Solved Windows Lockups At Night

Three times recently, upon waking the computer in the morning, I have found it locked up, requiring a forced shutdown and restart. I find no pattern to this. Restart today was rather scary, as after logging on, all I had was a blank screen with only the Malwarebytes icon on the task bar, and no mouse. I was just about to do a second forced shutdown when a message popped up, something about Windows having stopped and did I want to continue. I am quite vague about precisely what that message said, given my worries as to what was happening. As the box about continuing had a line around it indicating that it was usable, I hit the enter kit, the normal restart began, and all seemed fine.

I have not had the computer lockup during the day; it is set to go to sleep after two hours, and once in a while it may be three or four hours before I wake it. Most days, I stop around 1630 hours local, restart around 0500 t0 0600 local, and it is during that time span that the lockup appear.

I believe you and I have the same motherboard. I was having this issue at times and I have a complex ongoing communication with Dell about it. They have even gone so far as changing the motherboard trying to fix it. I figured out I could stop the freezes by disabling hibernate and using S3 sleep instead. However, when I have hibernate disabled, I discovered event viewer throws out event 137 (kernel power) each time I put the PC to sleep but I no longer have freezes. As far as using the PC, I was unaware of the errors for a long time as I experience no visual operational issues when they occur. Know that disabling hibernation also disables fast startup.

So you are not alone. The engineer I am working with is currently working with his counterpart at Microsoft so I do not know when they will find a solution to the problem.

I am assuming your bios settings are set to Dell default. To stop your freezes you can try disabling hibernate to see if it works for you. I used
option 2 in this tutorial. Enable or Disable Hibernate in Windows 11 Tutorial

All the time I've spent with Dell on this has been very frustrating and I wouldn't wish it on anyone, but if disabling hibernation fixes your issue, you might want to open your own ticket with them. They will have you going around in circles but you have to stay after them until you can get to the right person who will work with you. The first thing a low level support person will want to do is change your motherboard which won't fix anything. Until I finally connected with the engineer I'm working with, they had me jumping through hoops. You are more than welcome to cross reference your issue with mine by mentioning case #132006202

make sure it isn't the software before blaming the hardware.
1st. open task manager and shut down anything (non windows).
2nd. run checkdisk on at least you system drive.
3rd. defrag all disks.
4th. open an administrator command prompt and run
Dism.exe /Online /Cleanup-Image /RestoreHealth


see if that helps

Not Myself said:

restart around 0500 t0 0600 local, and it is during that time span that the lockup appear.

Click to expand...

Your computer probably doesn't like waking up that early in the morning.

@Not Myself I just looked at Dells site on XPS 8930. A new bios was release on 1/12/22. It could possibly address your issue (and hopefully mine)
EDIT: Well lo and behold my Optiplex also had a bios update issued 1/28 and it fixed my problems. No more Event 137 with hibernation disabled.

glasskuter said:

@Not Myself I just looked at Dells site on XPS 8930. A new bios was release on 1/12/22. It could possibly address your issue (and hopefully mine)
EDIT: Well lo and behold my Optiplex also had a bios update issued 1/28 and it fixed my problems. No more Event 137 with hibernation disabled.

Click to expand...

I have had two bios updates over the past few weeks; why two, I don't know, of course.

thomaseg1 said:

make sure it isn't the software before blaming the hardware.
1st. open task manager and shut down anything (non windows).
2nd. run checkdisk on at least you system drive.
3rd. defrag all disks.
4th. open an administrator command prompt and run
Dism.exe /Online /Cleanup-Image /RestoreHealth


see if that helps

Click to expand...

I ran Dism while going out to get today's newspapers (for those who don't know what "newspapers" mean, please do an on-line search.) When I returned to the computer, Dism informed me that it had concluded the operation successfully. I'll get around to checkdisk later. C:\ is SDS, so I'll leave it alone, let its settings take care of it. D:\ is hard drive, I can defrag it.

thomaseg1 said:

make sure it isn't the software before blaming the hardware.
1st. open task manager and shut down anything (non windows).
2nd. run checkdisk on at least you system drive.
3rd. defrag all disks.
4th. open an administrator command prompt and run
Dism.exe /Online /Cleanup-Image /RestoreHealth


see if that helps

Click to expand...

I ran the error check from the Property sheet for C: and D:. which I had never done. I found it interesting that the check of C" was basically immediate, as no scan was run, and a report that here are no errors appeared nearly instantaneously. D: was scanned, which too little time, with no errors found.

I was planning on running chkdsk on the SSD C: later today, but that was changed when the computer locked up while I was using it. I had to force a shutdown and restart, which I followed by running chkdsk C: /f. That was the first time I had ever run this on a SSD, and was rather concerning, given the amount of time it took for the scanning process to even begin.

Once it did start, it went through three stages, whatever they are, quite rapidly, followed by a very lengthy period of the rotating image that seems to be chasing its tail, but that finally changed to a screen about repairing the disc (or whatever it really said, I don't remember.) When that concluded, it stated that it had finished fixing the drive, so perhaps it actually found some errors. Again, as I know nothing about this, I don't actually know if problems were found and remedied, but it would be good if that is the case.

I also ran chkdsk D: /f, which to my surprise did not state that it would require a restart; this was my first time doing this on a data-only drive. No problems were found.

Try sfc /scannow From the administrator command prompt

I would go with @glasskuter 's posts as she is having the same or similar problems

thomaseg1 said:

Try sfc /scannow From the administrator command prompt

Click to expand...

Nice catch, and I don't know why I had not done that, it being a rather standard place to start.

This is what it had to offer: "Windows Resource Protection found corrupt files and successfully repaired them." That log is extremely long, and not particularly interesting reading, compared to, for example. Arthurianism In Early Plantagenet England (my book), and The Emperor's Codes (My son's book, who likes modern history, this one about Allied code breakers in WW II.

What should I search for in the log file to see what was repaired?

Just try it and see if the error is fixed :)

The-Hive said:

Just try it and see if the error is fixed :)

Click to expand...

Just try what to see if what error is fixed?

Wait and see if it locks up again if not then it's fixed

The-Hive said:

she is having the same or similar problems

Click to expand...

Thanks Rod for the vote of confidence, but as much crazy stuff as I've had happen with that new computer, I wouldn't swear by anything anymore. I finally had it running great, everything working and error free. Today Dell Support Assist crashed it. Support Assist updated and started testing hardware and BOOM! I can't even boot from my Macrium recovery media anymore nor can I boot from Windows installation media either. All I can do is get into the bios and it looks like the boot m.2 drive is gone. The boot menu recognizes the UEFI flash drives as being a boot option, but won't use them. I reset the bios but it didn't help. So right now, I'm feeling completely inadequate. It's been one thing after another ever since I bought the damned thing.

I'm back to my old 8 yr. old 9020 Optiplex that I don't think will ever die. I just didn't have it in me to tackle the Dell support merry-go-around again today.

Sorry @Not Myself, I didn't mean to hijack your thread. Right now, I'd give anything if all I was battling was my sleep problem.

The-Hive said:

Wait and see if it locks up again if not then it's fixed

Click to expand...

That means that I might have to wait some undefined and indefinite time span to know if it is fixed. Of course, should there be no further lockups during that time span, I would be quite pleased.

This is reminiscent of a comment I received from a store owner not long after I had started the fire department and was beginning to do inspections and present a list of needed improvements and how long might be taken before carrying out my orders. When I gave my report to this owner, the first item, with the shortest time allowable, was to make repairs to an unsafe chimney. He said he saw no reason to do that as he had never had a fire. I did not change my order.

Sorry to hear that, my test machine is a Dell Inspiron3501 and it works really well. My best Alienware had nothing but trouble from SupportAssist, after removing every trace of it the machine has worked fine ever since

The-Hive said:

Sorry to hear that, my test machine is a Dell Inspiron3501 and it works really well. My best Alienware had nothing but trouble from SupportAssist, after removing every trace of it the machine has worked fine ever since

Click to expand...

I've had a few problems with Support Assist:

1. I don't recall if this was with the XPS 8900, but have a feeling that it was more recent, which would have been the XPS 8930. I don't even recall what the problem was, but do know that it took some to find and fix it. There were, I believe two to SA updates that did not work, and after the second, another within a day or two, and all was finally ok. I think that was as Dell kept asking for me to submit something, or maybe it was from an on-line session in which they found and download information for them to work with.

2. One that I do remember quite well was a driver update that was for some Intel product. I tried twice to install it, both failed. I then found that this was an update for an Intel `whatever' that was not only not on my computer, but which was never used on an XPS 8900. Several on-line sessions with Dell, etc. , at both Level2 and Level 3 Support.

There was no way to remove the update from SA, and it was irritating to constantly get notifications to install it. One day I got another email about this, which looked different from all the previous ones; I figured out that it was not from home-user customers, but had been elevated to business-use support. Nearing the end of the computer warranty, the XPS 8930 arrived; I don't know if Delll was ever able to figure out why that Intel update was in SA on my machine.

3. The third one was not long ago, and it involved failed installs of SA. One woman tech support agent patiently handled the remote sessions, and she kept deleting files for testing. On at least one call, I am rather certain that she had the group that handled this on the phone, as she kept putting me on hold after deleting files and my trying to install SA. Whatever she deleted in our final on-line session was the culprit, as SA has been working well since then.

4. Well, sort of well: Sunday of last week, there were two updates to the Delll recovery module; the smaller one installed, but the rather large one would not, but suddenly neither SA nor Dell Update indicated that there were any updates for my machine. Why an update that failed to install apparently installed itself, well, that, or whatever happened, shall remain unknown.

@Not Myself @The-Hive From everything I've read all, those tests that SA does stresses the hardware. After the SA update started I walked away for a couple of minutes. When I came back SA was running all those extreme test. Then the PC froze with SA about 70% complete. The only way I could get any control was hard shutdown. When it booted back up, I got a black screen and the m.2boot drive and the storage drive had disappeared in bios.
I reset the bios. Nothing. I was curious if it would boot from a Linux live usb. I tested using a Linux Live usb, a Windows install usb, and a Macrium recovery usb. It recognized that they were bootable but wouldn't boot from them. I disabled secure boot and it still wouldn't boot from usb. I finally pulled the cmos battery out for about 2 hours, reset bios again, and was able to boot to Linux but the boot drive was still missing in bios. I can only assume it is now defective.

I didn't have it in me to tackle dealing with Dell support today to get a replacement. Just as well since we're iced in and we've been without power for 24 hrs. I need a bigger M.2 anyway so may just up the bucks and buy my own. Man, what a lemon Dell I got.