Win 8.1 freeze randomly without BSOD

krneki1

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For the past few weeks, multiple times daily (4-5x), I've been constantly having problems with random freezes on Asus N76Vz notebook @ Windows 8.1 x 64 with latest updates. I don't remember updating any drivers or installing any software that could be capable of doing that, so it has begun out of sudden.

Freezes are actually pretty weird. It starts with a partial freeze, i.e. I can still switch between opened programs, I can still open new tabs in Chrome (it won't open any new sites though, just rotating circle icon), winamp will keep playing music etc., actually all programs will freeze only partially, nothing like I've ever seen before. But I can't close any currently opened programs or open new ones, including task manager. Explorer (+Classic shell) will freeze (become completely non-responding) as well, so sooner or later, I will have to force shutdown computer and turn it on again.

I really have no idea where to look at because there's not a single minidump report. S.M.A.R.T status is telling me that SSD (with latest firmware) and HDD (0 bad sectors) are completely fine (checked with Hard Disk Sentinel). Computer is not infected nor have ever been (Comodo Internet Security for active protection, also scanned with malwarebytes, hitmanpro, TDSSkiller and adw cleaner). I have the latest BIOS and the latest drivers from official ASUS support website.

There are no other problems with Windows, except a lot of times I can't reboot Windows normally - it will stay at reboot screen forever. I've already tried few solutions I've Googled about, but none helped, including turning off hybrid shutdown.
And another problem unrelated to Windows freezing mentioned above. Sometimes I can't close an application (Winamp and iTunes mostly) and killing in task manager from Processes tab also won't do anything. But if I try to kill it from Details tab, I get "The operation could not be completed. Access is denied." error. I've Googled about that one as well, most solutions were solved by unplugging USB devices, but I don't have any connected at all, so dead end here too. I've also tried with Unlocker and FileAssasin and they can't do anything as well in that case.

Since there are no minidumps, I've collected system, application and administrative events around occurrence of random crash. I'm also posting system summary and hardware report from AIDA64. Please have a look at them here:
dropbox.com/sh/zbshbr1pmnk3kux/AAApt-kSUs0l9WSNoEdCafkya?dl=0

Let me know if you need any other reports, I'd be glad to post them. Thanks in advance for help!
 
I've just updated my dropbox folder with the following files:

sfc_scannow.txt - as you may see, no errors
CHKDSKResults.txt - not sure if that fixed anything
1st_boot_after_chkdsk.png - interesting thing, happened for the first time. Just after the CHKDSK ran, a bunch of identical CMD windows opened up on the 1st boot.
 
First thing I would try would be disabling dynamic tick. If that still doesn't work, start with process of elimination. BIOS and drivers first. Can't tell you how many times customers have walked in with bizarre Windows 8 issues and a simple BIOS update resolved the issues. After that, try reinstalling Windows to a different hard drive or ssd.
 
So I just though that it would be nice to share how I fixed my problem. Steps I mentioned in previous post didn't help at all, so I did these steps:

- disable dynamic tick
- change all scheduled tasks to Win8.1 compatibility
- uninstall Comodo Internet Security

I'm not sure which one helped, but one of these 3 did, so far I didn't have any freeze at all. I already installed Comodo again and it looks fine so far. Perhaps I'll also try to re-enable dynamic tick to see if that was the real issue.
 
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