thanks for the detailed post. I will test out this lead in my next freeze session. However, now that you mention it I get the following msg on my boot screen,
firmware: failed to load i915/skl_dmc_ver1_26.
i915 is the open source intel graphics driver, so does the above refer to a specific version of the driver ?
lsmod shows that the i915 module is loaded, furthermore
$ modinfo i915
filename: /lib/modules/4.13.0-1-amd64/kernel/drivers/gpu/drm/i915/i915.ko
license: GPL and additional rights
description: Intel Graphics
author: Intel Corporation
author: Tungsten Graphics, Inc.
firmware: i915/bxt_dmc_ver1_07.bin
firmware: i915/skl_dmc_ver1_26.bin
firmware: i915/kbl_dmc_ver1_01.bin
firmware: i915/kbl_guc_ver9_14.bin
firmware: i915/bxt_guc_ver8_7.bin
firmware: i915/skl_guc_ver6_1.bin
firmware: i915/kbl_huc_ver02_00_1810.bin
firmware: i915/bxt_huc_ver01_07_1398.bin
firmware: i915/skl_huc_ver01_07_1398.bin
the i915/skl_dmc_ver1_26 firmware is listed, does that means it is loaded after-all?