Hey guys, really hoping someone has the trick to solve this here… Got a new latest and greatest MSI gaming laptop (GS73VR 7RF) with Win10 Pro a couple months ago from XoticPC who did a couple customizations for me-received 3/15/17. I thought last month that it started locking up on me-no response except if I hold the power button down and shut it off and then power it up.
It started happening more frequently a couple weeks ago when it did this 4x in the same week! I contacted XoticPC, who said to just restore the OS-but I haven’t really installed that much and would rather figure out the problem (if I can) before I reinstall and run into it again. I did some searching and found this article: https://www.drivereasy.com/knowledge/solved-windows-10-freezes-locks-up-randomly-easily/ and while I was going to try the other steps, I read the comments and first comment about SSDs sounded interesting, and had a lot of support from people who it had helped, so I decided to try it: “If you use an SSD and you run into this problem just change this: 1. Open your advanced power plan settings. 2. Expand open Hard disk and Turn off hard disk after, SET TO NEVER, and click/tap on OK. NOTE: Windows 10 should never turn off an ssd by default, but somehow it was doing that to me. After changing to Never, it never happened to me. Maybe a bug in latest update!!” And I thought it had solved my problem b/c it had been over a week and no lockup! I was so relieved… …until 3:43pm today when after I walked away from my laptop and came back to it an hour later at 4:30pm it was locked up again…and displaying 3:43pm on the screen as that was the last time the clock changed… So I power-cycled it and now I’m back and writing this email… Checked the System Event logs and I do see: 1. Entry at 12pm today 7/5/17 giving system uptime as 771870 seconds 2. Windows update installed a Defender update around 1pm 3. And interestingly, the last 4 entries today before the lockup timestamped 3:06:08 to 3:06:24 are time-related: -The time provider 'VMICTimeProvider' has indicated that the current hardware and operating environment is not supported and has stopped. This behavior is expected for VMICTimeProvider on non-HyperV-guest environments. This may be the expected behavior for the current provider in the current operating environment as well. -The time provider NtpClient is currently receiving valid time data from time.windows.com,0x9 (ntp.m|0x9|0.0.0.0:123->52.173.193.166:123). -The time service is now synchronizing the system time with the time source time.windows.com,0x9 (ntp.m|0x9|0.0.0.0:123->52.173.193.166:123). -The system time has changed to 2017-07-05T22:06:24.080000000Z from 2017-07-05T22:06:24.081427600Z. Change Reason: An application or system component changed the time. 1. No other entries until 4:29:06pm when I power-cycled it and it shows the reboot, and there’s an entry at 4:29:14 of type Error: -The previous system shutdown at 3:43:13pm on 7/5/17 was unexpected so that’s the last time windows sees any activity, so I’m assuming that’s why it thinks it was shutdown then… 1. And at 4:29:07 it has type Critical: -The system has rebooted without cleanly shutting down first. This error could be caused if the system stopped responding, crashed, or lost power unexpectedly. Reason I thought it was the SSD thing is that it seemed to be only an issue when I was leaving the laptop idle-it never happened to me while I was using it-liked it never locked up in mid-keystroke or while I was doing something-it was always after I had it sit for some amount of time and then went back to it and it had been hung for a while…but changing that power setting clearly didn’t work… And checking the Summary page events I can see all of these lockups with the increasing frequency; here are the timestamps followed by the timestamp of the lockup from the corresponding Event viewer message) (all type Critical, and the message is “The system has rebooted without cleanly shutting down first. This error could be caused if the system stopped responding, crashed, or lost power unexpectedly.“) 7/5/17 4:29:07pm (lockup at 7/5/17 3:43:13pm) 6/26/17 12:58:31pm (lockup at 6/26/17 1:18:48am) 6/26/17 1:18:42am (lockup at 6/23/17 1:18:48pm) 6/22/17 6:22:37pm (lockup at 6/22/17 6:14:39pm) 6/22/17 6:11:07pm (lockup at 6/22/17 5:31:46pm) 6/15/17 2:57:39pm (lockup at 6/15/17 2:52:17pm) 6/4/17 1:18:19pm (lockup at 6/4/17 12:46:19pm) 5/11/17 3:25:50pm (lockup at 5/11/17 10:33:50am) So clearly it never happened before 5/11/17 and I guess I’ll go and review the event logs before that to see if something in particular was installed, but this is pretty weird, no right? No error messages, the system just lock up and is dead instantly…? Interestingly after the second lockup on 6/22 which happened only 3 mins after the first one that day, the second one on 6/26 happened only 6 seconds after boot if I’m reading these timestamps right…though I didn’t notice until the next day, which is when I rebooted. Anyway, any ideas? Anyone seen this before? Any help or suggestions much appreciated! BINO
