System unexpectedly shutting down due to random freezing.
System unexpectedly shutting down due to random freezing.
I'm facing a frustrating situation and could use some guidance. Sorry for the lengthy history. The issue seems to have begun a few weeks back. When I booted up, my icons appeared disorganized and out of place. Moving one to a new spot fixed the problem, but it keeps happening. After some time, while streaming, I experienced my first freeze—no error screen, the cursor stayed active, and the file explorer remained functional. I tried closing Task Manager to end Chrome, but it didn’t resolve anything. After exiting Task Manager, the 'task manager' window lingered on my desktop. It became difficult to reopen it, and eventually the whole system would lock up. I tried restarting, but the start menu wouldn’t respond properly. After a hard reboot, things seemed to stabilize for a while. Still, recurring problems persisted.
Nvidia released an updated driver, which I downloaded and installed. I thought it might be a coincidence, but the issue continued. The next time I froze, it happened while using Spotify in the background. All the usual symptoms appeared—audio stuck in a loop, and I couldn’t close Spotify in Task Manager. After another restart, I was finally free from freezing for a week.
Recently, two more similar incidents occurred: one while watching a video and another while working on a PowerPoint presentation with Spotify playing. In both cases, the audio looped endlessly and I couldn’t terminate it. Despite a hard restart, the problem remained. I ran a memory test (memtest) and it came up clean. I’m planning to perform a Windows Defender scan and a disk cleanup tonight, then share the results.
I’m also considering using NZXT’s CAM software with an overclock and will revert to the older version to test. I’ve never had a freeze while gaming, which suggests overclocking isn’t the cause. I’ve tried it for about two years without issues. Right now, I’m struggling and would appreciate any advice or insights.
When did you last reinstall your operating system from scratch? It can be frustrating, but it’s something I’ve done recently. I was experiencing system crashes (BSODs and freezes) and now everything is running smoothly again.