System locks every night

Question

There is a mixed opinion as to what action should be taken at the end of every day. Some will shut machines down, some will get up and leave them running and other may do something else. I was always taught to never turn off the machine unless it is necessary. So, because my screen saver has failed and does not work, every night I just shut off the screen and go to bed.

But for the past couple of months when I get up the next day and begin to work on the PC, it is locked. It will do nothing. Now please don't start on me about having too much open as I have 2t of hard drive space and 1t of memory and yes I have a lot of Excel files open, a few word files and some Chrome windows open. I always do, day in, day out.

But why is the system locking every day and when I say locking I mean locking. I can sit here and hit every key there is and NOTHING happens for hours on end. And then suddenly, it just begins working like nothing was ever wrong.

So, I have two questions:

1. What is causing this?
2. What can I do to prevent this?

Eh, sorry, I have a third question: Should I shut down the system every night?

Please advise.

And a quit note to Microsoft -
Sorry but I hate your new system and want the Microsoft Community back!

Answer 1

Hi there,

I'm Cherrelyn, and I’m here to help.

1. What’s causing this? This could be due to background updates, power settings, or memory/resource overload even if you have plenty of storage and RAM. Long uptimes with many apps left open (especially browsers and Excel files) may slowly lead to memory leaks or system freeze overnight.
2. What can you do?
   • Try updating all drivers, especially graphics and chipset drivers.
   • Review Power & Sleep Settings: Set your PC to avoid hibernate or hybrid sleep modes.
   • Use Task Scheduler or Reliability Monitor to check if something is running or crashing at night.
   • Run a system check: sfc /scannow in Command Prompt (admin) to rule out file corruption.
   • Restart your system every couple of days to reset memory usage and clear processes.
3. Should you shut down at night? Yes at least occasionally. While modern PCs can handle long uptimes, shutting down or restarting helps refresh system resources and prevents memory/resource-related lockups.

I hope this will help and if you have any question please don't hesitate to reply to this thread.

Warm regards,

Cherrelyn