I recently hit a really frustrating snag with my Windows 11 machine that left me tearing my hair out—and I’m thrilled to finally share my fix in case it helps someone else!
For about a week, every time my PC woke up from sleep, the whole system would freeze for a few agonizing seconds. The symptoms were odd: when I moved my mouse after sleep, I’d see the pointer bounce around, then nothing would work—the taskbar became unresponsive, apps took forever to open, and sometimes the desktop icons wouldn’t redraw at all. I assumed it was a driver issue or some residue from the last Windows update.
My first line of investigation was the usual suspects. I updated my graphics drivers to the latest version, ran the Windows troubleshooter for power/sleep configurations, and even did an SFC scan to check for corrupted system files. None of that helped. I even booted into Safe Mode to see if the issue was being caused by any third-party startup programs, but the problem still crept in after sleep wake-up.
After hours of hunting online, I came across a suggestion to disable “fast startup”—a setting that’s turned on by default in Windows 11 and is known to cause odd behavior on some systems. I wasn’t expecting much, but figured I had nothing left to lose. I went to Control Panel → Power Options → Choose what the power buttons do → Change settings that are currently unavailable, and then unchecked “Turn on fast startup.” After saving the change and rebooting, I tested it out: I put my PC to sleep, woke it up, and—voilà—the freeze was gone!
I can’t express how relieved I am. It turns out that the fast startup feature, while designed to speed things up, was causing my system to bypass some of the normal initialization routines, resulting in these intermittent freezes. I’d advise anyone experiencing similar post-sleep issues to give this setting a try. Just be aware that if your machine boots a tad slower, that’s the trade-off for a stable wake-up routine.
Has anyone else experienced this? I’d love to hear your thoughts or any other quirky fixes you’ve stumbled upon. Happy computing!
