Need ideas, really stuck on this. Erratic behavior escalated to hard crashes & freezes

My best friend's gaming laptop started having issues with occasional crashing or freezing, which we could not find any possible causes as malware scans, antivirus, rootkit finders, etc, didn't find a thing. Checking SSD disk integrity, testing RAM, and so on, found absolutely no issues with the hardware itself. Though something that concerned me was that sfc sometimes would find an issue, and fix it, and yet the issues persisted. But what really borked the entire thing was a recent NVIDIA update. I think it was the March 24th one. The NVIDIA app crashed during the install, then freezes and hard crashes happened a lot more frequently, to the point where it won't boot into Windows anymore. No, not even safe mode. I attempted to use DDU, but obviously can't now if the PC won't even get into Windows.

Now here's where it gets very weird. I've attempted various live OS setups and diagnostic environments, and so far it still randomly freezes in THOSE. For example, the Malwarebytes scanner froze the first time almost immediately after starting it. Second time it finished, with no threats found. Now thankfully the memtest completed without issuse, or errors, because testing 64 GB of RAM was a 3 hour-long waiting game.

What I've been focusing on currently is backing up his important files and games, most of it to the other internal SSD. The Win10 mini live OS has been helpful in that regard, considering it seems much less likely to freeze. So I think his stuff is safe, but I still need to find out the cause of these freezes/crashes. I'm completely stumped. There might be something else I haven't tried yet that those of you more tech-savvy could suggest? The only thing I can think of is the motherboard, but I don't know how to test that. Or more likely, get some logs to look at? His system (Windows, drivers, etc) was current prior to the NVIDIA fiasco, so I presume it's the latest Windows build.

Some stats (that I know)
Eluktronics Prometheus XVII
AMD Ryzen 9 5900HX CPU & Radeon graphics
64 GB DDR4 3200MHz
NVIDIA RTX 3090 (I think, it's definitely one of the 3000 series)

GuyInDogSuit said:

Now here's where it gets very weird. I've attempted various live OS setups and diagnostic environments, and so far it still randomly freezes in THOSE.

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This sort of points to a hardware or temperature issue.
A live OS doesn't use any of the currently installed drivers.

Have you tried a live Linux OS like... Ubuntu?

No, using an Ubuntu live boot OS has crossed my mind, but I think you're onto something about a potential temp issue. But from my experience, overheating generally shuts the system down entirely. I agree that it's a hardware issue, at least.

GuyInDogSuit said:

No, using an Ubuntu live boot OS has crossed my mind, but I think you're onto something about a potential temp issue. But from my experience, overheating generally shuts the system down entirely. I agree that it's a hardware issue, at least.

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I like using Ubuntu Live OS... then if the laptop crashes and freezes, it's definitely a hardware or temperature issue.

Depends on what is overheating.
Lots of folks don't blow the dust out of their laptops.
Or accidentally block the air vents. Like using it in bed or on something other than a hard surface.



And here's ten points, just for filling out your computer specs... whatever your account name is.

OK, I'll tinker with it some more and monitor temps more closely. Not sure which app will show them all but I think I can figure that out...

ILostMyShoe said:

OK, I'll tinker with it some more and monitor temps more closely. Not sure which app will show them all but I think I can figure that out...

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HWMonitor is one, and is free.
So is HWInfo

True, that's a go-to. Thanks.

It seems Ubuntu Live is now called Ubuntu Desktop.
If you decide to try it out...