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ThomasWhite's avatar
ThomasWhite
Iron Contributor
May 08, 2025

W10 Hanging, UI functionality but nothing else.

I have a strange issue on a fairly wholly new setup. A month old.

About once a week W10 will Hang.

This is the third time it happened, took my dog for a walk, came back, unlocked the Desktop user and I'll have problems. It never happens when I am active on the Desktop, only when I leave it for a while, like work, sleep or .. dogwalks, in this case.

Here's what happens:

Explorer.exe's UI will be responsive, in that I can open tabs like the start-button, the settings icons are there and they branch out into restart/shutdown/etc, but I can't open anything and clicking the restart or shutdowns does nothing. I can close some folders and programs that were already open, and others will simply not close, even if the mouse-clicking has visual feedback. I cannot start any programs and no keyboard hotkeys work, like Taskmanager or Windows + R. I am eventually forced to reset.

It's as if Windows was sitting at the table and then just got up and left.

I checked the Event Viewer on windows system-logs and they just stopped for an hour while I was out with my dog, from 14:06 to 15:43 (which is when I hit the reset). It had some errors that seemed benign to me prior but the last two were Service Control Manager Information before it stopped "Thinking". Table and details bellow.

 

1 Reply

  • RobertLewis's avatar
    RobertLewis
    Iron Contributor

    Ensure all device drivers are up to date, especially graphics, chipset, and storage drivers. Check your motherboard or system manufacturer website for BIOS updates.

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