How to find the culprit that freeze windows 10 when task manager is also frozen (till windows unfreezes)?

Question

When windows 10 freezes, task manager also freeze until windows become responsive.

Since the task manager opens only when the problem is gone, I can't count on it to find what freezes the computer.

How do you troubleshoot this?

Solution

One technique that might work to give you more information is to launch Task Manager (or whatever diagnostic program you want to use) on your PC at startup (at boot time; prior to the freeze you are troubleshooting), and then quickly switch to the Task Manager window when the problem occurs.

I used this method when I needed to figure out what process was causing odd (but short-lived) behavior on my PC. Launching Task Manager took longer than the odd behavior persisted, so I just ran Task Manager all the time until I was able catch the guilty process when that odd behavior occurred. The downside is that your diagnostic program will be using CPU cycles until you determine the guilty process.

If the freeze also stops your ability to switch windows, you may be forced to run it (and all other programs) windowed so that Task Manager is always visible, and hopefully when Windows freezes the guilty process will be visible.

Comments

[Kong Nan]

Maybe ProcessMonitor/PerformanceMonitor helps. superuser.com/a/453916/1065199 stackoverflow.com/a/11137028/11807952

[JinSnow]

That's interesting, I'll try. Thanks!