I see Chrome on a similar laptop and SSD to occasionally pause (freeze) and a second or two later come back. At worst it would seemingly lock up for 30 or more seconds. That is sadly normal today with folk that open 40 tabs on Chrome on low RAM machines.
If the lock up requires a reboot it's often hardware if the factory OS was restored. There can be poor choices on drivers (automatic can be bad) so there's always a check done on that. Nothing has changed in 2 decades about drivers so I'll skip that here.
It seems a nice enough PC but light on RAM and since it would freeze before my bet is a hardware issue.
What HP is this? You left clues but didn't reveal which one.
Try to share a Web Speccy about this: Read https://www.piriform.com/docs/speccy/using-speccy/publishing-a-speccy-profile-to-the-web
Every so often my dads pc freezes sometimes when logging on then more erratic when online freezes around 3 to 10 seconds every 10 to 20 mins so reformatted and installed windows 10 pro it did freeze before reinstalling windows 10 with new Kinston 500gb SSD and nvidia 1030
Tried changing power options /done ram test/checked heat/installed SSD toolbox//updated drivers/done system scan/task manager shows no abnormal high usage but freezes as well reset bios to default.
Running windows 10 pro 64 4gb ddr3
Intel Core i3 4160 @ 3.60GHz 41 °C
Haswell 22nm Technology
4.00GB Single-Channel DDR3 @ 798MHz (11-11-11-2![]()
Hewlett-Packard 18E9 (SOCKET 0)
2047MB NVIDIA GeForce GT 1030 (ASUStek Computer Inc) 37 °C
447GB KINGSTON SA400S37480G (SATA-2 (SSD)) 29 °C
465GB TOSHIBA DT01ACA050 (SATA )
hp DVD RAM UJ8E0
any advice would be much appreciated thanks mark

Chowhound
Comic Vine
GameFAQs
GameSpot
Giant Bomb
TechRepublic