[JoelJohnson]

Originally Posted by Heyitsrick

Are you familiar with the Windows "Event Viewer"? It's an app in the Control Panel that logs all manner of things going on in Windows, be them part of the "System" (operating system events), "Application" (your programs), "Security", etc. I would go into the Event Viewer under the category of "Windows Logs" and separately click on System, and after you peruse that, Application. The events are listed in date/time order, so the most recent are at the top. You'll be trying to look for events that happened right at the time of a known lockup. Look for "Error" listings and "Warning" listings. Be advised that just because you find Errors and/or Warnings, that doesn't mean they are critical issues at all. You're bound to find some in both System and Application. But you're trying to match THE TIME of these error events with the time of your lockup(s). Make sense? If there are errors right at the time of a system lock up, that may be a great pointer to figure out what's going on.

Lockups can be caused by many things, but I've found over the years that display adapter drivers can be suspect. By that, I mean the software your computer is using to create the images on your screen. Sometimes mouse/trackbar drivers are suspect. As someone else mentioned, security (anti-virus) software can cause delays by scanning something you're using or have on your drive, and causing issues.

Anyway, the fastest way to get to the Windows Event viewer is to just type (without the quotes) "Event Viewer" in the "Type here to search" box. Windows should return an Event Viewer result you can click on to open it.

On the left side of Event Viewer, you'll see a folder view of things to open/click on. You want the "Windows Logs" section, and then, again, click on Application or System. Scroll down the list to try and find the time you noticed a lock up. (Make sure you find the time BEFORE you've rebooted the laptop. In other words, if you notice a lock up / stalled system at 9:30 am and you reboot it at 9:40 am, you want to find the event logs for 9:30 am or very shortly before 9:30 am.

Finally, I've read through the posts here on this topic. Invariably you'll find anti-Microsoft posts or "Hey, switch to this operating system instead!" posts. Microsoft is far from perfect, and they have had some sloppy Windows 10 updates of late. However, people also need to keep in mind that Microsoft, as opposed to a closed system like Apple's computers, needs to work on literally uncountable combinations of hardware brands, motherboards, memory, display cards, etc., etc., etc. There are millions of possible configurations for Windows PCs. Many so-called "Windows problems" are the result of bad 3rd party drivers. In other words, a company that created a peripheral (hard drive, mouse, display adapter, etc.) may have written its own software to run it. And there may, in fact, be problems with THEIR SOFTWARE. And who gets blamed? Microsoft, of course. People just think "hey, I'm running Windows and it worked fine last week - Microsoft screwed something up!!". I'm just saying that may or may not be true. It may - and has been many times - the result of bad software that a 3rd party has written and installed for its devices. Counter that with a company like Apple that only releases its own computers and has much more control over (internally, anyway) how they run. And even with that, Apple has still had its own issues. There's no perfect operating system (and that includes your favorite distribution of Linux, too, lol).

True, Linux is not perfect, but it's far safer than Windows, it's open software, it doesn't track you, it doesn't force updates on you, it's far more stable than Windows (there is a version of Linux running an elevator system for 10 years without a reboot).

IBM just spent $34 BILLION on a Linux company (Red Hat), Microsoft is including a Linux system in it's Edge browser, most the web services you use run on Linux, your car may be running a Linux system.

Chris Titus, that has all the Microsoft certificates to run his business switched to Linux Mint for his daily drive at home (he maintains a Windows system for his clients).

There is no "Linux Company", it's a collection people around the world that maintain it and promote it mostly for very little or no money at all.