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Problem description: I built a brand new computer in early January this year. Only parts saved over was the case itself and a regular HDD. Starting mid-ish Febuary my computer started to freeze with no warning. It will just lock on whatever frame my computer is on and garble out static from the speakers until I hold down the power button. No BSOD, no Event Log message beyond "Computer did not properly shut down last time". I want to say it started when I updated my Nvidia GPU drivers from 362.00 to 364.47 but I can't say for sure. But I know since I upgraded to 364.47 this has been happening. Even when I downgraded back to 362. This has gotten worse then better then worse again. There's no pattern at all to what is happening. I can leave my computer running doing something all night long and not have it freeze, then once I'm up and at my computer, doing the exact same thing, it'll freeze randomly. I could leave a playlist of videos on repeat overnight, nothing. Sitting at my computer watching those videos, freeze. Used to happen during specific games, not it happens whenever the gently caress it wants as long as I'm awake to be pissed off by it. Attempted fixes: I've updated my Nvidia GPU drivers several times, now on 365.10. Every time I do a driver update I do a clean installation. I've updated my ASUS Z170-A motherboard from firmware 0602 to ver 1101. I know there are more up-to-date versions for that motherboard but all I can find are people saying they get stuck in boot loops or can't get past Post when they update to anything past 1101. I've been going through the event log and looking up every single error I could find that happened within an hour of the freeze but never found anything related to freezing. The problem is so vague and I have no real idea of what is screwing up that I can't find anything on Google that can help me out. I've tried all of the usual "Update everything, look at a bunch of tools" but nothing ever shows anything worthwhile. Crystal Disk Info says both Hard Drives are in good condition. MSI Afterburner says that nothing on my PC seems to be overheating. Recent changes: The only change that could have started this would have been the GPU driver update from 362.00 to 364.47. Even when downgrading them back the problem was still occurring. Only reason I even updated my drivers was because I had a game that when you hit launch the process would appear in the task manager for a split second before disappearing and nothing happening. And in the end could never get it working anyway, but the computer started freezing after that point in time. Maybe not because of it, but I don't know. -- Operating system: Windows 10 Pro, up to date. System specs: Motherboard - ASUS Z170-A. CPU - Intel i5 6600k 3.50GHz. 16GB RAM. GPU - Nvidia GTX 970. Windows install is on a Samsung EVO 850 SSD. Also have a 1GB Western Digital HDD. I have Googled and read the FAQ: Yes I'm sorry guys, I really don't know what to do anymore. Every time this happened I used to just right down every single event log error within the past hour before the freeze and look up every one of them. But I could never really get anywhere with them and could never find a connection between those errors and freezing. The only event log error that seems to have anything to do with the freezing has been just "Your system did not shut down properly" I am stressed out beyond belief and feel like I shouldn't even own a computer if it breaks this hard on me a month after I buy it. And I've just been too afraid to try and get help here because I know I'm gonna get berated for it. So I don't know, I wish my PC would stop freezing. Edit: Yea, I'm at the point where I'm seriously considering wiping everything and starting over. But with my slow rear end internet that'd be actual weeks of redownloading all the games I have right now. Plus I feel like I will just run into the problem again. Ularg fucked around with this message at 10:14 on May 5, 2016 |
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May 5, 2016 09:29
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| # ? Apr 25, 2024 18:29 |
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What's the brand and model of your power supply?
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May 5, 2016 16:49
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Have you checked the RAM? You could, e.g., try running Prime95 "Blend" test for a few hours. If you get an error (e.g. a rounding error) you may have a bad stick of RAM. Memtest86+ also tests RAM, but from what I have read Prime95 stresses the memory in ways Memtest86+ does not. Have you tried taking out your video card and using your onboard video for a few days? If there are no errors at least you've narrowed down the problem some. If onboard video is stable, you could try running your card in the other graphics PCIE x16 slot. If your system is stable, your primary PCIE slot may be bad. If the problem reappears, perhaps that's enough of a reason to RMA the card? Obviously if you have a spare PSU you can swap in, or another system you can test the card in, you have additional options to narrow down the problem.
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May 6, 2016 01:59
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Have you been getting the "Display driver stopped responding but has recovered" error message popping up?
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May 6, 2016 07:27
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Thank you guys, I'm going to go through everything suggested and post with the results for all of them. My sleep schedule is backwards, so I'm sorry for the long delay to replies.
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May 6, 2016 10:15
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Alereon posted:What's the brand and model of your power supply? EVGA 550 G2 Power Supply, brand new like the others (sorry I forgot to mention it). I still have the parts of my old computer, but they're about 6 years old now. It's a 900 watt psu. CaptainSarcastic posted:Have you been getting the "Display driver stopped responding but has recovered" error message popping up? Here are all the event viewer messages. When my computer freezes and I boot it back up I go into event viewer and wrote down any error that happened within the last hour. However I can't tell if one is an error that happened at or before the freezing or at boot up after the freezing. I've looked up pretty much every single error trying to find information but either there isn't any clear information or I just don't understand the fixes for it. Computer freezing, event viewer info posted:______________________________________________________________ Manifisto posted:Have you checked the RAM? You could, e.g., try running Prime95 "Blend" test for a few hours. If you get an error (e.g. a rounding error) you may have a bad stick of RAM. Memtest86+ also tests RAM, but from what I have read Prime95 stresses the memory in ways Memtest86+ does not. You're talking about this, right? If so I'll download Prime95 Blend and start running it in about an hour. As for the other parts I will need to come back to it after the tests, finding a way to stress test the onboard video card to see if it'll freeze just the same as my pc currently does trying to play Overwatch or The Division or any other GPU-intensive game.
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May 6, 2016 21:07
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Ularg posted:You're talking about this, right? Yes. That's old info but the details seem mostly right. You don't need to run multiple instances manually, the newer versions of Prime95 use multiple threads to test all your cores. Keep an eye on temps (core temps primarily) periodically as the test runs; things will get pretty hot and this can help diagnose an overheating problem. I use HWMonitor for this--I like how it keeps track of min and max values.
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May 6, 2016 22:02
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Manifisto posted:Yes. That's old info but the details seem mostly right. You don't need to run multiple instances manually, the newer versions of Prime95 use multiple threads to test all your cores. Keep an eye on temps (core temps primarily) periodically as the test runs; things will get pretty hot and this can help diagnose an overheating problem. I use HWMonitor for this--I like how it keeps track of min and max values. Thank you, Prime95 and HWMonitor downloaded and ready to go. Going to start it up in just a moment. Should I stop the test and shut down my computer if it ends up getting to hot? And how hot would that be? Here's a quick look at how it's at right now at idle. Just Chrome and Steam/Origin running. 
Ularg fucked around with this message at 22:32 on May 6, 2016 |
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May 6, 2016 22:29
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Those are good idle temps. Your processor will slow itself down if it gets into the range where damage is likely, so your risk of permanently harming the CPU is low. If the system gets into "borderline too high" territory, you may want to keep running the test for a bit longer and see if that's what's causing your instability. If, on the other hand, you're getting into "clearly far too high" territory, I'd stop Prime95 (your temps should go back down immediately) and probably look into reseating your heatsink. On temps, I'm not an expert and you might want to Google for yourself, but I would say that max temps in the 70s are probably OK, over 80 is too high, 90+ is where your processor will start throttling itself to cool down. If it were my computer I'd stop the test if the cores started getting in the 85 range, you shouldn't see anything that high if you're not overclocking. One important thing to consider is that Prime95 will probably work your processor harder than anything you're likely to encounter in normal usage, so slightly high temperatures aren't that big a deal as long as your system is stable. Good luck!
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May 7, 2016 01:09
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Thank you! The test appears to be going smoothly. The max temps my cores are getting to are 67C, which seems pretty low. Not sure if my AC is affecting it at all (I live in florida and I hate heat, so it's 76 F in my room.
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May 7, 2016 01:34
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Sorry, I need to stop the stress test for right now. I need to get some stuff done on my PC, and I'll rerun it when I'm going to bed and let it run a lot longer. But I hope what I have so far can help (seriously, I hope I just didn't screw everything up by stopping it) It was interesting to see my Task Manager display my CPU being at 100% workload. I can't even believe that the computer didn't freeze or have any problems running this thing.    These were taken a good bit apart to give an idea of how it handled along the way. And I wanted to double check Crystal Disk Info to see if there was anything I could have missed for being stupid. Regular HDD:  My SSD (Windows installed here):  Edit: Okay, done with what I needed to do. Sorry about that. Test is running again, I'm going to sleep. Will report sometime tomorrow. Ularg fucked around with this message at 04:22 on May 7, 2016 |
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May 7, 2016 02:53
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Left it running all night and up until just now. Woke up and found out the computer froze at some point. It just freezes on whatever frame it's on so I looked at the windows and didn't see any core temps over 64C max. There was nothing insane about anything there, it was the same as the screenshots from above.
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May 7, 2016 21:29
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You can check the log in the directory where you have Prime95, the log is called results.txt. Does it indicate any errors during your run?
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May 7, 2016 22:05
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quote:[Fri May 06 05:09:35 2016]
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May 7, 2016 22:20
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Hm, looks like you did not throw any errors, so unfortunately the test hasn't narrowed down your problem. I'd say it's worth using the onboard video for a while and see if your issue persists, that should help tell you if it's the card that's the problem.
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May 7, 2016 22:42
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What should I be testing exact while I'm running onboard video? Obviously limited in the amount of games I can play. Would I be able to run any kind of stress test to stream line it?
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May 7, 2016 23:05
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From your description, the lockups aren't correlated with the video card being stressed (it was presumably idle while you were running Prime95 and you still froze), so you can probably just use your system the way you do normally. Sure, run some games on low settings, run the Cinebench benchmark (the graphics part) if you feel like it.
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May 8, 2016 04:45
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I have absolutely no idea why. Originally I was going to wait for the Overwatch beta to end on May 9th, but by then my computer hasn't froze from all the Overwatch playing like it did before. So I kept playing games seeing if it would freeze. And It's now the 14th and my computer hasn't frozen once. Both running games and being idle not a single hiccup or freeze. And now I'm partly afraid of going through with the test if it's going to make the freezing come back.
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May 14, 2016 16:40
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I'm having the exact same issue - lockups are typically while GTA Online for me, but they occasionally happen while doing nothing in particular, like today. I also thought I'd fixed the issue, but sure enough it happened again. Ran the Prime95 blend test and it turned up nothing, after three hours this is what I had: http://imgur.com/jK5LLpn Log showed no failures, disk check and memtest also nothing. I'm playing GTA tonight, so I'll leave GPU-Z up and see if anything spikes if it locks up.
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May 14, 2016 17:22
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Ularg posted:I have absolutely no idea why. Originally I was going to wait for the Overwatch beta to end on May 9th, but by then my computer hasn't froze from all the Overwatch playing like it did before. So I kept playing games seeing if it would freeze. And It's now the 14th and my computer hasn't frozen once. Both running games and being idle not a single hiccup or freeze. With seemingly random errors they can come and go in annoying fashion. Generally in my experience when a computer can go two solid weeks with no BSODs/freezes it's probably clear of the issue.
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May 14, 2016 22:38
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Hey Ularg. Over the past week I've been having the exact same symptoms that you described in your OP. I tried all the diagnostic tests that people mentioned here but the solution in my case (pardon the pun) was simply that my CPU thermal paste needing replacing and heatsink was full of dust. Given that you've got a fairly new rig, it would be surprising that your CPU thermal paste would already be shot but it'd be worth a look if you haven't found a solution already. I cleaned out all the CPU heatsink dust while I was at it. Edit: just realised your PC passed all the Prime95 tests, please disregard my post. TimeWaster fucked around with this message at 22:09 on May 18, 2016 |
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May 18, 2016 12:43
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| # ? Apr 25, 2024 18:29 |
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After awhile of my computer working fine but nonetheless stressing me out with the possibility of freezing again it came back. But this time it was an actual bluescreen SO I GOT LOGS AND poo poo.quote:Windows stopped working quote:Windows Hardware Error I have been given .dmp files but with no clue how to read them and was given Access Denied when I tried to.
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Jun 7, 2016 02:58
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