Win 11 upgraded from Win 10 - freezes in browser(s), when inactive for a while

I'm posting this way after the fact and after my resolution of the issue but thought it might be useful (and maybe others have seen this and will agree with my conclusion [or not]).

Two machines:

• Lenovo T5 Desktop, Core i7-10700, 16GB RAM, Nvidia 1660 Super
• LG Gram 13Z990 notebook, Core i5-8265U, 8GB RAM, Intel UHD Graphics (620?)

Both were running Win10 fully updated as of December 2022. Both were running perfectly. (Yeah, I know, so why upgrade?)

I used the "upgrade" method suggested by Microsoft in Windows Update on both machines. The upgrades were completed without any issues. There were some additional updates subsequently installed (all through Windows Update). Those completed without issue.

Very soon thereafter, both systems began freezing. I'm not referring to any sort of transient "seconds-long" or even "minutes-long" pauses; rather, these were hard freezes immediately after some user interaction involving the mouse (or trackpad, in the case of the LG). I would click on a window's menu (in Windows Explorer or TBird) and occasionally it would drop down but everything froze; or I would click on a browser's bookmarks folder and it would (or would not) drop down and then freeze. Again, I'm not talking about an app being frozen and using Task Manager to restart it; I'm referring to a complete system freeze - totally unresponsive, requiring a long press on the power button to power off the unit and then powering it up again.

I'll mention that, regardless of the web browser used (Edge, Firefox, Chrome), the same issue occurred; and as the freeze would occur after a period of time even without using a web browser, I felt that which browser I was using didn't matter.

The amount of time from initial boot to freeze was random; sometimes it would be a few hours but occasionally within a few seconds.

As the common thread between these units was a Win10 > Win11 upgrade, I'm thinking there was some detritus left over from Win10 that Win11 was using (and would have, with a clean installation, created proper files anew). I backed up my data files and used a Win10 flash drive (thank you, Rufus) to boot, wipe, and then install Win10 from scratch. I followed up with my usual apps and whatever Win10 updates Windows Update requested. No more freezes.

I was going to try a Win11 clean installation but, as everything is back to working flawlessly, why bother? Well, if I'm going to buy a new machine which might only work with Win11, wouldn't it be prudent to check if Win11 is actually stable on machines that Microsoft claims are ready for Win11? Then all my machines can run the same OS version (as I'm not going to replace all of them at once).

The wise words of forum members are always appreciated. Thanks.
Barry

In this guide, you will learn the steps to perform a clean boot on Windows 11 and Windows 10 to help you troubleshoot and determine conflicts in your setup.