Thank you for being a valued part of the CNET community. As of December 1, 2020, the forums are in read-only format. In early 2021, CNET Forums will no longer be available. We are grateful for the participation and advice you have provided to one another over the years.

Thanks,

CNET Support

Question

System interface hanging at regular intervals

Mar 1, 2020 4:24AM PST

I have tried everything I can think of down to a full factory reset and the issue still occurs. I know this is a software issue because it does not occur in safe mode.

More details on the problem: screen hangs/freezes about once for a second every other second. I am running windows 10 on a Lenovo laptop.

Any advise/help is greatly appreciated. Thanks all!

Discussion is locked

- Collapse -
Answer
Let's check out the machine with a Speccy report.
Mar 1, 2020 10:37AM PST

How will follow in a link so to preview what it will show us is temperatures and drive health plus a lot more. Your assertion it's not hardware is something a new tech may think but the heat and HDD issues continue to show up as OK in safe mode but not ok in a full boot. It takes time for techs to catch on for this one.

So if you are convinced it's software, do a CLEAN INSTALL of Windows 10. Do not bother with factory reset.

Here's how to share that report:
https://www.piriform.com/docs/speccy/using-speccy/publishing-a-speccy-profile-to-the-web

Post was last edited on March 1, 2020 10:38 AM PST

- Collapse -
thanks for the reply
Mar 1, 2020 11:27AM PST
- Collapse -
Now that confuses me.
Mar 1, 2020 11:46AM PST

A factory reset is usually removed after a clean install. How did you do that? Do you have Lenovo restore media or a clone of the HDD when the machine was new? On to the Speccy.

- Collapse -
Answer
Speccy was fairly clean.
Mar 1, 2020 12:00PM PST

First this looks to be a very old laptop. I think it shipped in 2014 and W10 has been out for years so either there is more story here or the laptop is finally starting to fail. Again, the safe mode is not proof it's anything.

I don't see anything that stands out in the report so here's the list to work.

1. The usual I run into is an incomplete Windows install. This model and many others CHALLENGE us as to drivers and install order. I do not have the exact recipe for most models. The rundown is to install the OS, the drivers for motherboard, audio, video, networking and then apps called for machine control such as WiFi on/off etc.
2. The BIOS looks out of date. Try:
https://pcsupport.lenovo.com/us/en/products/laptops-and-netbooks/flex-series/flex-2-15d-notebook-lenovo/downloads/ds101002
3. GPU driver 26.20.15019.15019 DATE:02/26/2020. AMD is rather famous about driver hell along with Windows. This can be tied to the BIOS so if this was mine, then the BIOS is updated to it's last release and test again. If that fails then we try the Lenovo version they issued or other versions by AMD.

4. The RAM is single channel. This can lead to all sorts of performance complaints. Get it to dual channel.

5. The HDD looks in good shape but doesn't show what I see with a clean install. That is, when you clean install you wipe the drive clean. This doesn't look clean.