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We are having an issue with many of the PC’s in our network including mine with random freezing. We have one user who has said it seems to happen every hour or half hour. It seems to be limited to Microsoft products on the PC’s. It seems to start with IE then moves into the Office suite, such as Skype for business 2016, Outlook, Excel, and so on. When the PC freezes the start button quit’s working, also task manager will not open, and if you attempt to open task manager when the PC starts to freeze it will completely lock up the Machine. The only thing that will unlock the PC is doing a hard reboot. We have attempted adding additional ram going from 12 GB to 16 GB on the affected machines. sometimes when it will freeze we have experienced black screens (all pc’s are running dual monitors). updating to the latest video drivers from HP seem’s to have helped in this issue but not with the freezing. We have tried running Malwarebytes as well as C Cleaner. Each fix seems to have a temporary effect then it goes back to freezing again. Have tried not using skype, outlook, and IE at various times and it still would freeze. Any and all help would be greatly appreciated.

The machine specs are as follows:

HP ProDesk 600 G2 SFF Intel core i7 6700. Windows 7 64 bit. Intel HD Graphics 530. 12 GB of ram (some upgraded to 16 GB). All with Dual monitors on vga/display port

3 Spice ups
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My first thought would be a clean install off windows. If that works, progress to installing the latest drivers. If the PC still works, install Office. Keep this up till you find the issue. My guess is its a bad windows or driver update, have you tried using an older video driver or looked at recent Windows updates?

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We started with some older video drivers and updated them to the point where they are at now. Have not tried removing any windows updates as of yet

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Also I just remembered we have ran the Online fix for Office this seemed to work for a short time as did all of the other fixes we tried. Then it would go back to freezing again.

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  • Boot computer into safe mode

  • Perform a virus scan from safe mode

  • In addition, cross scan with additional antivirus softwares like (Avast, Sophos, AVG, Hitman Pro, etc). Other antivirus solutions may pick up traces that Malwarebytes can’t.

  • Check msconfig, startup items, programs etc.

  • Any updates that have been pushed out lately?

  • Are your applications up to date?

1 Spice up
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Will try AVG we currently have AVG installed on all of our machines. I have started to uninstall updates from July to see if that helps ( the freezing has been happening for a while ) some applications are up to date some are not. I have removed adobe pro 10 from my machine to see if that was causing issues as I have heard of some problems with freezing due to that program and no change. Also on top of removing the July updates I have adjusted the time when outlook checks for emails to see if its a problem with that hanging.

1 Spice up
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MRW38: “We are having an issue with many of the PC’s in our network including mine with random freezing.”

Apparently, the issue is a system wide one, which points to virus and malware infection. I would guess virus/malware is spreading over the network.

You should check individual computers for viruses and malware while they are separated from the network and plug them back to the network only after all of them have been checked.

You could create antivirus boot up scan CD/USB.

Also make sure that the time of the whole network is correctly set.

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@mitchellwiebe

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This was a great post for you. I would recommend Avast as you can set it to perform a boot time scan of the system before it even gets into Windows.

Also, after a fresh boot of the machine from a frozen state, check event viewer for clues. That is one thing I do not see in your posts here is any findings there.

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Here are some event logs that may be of use:

taskhost (1496) WebCacheLocal: Error -1811

The program iexplore.exe version 11.0.9600.18817 stopped interacting with Windows and was closed. To see if more information about the problem is available, check the problem history in the Action Center control panel.

Process ID: 21e4

Start Time: 01d3439aee7ad1b0

Termination Time: 60000

Application Path: C:\Program Files\Internet Explorer\iexplore.exe

Report Id: 348ab65b-af8e-11e7-ac5e-5065f34759e0

The program lync.exe version 16.0.8201.2193 stopped interacting with Windows and was closed. To see if more information about the problem is available, check the problem history in the Action Center control panel.

Process ID: 161c

Start Time: 01d3391b8954cd41

Termination Time: 60000

Application Path: C:\Program Files\Microsoft Office\root\Office16\lync.exe

Report Id: d6d7cc36-a51e-11e7-ac21-5065f34759e0

The program chrome.exe version 61.0.3163.100 stopped interacting with Windows and was closed. To see if more information about the problem is available, check the problem history in the Action Center control panel.

Process ID: c18

Start Time: 01d33b7677b77e1e

Termination Time: 60000

Application Path: C:\Program Files (x86)\Google\Chrome\Application\chrome.exe

Report Id: f3e9718f-a775-11e7-a529-5065f34759e0

The program mstsc.exe version 6.3.9600.16415 stopped interacting with Windows and was closed. To see if more information about the problem is available, check the problem history in the Action Center control panel.

Process ID: 78c

Start Time: 01d33e12e691d4d3

Termination Time: 60000

Application Path: C:\windows\system32\mstsc.exe

Report Id: 39440ea4-aa06-11e7-85eb-5065f34759e0

I hope these can help

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Yup I agree with Tico. One of the reasons that I mentioned Avast is for the boot-time scan. Schedule it and restart your computer. The scan will find anything before the computer boots into the OS. Do not forget that some viruses may disguise themselves and remain dormant. Check your C drive and look through hidden folders as well.

Make a comparison chart of your computers and try to isolate commonalities and go from there. Are there any resource hogs on the computers? Good luck.

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These are all good suggestions, but have you also tried running the

sfc /scannow

command in an elevated command prompt window?

This command will check for corrupted, or missing windows files that could be causing your errors.

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Thanks to everybody who mentioned us – OP, let me know if you need any help.

AVG should be able to perform a boot time scan through the scheduling options. Also, here’s instructions on performing a boot-time scan in Avast: https://www.avast.com/faq.php?article=AVKB132

@Avast_Business

@mitchellwiebe

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You mention some sitting at 12GB or RAM and some at 16GM. Was that stock/out of the box for them all, or did you upgrade them all? I have seen goofy things with odd RAM combos before. PITA to track down, but has happened to be before.

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We seem to have found the issue. This was only happening to machines where we would remote in from home using Log Me In. The issue appears to have been caused by our Log Me In installation once we repaired the installations the issues have gone away.

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