One word ... Acronis.
I was hesitant to do a fresh install, and re-install eveything I had before. I did some digging and found a windows 10 forum where there were 100's of complaints similar to mine. There were many suggestions, and I tried a couple without any success, but a few suggestions indicated Acronis 2014 and 2015 were culprits.
I had originally got an OEM version of Acronis 2014 with my Crucial MX100 256GB SSD. A few people had indicated that once they upgraded their versions of Acronis, the hanging stopped.
So I bit the bullet and spent $60 on a five system upgrade to Acronis 2016, and lo and behold my system hanging has stopped. Also, I noticed that (at least) one of my backup drives (have 2 additional regular drives in the z800) was constantly being read and the disk head was clicking every few seconds. That problem has also stopped. I have rebooted a couple of times, and my system has been up at least five hours without it hanging. Everything seems normal again.
I never did have to upgrade to the new BIOS.
It's pretty lame that Acronis seems to be causing a lot of people grief, and that it required a purchased upgrade for my system to be useable again. It also doesn't help that Microsoft allows an install without indication that this software on the system may not be compatable.
SO .... I also have a z400 that is running Windows 7, that I may also upgrade now since I think I may have found the issue.
Thanks for all your help SDH!!
Eric
