Hello, On a fresh installation of Windows 11. By "freeze" I mean the screen, mouse and keyboard just sit there. The only rescue is pressing the reset button. The problem occurs precisely 5 minutes after the sign in screen appears. Not 4m:50s, not 5m:10s but 5m:0s, always. I don't even need to sign in. I removed all extra disks, HW and video card to no avail. The problem does not occur in Safe Mode however. Combined with the precise timing of the problem suggests that some process is being started at 5 minutes. There are no errors leading up to the freeze in the Event Viewer. Any ideas how I can track down what is triggering the issue please?

I haven't fixed the issue on my Win 11 yet, I'm in the trial period of reinstalling to Win10 to see if the issue doesn't come back, and I have not had the chance to try the solutions here. I just wanted to share my findings while I was troubleshooting. I had this exact problem, 5 minutes, to the dot, after rebooting my computer would freeze, seems to just be mouse, keyboard, and screen(graphics) become unresponsive, but the computer is still running. Safe mode with networking doesn't freeze. This only happened after I upgraded to Win 11 and used it for about a week. I then bought a new hard drive, imaged it with a fresh Win 11: freezing resumed after about a week. Reimaged again, this time I didn't import my account settings, and just created a local account without signing in: Freezes again after about a week. I was able to narrow the issue down to it being some kind of a network communication trigger because disabling my network driver (I only connect via ethernet) prevented freezing. I then used a usb to ethernet adaptor suspecting a bad NIC or driver, but it resumed freezing again. My computer is old: 2016, so it doesn't have a TPM, has outdated CPU, BIOS, and other hardware. I hope this gets everyone a bit closer to resolving issue.

Windows 11 PC Freezes After Precisely 5 Mintues

Answer accepted by question author

Luis Capelo 40

I had this exact problem. 5 minutes after booting up, the computer would freeze.
turns out the Secure-Boot-Update scheduled task (something I didn't know even existed) was responsible.
triggering this task made the computer immediately freeze (reproduces the issue).
disabling this task made the computer work perfectly fine (works around the issue).

don't know what is wrong with the task, there is no useful information (that I could find) in system events. but this workaround may keep your machine running without having to reinstall windows.

run task scheduler
Microsoft / Windows / PI / Secure-Boot-Update <- disable the task.

Epistemon 45 Reputation points

2026-05-19T18:33:10.8066667+00:00

Great spot, thank you very much! Hope it helps others.

After a Windows reinstallation, it happened again a few weeks later. I tried to use System Restore points but that failed to, well, restore. I re-installed Windows a second time (Grrr!), about a month ago, and fortunately it now appears stable. I still have this task enabled though but so far, so good. I can see the 5 minute delay setting which explains the precision timing of the problem.

I'll definitely look at this next time it happens.

On the plus side, after all the installations I finally set-up and tested a decent Windows backup routine. I'm using Paragon Community Edition. Highly recommended.

If you have time, pls let us know how your determined it was this particular task out of all the tasks in Task Scheduler that was the cause.
Luis Capelo 40 Reputation points

2026-05-22T08:06:09.38+00:00

@Epistemon , this specific task was shown as a possible culprit by an LLM model, I think it may have been grok. I'd never have found it myself in a sea of possibilities... I did ask generically for possible causes for the freeze after 5 minutes, and it came up as the first thing to check.
Epistemon 45 Reputation points

2026-05-22T10:22:05.6566667+00:00

That's good info, many thanks.
Chris Tremonti 5 Reputation points

2026-06-02T14:38:37.5433333+00:00

Thank you so much! I was installing all kinds of drivers and so on.. used chat GPT as well and told it about the 5 minute thing.. nothing worked. This is it. I have a Alienware Aurora R5 and installed windows 11 with a bypass. (unsupported CPU..) This worked for me.
matten 0 Reputation points

2026-06-11T15:09:36.1766667+00:00

Thank You so much Luis Capelo! You are life saver. I spent days to fix my child PC that froze every time after 5min of use. I was totally devastated. Your answer helped me to fix the problem in 1 minute. Thank You again!
yb Sun 0 Reputation points

2026-06-17T14:22:08.8933333+00:00

Thk u for ur kindness and professionalism; u saved me from three days of troubleshooting
Akash 0 Reputation points

2026-07-05T10:10:03.6633333+00:00

Let me tell you guys permanent solution....just disable the secure boot from bios only for unsupported device
Frank Toh 5 Reputation points

2026-07-05T10:16:34.3733333+00:00
Goto: Search Bar/ Task Scheduler/ Task Scheduler Library/ Microsoft/ Windows/ PI/

Click PI/

Right Click Secure-Boot-Update/ Disable. Bingo!

Restart Computer. Hope those who face similar problems can resolve them. These are for those computers with 5 mins and 12 hours freezing schedules.
matten 0 Reputation points

2026-07-05T12:27:48.97+00:00

I had an issue with the 5 minutes freezing schedule. However got it solved thanks to the information I did got here.

There is new issue.When I enter the game Fortnite the same freeze issue steps in 10.00minutes in gameplay. There is no way I get access to Search Bar/ Task Scheduler/ Task Scheduler Library/ Microsoft/ Windows/ PI/Secure-Boot-Update/ Disable because I've already disabled and also deleted it.

Any other ideas in this matter?

//fixed - solution: went back to win10. serious conflict Fortnite Anti Spyware Kernel based security vs older platform not having TPM2.0. With Win10 the game runs flawlessly even on i7 4790k
Ian Garlick 0 Reputation points

2026-07-06T00:01:37.8166667+00:00

Many Thanks, Whatever it is it aint working
Alban 5 Reputation points

2026-07-18T10:19:44.14+00:00

@Luis Capelo You saved my PC. Thank you so much :) Secure-Boot-Update was the problem and I had tried all the other suggested solutions I had found. Yours was my last hope and it succeeded.

Windows 11 PC Freezes After Precisely 5 Mintues

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