '22 at 14:08
  • There's nothing interesting in the even viewer. Once the freeze occurs the computer becomes totally unresponsive, including the network stack, so I doubt that remote debugger would work. – Gena Feb 19 '22 at 14:08
  • Attempt to dump process memory sounds interesting. I'll give it a try.. – Gena Feb 19 '22 at 14:08
  • Reinstall is always an option. My problem is the legacy software that can not be reinstalled. I do keep daily snapshots of windows partition with Acronis. – Gena Feb 19 '22 at 14:10
  • @Gena Daily snapshots aren't going to resolve the issue if it's been going on for a year (specific to Acronis, it's not uncommon for OS partition restores from their snapshots to not complete successfully). A hard freeze is usually a result of a hardware, driver, or malware issue. For legacy software, capturing a WIM of the OS partition is a full backup and you should be able to copy the files and registry settings from the WIM to the clean install (it may be trial and error to find all the files and registry keys, but if that fails, you can always restore the OS partition from the WIM) – JW0914 Feb 19 '22 at 14:23
  • Cont'd... Software will only install to: %ProgramFiles%, %ProgramFiles(x86)%, %ProgramData%, %AppData%, or %LocalAppData%. Program settings files are stored in: %ProgramData%, %AppData%, or %LocalAppData%. User-specific Registry keys are within Registry hive: %UserProfile%\ntuser.dat, whereas system-wide software keys are stored within hives in %WinDir%\System32\config: DEFAULT, drivers, SOFTWARE, SYSTEM (it would be more efficient to export the Registry hives prior to clean installing versus trying to mount the hives within %WinDir%\System32\config) – JW0914 Feb 19 '22 at 14:37
  • Just tried to dump memory of all running processes, one by one, and there was no freeze. Guess I'll have to reinstall everything after all. – Gena Feb 20 '22 at 09:37
  • Today suddenly received BSOD CLOCK_WATCHDOG_TIMEOUT, and I believe it's related to the freezes. Here's the debug link . Looks like USB devices are somehow causing this... – Gena Feb 23 '22 at 07:40

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