Windows 10 Pro 64-bit hard hang

After I installed Windows 10 on my Sony Vaio SVS13A190X laptop it started freezing periodically. Usually it happens during installation of something i.e. when there is some heavy disk usage. I have scanned all my SSD disks and all of them looks good. Windows just freezes, UI stops responding, no BSOD. I have configured Windows to create a memory dump by pressing Ctrl+ScrLck+ScrLck and then created 2 memory dumps when I got 2 freezes. I'm newbie in windbg so just followed steps desribed in this post to see if it may lead to something. Obviously that wasn't enough for my case. I've created minidumps and sharing them here and here. I will appreciate any help with this.

I tried:

Install fresh copy of Windows 10
Install version 1903 over it
Update all drivers
Using different tools in order to figure out the problem
Scan all my SSD disks
CPU stress test
Memory test

My PC configuration:

CPU: Intel Core i7-3520M
RAM: 12GB
Hybrid graphic with Intel HD Graphics 4000 and NVIDIA GeForce GT 640M LE
2x128GB SSD disks in RAID0 + 128GB SSD disk installed in optical drive slot
Hyper-V enabled

UPDATE 1

My system freezes now every time I'm trying to install CUDA toolkit. The interesting thing is that it freezes while extracting data to temp folder. Every time on different stage of the process so I guess that something wrong with my SSDs which are in RAID0 configuration. Here are below screenshots of the CrystalDiskInfo output for all my disks: disk 1, disk 2 and disk 3.

UPDATE 2

I can usually reproduce the freeze when I:

Install new software on PC (or update existing one)
Run Docker containers (using Hyper-V)

Also sometimes I experience the issue that laptop doesn't wake up from sleep.

Alexey Andrushkevich

Posted 2019-09-08T19:34:36.510

Reputation: 111

Did you perform a clean install of Windows 10 or an upgrade from a different OS? Upgrades can sometimes introduce performance problems like this. – Mr Ethernet – 2019-09-08T19:57:38.443

Did you try to unplug the laptop when it happens? Some HP laptops just freeze, you unplug them and they start working again. – Sacha K – 2019-09-08T20:33:43.617

@wrecclesham yes I did a clean install of Windows 10. Also it has recently upgraded to 1903. I also updated drivers for all the hardware but it didn't help. – Alexey Andrushkevich – 2019-09-09T04:56:39.223

@SachaK yes, I tried to unplug the laptop once it has freezed. Also I tried to push the power button and restart graphics drivers by pressing Win+Ctrl+Shift+B. Nothing helped. – Alexey Andrushkevich – 2019-09-09T07:58:31.570

Does your UEFI/BIOS provide some self diagnostic tools? If yes, run them! If this does not help, download UBCD (https://www.ultimatebootcd.com/), boot it and run CPUstress and Memtest86+. Do not run them from within Windows.

– dirdi – 2019-09-11T11:39:13.350

Hang1 happens inside the driver i8042prt.sys for the i8042 Keyboard and PS/2 Mouse. Hang2 is apparently initiated by yourself. If both dumps were not started by yourself, this might point to a PS/2 Mouse or Keyboard. Otherwise, they are not informative. I suggest running MemTest86 over-night as hardware test, just for starters.

– harrymc – 2019-09-11T16:50:17.497

@harrymc I have tried to run memory test and cpu stress tests one more time. Both went OK, no issues were found. – Alexey Andrushkevich – 2019-09-12T09:02:30.440

Try to find any interesting messages in the Event Viewer. – harrymc – 2019-09-12T11:14:24.110

@harrymc nothing helpful. I have checked the event viewer right after freeze and reboot. Once it freezed I left it for about 30 minutes, then rebooted and checked event viewer logs. There were not errors or warning reported right before the freeze and during that 30 minute period. – Alexey Andrushkevich – 2019-09-15T10:28:03.550

Your disk seems ok. For such weird cases, I recommend resetting Windows components to a known state by doing Repair Install of Windows 10 with an In-place Upgrade. This operation is equivalent to the upgrade to v1903, so the same precautions need to be taken.

– harrymc – 2019-09-15T15:00:06.677

Answers

If you have the possibility of busting your RAID0, i would set every SSD in standalone, no RAID. Then try the step which causes the freezes on each individual hard drive. If it never crashes on any SSD, there's high odds that the RAID controller is a fault. If a single SSD fails, then there's high odds the SSD is at fault. If everything works regardless of these steps, I'd try to set perhaps a RAID5, see how it behaves (obviously this point is moot if you only have 2 HDDs).

If nothing else, if you have the available hardware, I'd try doing the steps mentionned above while using the SSD's on a different device, to try and isolate the issue.

Dexirian

Posted 2019-09-08T19:34:36.510

Reputation: 135

This options if too painful because Windows 10 is installed on RAID0. I will leave it for Plan Z. Is there any way to test RAID controller? – Alexey Andrushkevich – 2019-09-15T18:16:48.077

Check first if your windows installation is corrupt by running sfc /scannow. if it isn't try installing Windows 10 on a brand new hdd or ssd (your choice). And see if the problem persists.

EDIT: Check your disk for bad sectors, I realize that you have an SSD, but soemtimes part of it "wears out" and windows can report it as a bad sector, so try running chskdsk /r c:

One more thing you should try in case the problem isn't from your SSDs, get a Linux Distro (any one) and burn to a usb drive, then boot to that usb drive, and use the live session for a bit, if you don't get any hangs or freezes, that means the problem is from your SSDs and you should consider switching them out.

And because you said that you get hangs when you install new software, install a couple of things in the live linux session and see if it hangs.

watass

Posted 2019-09-08T19:34:36.510

Reputation: 107

I ran it and it found few corrupted files so I ran DISM tool and then sfc tool one more time so eventually I've got the message "Windows Resource Protection did not find any integrity violations". After that I started rolling up an update for Visual Studio 2019 and have got another system freeze. – Alexey Andrushkevich – 2019-09-15T21:57:22.833

Don't know if that helps, but most of the time the system freezes when I try to install new software. Sometimes it happens when I run docker containers and in very rare cases it freezes when it is idle. – Alexey Andrushkevich – 2019-09-15T22:00:30.517

I edited my answer, try to see if it helps. Start with booting a live session of any linux distro. And see if it still freezes. – watass – 2019-09-16T08:11:23.700

I did run chkdsk /r c:. It fixed something but that didn't resolve the issue. There is one thing that confuses me. If the problem in my disk why it doesn't popup when I test it with different utilities? I believe if there was an issue with RAID controller or any of these disks in it the system would eventually freeze every time I perform a disk scan. – Alexey Andrushkevich – 2019-09-17T08:21:42.957

Your disk seems OK, so the cause is probably software. On the other hand, the measures you have taken seem to be very complete.

It is possible that something went wrong when upgrading to Windows 10, meaning that some previous driver or setting is still in effect.

I recommend resetting all Windows components to a known state by doing Repair Install of Windows 10 with an In-place Upgrade. This operation is equivalent to upgrading Windows 19 to version 1903, so the same precautions need to be taken.

If the problem still occurs, the next step would be to install Windows 10 from scratch. Install only drivers that are absolutely required, staying with the generic Windows 10 drivers for as long as possible, and only install drivers downloaded from the manufacturer's website.

harrymc

Posted 2019-09-08T19:34:36.510

Reputation: 306 093

I have finally figured out that it's not a software issue. I can reproduce the issue by copying a lot of files from external ssd to the disks in raid0. I reproduced this by booting to command prompt and copying files. So now I'm confident the issue is in my ssd or raid controller. – Alexey Andrushkevich – 2019-09-28T12:44:05.703

Enable Safe Boot option (press F8 to enable it just in boot sequence), then boot Windows and first check your video graphics drivers. For that uninstall your current driver and CUDA from system, clean the system with DDU (driver uninstaller utility). Reboot. Install fresh graphics driver from Safe Mode. Alternatively, boot into Normal Mode and wait for your system to install Graphics drivers.

There is known problems between NVIDIA and Win10 x64 OS, causing instability occuring in the form of "random freezes". Multiple users reported same problem. If that is the case, the only thing you can do is to use Linux (CUDA works there on both proprietary and free drivers) or roll back to Win 32bit.

Also there were a problem concerning "Windows Automatic Driver installs" when users were installing drivers manually but system were updating it to versions up (to the buggy one). Also there were problems between NVIDIA graphics driver uptade service and windows drivers update service.

sanaris

Posted 2019-09-08T19:34:36.510

Reputation: 161

-1

You could look if there are firmware updates available, Bios & harddisk, for your system.

Next to that, have you installed the latest drivers supplied by Sony for your Vaio?

Ronald van Meer

Posted 2019-09-08T19:34:36.510

Reputation: 1

No new versions of BIOS (at least on SONY site) are available for my laptop. As for drivers it's a bit complicated because my laptop was coming with Window 7 pre-installed. Most of the drivers were downloaded for Windows 7/Windows 8/Windows 8.1. Some of these drivers were later updated (something via Windows Update, something manually) after this issue started appearing. – Alexey Andrushkevich – 2019-09-15T19:52:42.173

-1

I would boot in the BIOS and see if you are able to run a hardware scan. If this comes back fine, I would recommend installing drivers that are recommended by Sony.

If all this fails, you may need to reset Windows. You can do this in the settings>update and security>recovery>reset this PC.

Hopefully this helps!

Stanners

Posted 2019-09-08T19:34:36.510

Reputation: 89

BIOS (Insyde Corp. R0143C5, 8/22/2012) was updated few years ago to the latest version available on Sony web site for download. The BIOS doesn't provide any functionality which would allow me to perform a hardware scan. Originally this laptop was coming with Windows 7. Sony provides drivers for Windows 7 and Windows 8 only, nothing for Windows 10. I have installed a fresh copy of Windows 10 almost year ago. Previously it was updated from Windows 8 or Windows 7 (don't really remember that). – Alexey Andrushkevich – 2019-09-15T10:35:36.577