computer freezes then recovers without crashes or error messages/logs

[Asagrim]

I consider myself an IT professional, but there is this issue I can't figure out, because no actual error message is associated with the occurrence.

Sometimes - unfortunately more and more often, which prompted me to write here - my explorer just freezes for 10-20 minutes, then recovers and everything continues as if nothing had happened. While the computer is freezing I can see in resource monitor that programs get to read my storage just fine, but writing doesn't happen and this is the ONLY abnormality I can associate with this occurrence. The event log records no error or anything related to this, every single program I have running at the time explorer starts freezing keeps working fine as long as it doesn't try to access storage for writing, then it freezes too and they all recover the same time, write their data and continue as if nothing had happened.

Could it be SSD trim going haywire? I have no idea, every test program I throw at it says it's in good condition (even the performance, considering the 54.2 TBW), besides, writing is denied for the duration of the freeze to hard drives as well. I can't think of anything, if I do not see an error message, I can't troubleshoot it.

Any ideas?

Thanks!

 

[DualBoot]

In my experience when random events like that happen its been either a bad driver or a failing drive..
the easiest way to check is to clone your drive to a known good drive and run that for a while, if all is ok then you know the drive is the issue, may just need reformatting to get rid of the glitch..

If the problem persists then its probably driver related either SSD, Video, and yes even Audio drivers can be a nuisance and jam a system up ..

also try different sata power and data cables...

 

[Asagrim]

Thank you for your suggestions!

drivers:

I'm a "If it ain't broke, don't fix it!" kind of guy, so I never update any software that works fine, including drivers. Most people encounter issues because they always mess around with their software environment, always updating everything 'just for the heck of it'. If I encounter application-specific issues that point to an outdated driver (like graphical glitches in a newly installed game), I update it, but only then. If a system is stable, I do not intentionally jeopardize that stability by updating software that is stable now. So this stability was definitely broken by something else than the new version of a software I use. This OS with these drivers used to be stable, so I don't see how a driver could cause this issue.

The only updates I get are updates I can not prevent, on Windows 8.1 that's my Antivirus, Chrome, Skype... so only security and internet software that insists on being updated to remain functioning. Nothing else.

cloned OS:

Unfortunately, am using all the drives I own, so if one of them is the culprit, placing the OS on a different drive won't clarify the issue further. I will definitely try this one as soon as I can lay my hands on a drive I haven't used before.

faulty cable:

My computer has been completely stationary for longer than the problem persists, but if cloning the os to a new drive will fix the issue I will definitely replace the cables and retry my SSD to make sure if I didn't fix the issue by moving a loose cable. I wouldn't want to buy a new SSD needlessly.


These freezes are so random I can have a computer that's freezing all day then it decides to work for the next two weeks flawlessly, and this change happens just by itself, without so much as a relog on my part. I think a hardware failure - even something as random as a damaged cable - would be causing issues less sporadically.