Windows Freezes for 5-10 seconds every few minutes.

[Guest tdemerse]

After upgrading to Win 8.1 I have had some experiences with my computer freezing for 5-10 seconds every few minutes. Music continues to play, the curser continues to blink (although sometimes it freezes too), and the mouse can be moved, but trying to type doesn't work, and trying to close, open, move or otherwise interact with programs (both desktop and modern apps) fails. Then, at the end of the brief freeze, everything that was done during the freeze happens all at once. Restarting the computer breaks the trend until it starts up again (sometimes hours later, other times days).

 

 

There doesn't appear to be any overheating issues, SFC came up clean, and the problem only cropped up recently (although before it happened occasionally with IE only but that stopped). I don't run 3rd party antivirus and defender is coming up clean, and so did the McAfee free scan.

 

 

My computer is an up to date Dell XPS 1520 running Windows 8.1 Update 1.

 

 

One last note, the issue seems to happen at times when I use Windows' built in File Backup system. I can't actually think of any time it started when I wasn't hooked up to the backup media, although it persists after disconnecting. I have used three different backup media types so I am not sure if one of the external disks is causing it, but I will look into that now.

 

OT: Occasional Windows Freezes

 

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