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Question

Windows 10 pc keeps hard freezing

Jun 2, 2016 3:45PM PDT

My pc has started freezing to the point where it's almost unusable. Its a really nice pc thats been having no problems with performance other than this issue. Its the type of freeze where the caps lock light wont even come on which i read means that you have to actually shut down the computer (by holding down power button for 5 seconds) to get out of.

I run windows 10 and when i go to event viewer, the only thing i find is error event 10 under application logs, which is strange because any research i do says that the event 10 error is only for w7 and windows server 2008 r2.

Also, I had a problem with memory that was causing crashes a while back which i got fixed. I ran a memtest just to be safe and nothing came up. I did system file checker and it too was clean. It's also frozen during the initial boot with the windows logo so i was assuming that meant it was a problem with windows and not a program i have downloaded. I dont think its a virus either since quick scans dont bring anything up. Id like to do a full scan but the computer always freezes about half way through lol

Discussion is locked

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Answer
Microsoft is known to be lagging on docs.
Jun 2, 2016 3:53PM PDT

I had a lost discussion about a certain EventID that was documented for NT 4.0 yet applied to XP and the client was adamant because MSFT didn't doc it, it didn't apply.

Anyhow there's not much about the PC, drivers, apps and such so the other clue is the freeze on scanning. Does safe mode lock up (try with networking.)

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Works fine in safe mode
Jun 2, 2016 5:48PM PDT

Been running it in safemode with networking for about 2 hours and it was working, ran the full scan and everything came up clean, also resting cpu usage was a lot lower in safe mode. I didnt think to include since ive had this problem for a few months, but cpu usage is always at about 70%ish. One of the service host processes always eats up my cpu usage and i think i remember figuring out that it was one of the processes that checks for updates or something. Kinda gave up a few months back when i was unable to fix it, but do you think that could be whats causing the freezes?

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I asked about drivers in a round about way.
Jun 2, 2016 6:04PM PDT
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CPU Problem
Jun 4, 2016 10:40AM PDT

okay after some more diagnostics, i think ive figured it out. Service host: local system has been keeping my cpu at super high lvls, now antimalware service executable has also been eating up cpu... now every time i do something remotely cpu heavy, the computer freezes (aka full virus scans, games, using chrome since it too uses a lot of cpu), im trying to update windows now to see if that helps, just have to keep killing the service host:local system process periodically since it's pushing my cpu to 100% usage... windows 10 is going to be the death of my pc

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That's odd.
Jun 4, 2016 10:45AM PDT

Here I'm on my new W10 laptop and I opted for Windows Defender and for malware I use Adblock+ and Web Of Trust to alert me about bad sites. For scans I use Grif's advice.

Maybe your antimalware isn't a good one?

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Its windows antimalware
Jun 4, 2016 12:26PM PDT

the antimalware is from windows defender so doubt its that, the update did not fix it. Digging deeper into service host: local system, i found the exact process causing problems is most likely the windows management instrumentation one. Hopefully it hasnt wrecked my cpu

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That's not what I've seen to date.
Jun 4, 2016 12:53PM PDT

While I'm just under 100 W10 upgrades the story isn't being repeated here.

Try a new user account and see if the trouble follows.

And I'm not finding much detail about your work with drivers after the W10 install or upgrade.