New Laptop Freezing Completely

N

NathanBurley772

New member
Hi All,

Bought a new laptop at the end of July. Not used it a lot yet but it's been fine for the most part. Over the last couple of days though it's started freezing completely (CTRL+ALT+DEL won't work, no response from mouse or the power button etc. It's a hard reboot or nothing). It does it whether I'm in a game or just using the web, python programming etc. So it doesn't seem to be based on the system working hard. I've got it in silent mode but I'm never pushing it hard. Most times when I check the temperatures they're below 60. If I am pushing it I put it in proper fan mode and it sounds like a jet taking off. So, I also don't think it's temperature based.

...any ideas? Is this an Intel 13 / 14th gen chip issue?

Cheers,

Nathan

Chassis & Display
Defiance Series: 16" Matte QHD+ 240Hz sRGB 100% LED Widescreen (2560 x 1600)
Processor (CPU)
Intel® Core™ i7 16 Core Processor 14650HX (5.2GHz Turbo)
Memory (RAM)
16GB PCS PRO SODIMM DDR5 4800MHz (1 x 16GB)
Graphics Card
NVIDIA® GeForce® RTX 4060 - 8.0GB GDDR6 Video RAM - DirectX® 12.1
1st M.2 SSD Drive
1TB SOLIDIGM P41+ GEN 4 M.2 NVMe PCIe SSD (up to 4125MB/sR, 2950MB/sW)
AC Adaptor
1 x 230W AC Adaptor
Power Cable
1 x 1.5 Metre Cloverleaf UK Power Cable
Battery
1 x Defiance Battery 54WH
Thermal Paste
ARCTIC MX-4 EXTREME THERMAL CONDUCTIVITY COMPOUND
Sound Card
2 Channel High Definition Audio + MIC/Headphone Jack
Wireless Network Card
GIGABIT LAN & WIRELESS INTEL® Wi-Fi 6E AX211 + BT 5.3
USB/Thunderbolt Options
2 x USB 3.2 PORTS (Type C) + 2 x USB 3.2 PORTS
Keyboard Language
DEFIANCE MULTI COLOUR BACKLIT UK KEYBOARD
Operating System
Windows 11 Home 64 Bit - inc. Single Licence
Operating System Language
United Kingdom - English Language
Windows Recovery Media
Windows 10/11 Multi-Language Recovery Image - Unlimited Downloads from Online Account
Office Software
FREE 30 Day Trial of Microsoft 365® (Operating System Required)
Anti-Virus
NO ANTI-VIRUS SOFTWARE
Browser
Microsoft® Edge
Keyboard & Mouse
INTEGRATED 2 BUTTON TOUCHPAD MOUSE
Webcam
INTEGRATED 2.0 MP FULL HD WEBCAM
Warranty
3 Year Standard Warranty (6 Month Collect & Return, 1 Year Parts, 3 Year Labour)
Delivery
STANDARD INSURED DELIVERY TO UK MAINLAND (MON-FRI)
Build Time
Standard Build - Approximately 3 to 5 working days
Miscellaneous
PCSpecialist Game Pass Sheet
Welcome Book
PCSpecialist Welcome Book
Price: £0.00 including VAT and Delivery


Unique URL to re-configure: https://www.pcspecialist.co.uk/saved-configurations/defiance-16/te!TzmunKf/
 
ubuysa

ubuysa

The BSOD Doctor
How often does it freeze? If it's pretty often you could try starting Windows in Safe Mode. In Safe Mode a stripped-down Windows system is loaded, with only critical services and drivers loaded. Typically no third-party drivers are loaded. This does mean that you won't be able to do any useful work in Safe Mode, or play games, and many of your devices may not work properly (or at all) because their drivers have not been loaded. Your display will be low resolution for example, because you'll be using only the Windows basic display driver.

The usefulness of Safe Mode is that because it's a stripped-down system consisting only of Microsoft services and drivers it's very stable, so if it freezes in Safe Mode you have a hardware problem. On the other hand, if it's stable in Safe Mode then your problem is with a third-party driver or service that wasn't loaded in Safe Mode. That's what I think is the likely cause and there is another technique we can use in that case to locate the problem service or driver.

One step at a time though, let's be sure it's stable in Safe Mode.
 
N

NathanBurley772

New member
Thanks @ubuysa! It freezes... now and then is about as good as I can give you. If I'm playing / using the system in the evening it'll likely freeze once in that time (3-4 hours use). I've tried just locking the screen overnight and leaving it (again in quiet mode just idle) and it's frozen like that twice now overnight. So it seems to be a time thing rather than a temperature / stress thing.

Happy to try a safe more reboot and then leave it and see if it locks up on its own.
 
N

NathanBurley772

New member
@ubuysa - I left it for a stint yesterday in safe mode and it was fine. I left it overnight in safe mode last night and it was still happy happy. So, thankfully it doesn't *seem* to be a hardware issue. How on earth do I track down a driver issue when the system freezes so completely? do you know of logs it'll create which might shed light on this?
 
D

DarkPaladin

Enthusiast
The easiest way to solve this (without spending hours pinpointing specific software or drivers) is to perform a fresh install of Windows 11 through USB.

If however you did want to try and narrow down crashes, type Event Viewer in the Windows search bar and then click either Custom Views > Admin views or Windows Logs. Check for the errors that closely matches when your PC crashes (e.g. if your laptop froze at 9:36pm, find the error closest to 9:36pm). Then you can see what the likely culprit is.

1) Download the Windows 11 Media Creation Tool https://www.microsoft.com/en-gb/software-download/windows11
2) Format a USB drive with at least 8GB size
3) Install the Media Creation Tool to USB
4) Backup all of your files (e.g. photos, music, videos, documents) to another USB or external drive
5) Keep the USB with Media Creation Tool inserted
6) Restart your PC and push the key that takes you into the BIOS (usually this is F2 or delete but it can vary)
7) Change the boot order to your USB drive then save changes
8) Initiate the installation of Windows 11 and format all of your drives (if you have more than 1, install Windows on your primary drive)
9) Let Windows install, then download your driver updates either directly from PCSpecialist or the manufacturers themselves (e.g. GPU drivers from NVIDIA)
 
ubuysa

ubuysa

The BSOD Doctor
DO NOT reinstall Windows, not yet anyway. Without knowing what the problem is you run the very real risk of reinstalling the problem.

Now I want you to try a clean boot of Windows. First disable all third-party services and all auto-starting third-party apps (details in the link). See whether it freezes when you boot that. This will bot a full Windows system so it's an important test.

If that doesn't freeze then leave the startup apps disabled and enable half of the services and reboot. If it freezes the problem is in the half you enabled, if it does it's (probably) in the half you didn't enable. Pick the suspect half and enable/disable half of those. By working with half at a time you will quickly zoom in on the problem service (driver).

If it doesn't freeze with all third-party services enabled then move on to the startup apps. enable half of those and reboot. Use this binary search technique on the startup apps to find the problem one.
 
N

NathanBurley772

New member
OK, i checked the logs and in the administrative Events log this error is just spamming the system. I have hundreds of errors just like this:

"Realtek PCIe GbE Family Controller has a Hardware IO error." Source - rt64x64 Event ID 2

After a LOT of these it gives me a warning:

"The network interface "Realtek PCIe GbE Family Controller" has begun resetting. There will be a momentary disruption in network connectivity while the hardware resets. Reason: The network driver detected that its hardware has stopped responding to commands. This network interface has reset 1318 time(s) since it was last initialized." - source NDIS Event ID 10400

I'm not 100% sure this is the issue but I *think* it roughly coincides with the time the problem happened last night.

So, it seems to be the Ethernet controller. I'm not using wired comms though, wifi only. Possible hardware issue after all? I can try disabling the ethernet port but if there's an actual issue with it then tbh it's a brand new laptop so I want it resolved.

If that doesn't help narrow it down though I'll follow the steps @ubuysa left. Sorry @DarkPaladin, windows re-install is defs my last preferred option.
 
ubuysa

ubuysa

The BSOD Doctor
Yep I'd agree that the LAN adapter sounds like the problem there. Update the driver first but that could be a bad device.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Top