My PC constantly freezes if I'm not playing a game or have a game running.
✅ If I'm playing a game, it's fine.
✅ If I have a game running in the background while doing other stuff, it's fine.
❌ If I leave my PC while playing a game and the lock screen pops up, it will freeze.
❌ If I do anything other than gaming, such as browsing the web or digital art, PC will freeze.
❌ If PC goes to sleep overnight, it will freeze.
The frozen PC will typically show no error code and display will show "no input" until I hard reset.
If I hard reset, it often won't successfully turn back on unless I move the mouse while it's resetting, otherwise it will freeze again on the windows loading screen.
Sometimes I will actually get a blue screen with the error code of DPC_Watchdog_Error or something like that.
Anyone know where I should look first to try and fix this? It's been happening for weeks now and it's driving me crazy. I can't figure it out.
Nope, seemingly any game, but they are all through Steam so not sure if maybe it's steam related. I also have some sort of Asus game performance booster that turns on when games are running, can't remember what it's called.
Try uninstalling the Asus game performance booster, restart, and then see if the problem persist. If it does, try uninstalling steam next.
Edit: I want to add that the fact the freezing only happens when software isnt running makes me believe its software related. If i had to guess, possibly a program or utility that runs alongside the game and may even run at startup. If it was the same game everytime, then I would suspect the game install first, but since any game keeps the system running fine it makes me think the issue stems from software running only during game play for all games. Getting a blue screen error makes me think the problem software is something with elevated system access and, before your response, my intial suspicion was a bad AntiCheat install. If i had to guess, your game boosting software might be trying to run when games arent creating a conflict somewhere (maybe unresponsive programs windows cant resolve).