Need help with PC Freezing issues.

If it's not ZDoom, it goes here.
User avatar
R4L
Global Moderator
Posts: 400
Joined: Fri Mar 03, 2017 9:53 am
Preferred Pronouns: He/Him
Operating System Version (Optional): Windows 11 Pro
Graphics Processor: nVidia (Modern GZDoom)
Contact:

Re: Need help with PC Freezing issues.

Post by R4L »

What was it plugged into? On your mobo you should have a 3 or 4 pin header for your CPU heatsink fan, and usually two or three chassis fan headers. They are always marked. CPU fans are especially important, because the BIOS has to tell the fan how to ramp up when it needs to cool down your processor. While you're at it, check every other connection you've made.
User avatar
Amuscaria
Posts: 6628
Joined: Mon Jul 26, 2004 12:59 pm
Location: Growing from mycelium near you.

Re: Need help with PC Freezing issues.

Post by Amuscaria »

R4L wrote:What was it plugged into? On your mobo you should have a 3 or 4 pin header for your CPU heatsink fan, and usually two or three chassis fan headers. They are always marked. CPU fans are especially important, because the BIOS has to tell the fan how to ramp up when it needs to cool down your processor. While you're at it, check every other connection you've made.
It was a 3-pin outlet, but wasn't labeled as for a fan. The Motherboard ran out of labeled fan sockets for my 6 fans in my tower, so I just used another one that fit the fan plug. I read on a thread on a forum that this might cause computer issues. Not sure if it fixed anything, as the computer freezes whenever it wants to. Going to update the drivers again in a few weeks, and see if that helps.
User avatar
Dr_Cosmobyte
Posts: 2755
Joined: Thu Jun 04, 2015 9:07 pm
Location: Killing spiders.

Re: Need help with PC Freezing issues.

Post by Dr_Cosmobyte »

I had some of these issues during a long time, they magically vanished when i re-built my pc. I'd go to check some basic stuff.

Sometimes even the BIOS 5V battery might be doing it. Try to reconnect it, as well as seeing if there aren't any cables or similar stuff disturbing the air entrances inside the gabinet.

Double check all connections, including video cards and off-board stuffs. Reconnect the RAM cards, video cards and HD cables. Also, if you by any means have a magnifying glass, give the MoBo a quick tour using it and check for any components that might be damaged. Your pc is probably new, but check if the capacitors aren't bloated on the top. I've seen some cases where the pc could run with them, but gradually become slower.
User avatar
R4L
Global Moderator
Posts: 400
Joined: Fri Mar 03, 2017 9:53 am
Preferred Pronouns: He/Him
Operating System Version (Optional): Windows 11 Pro
Graphics Processor: nVidia (Modern GZDoom)
Contact:

Re: Need help with PC Freezing issues.

Post by R4L »

6 fans? Wow... Technically, you can use a Y-splitter cable to plug two fans into one fan connector, but if your BIOS supports fan control (like most do) then I'd really not recommend it. Alternatively, you can use this cable or a lot of times, chassis fans have these already. Your PSU provides power to the fan through the 4 pin Molex connector, and the BIOS doesn't need to manage it. I use those because my mobo only has two chassis fan connectors, and because my case fans came with them! :)

But if your OS is still freezing, I doubt it's anything to do with that. Sounds like a bad driver, or a bad I/O port. My Rosewill case had a short on one of the USB 3.0 ports that caused my machine to randomly reboot when I had anything plugged into it. Really the only way to find out without re-installing the entire OS is to do a clean boot as suggested earlier, and see how it runs bare bones; no GPU plugged in, or WiFi cards or anything extra. Best of luck on your troubleshooting! My job requires a TON of troubleshooting, and a lot of times it's something simple like a bad DIMM of RAM or a bad PSU.
User avatar
Amuscaria
Posts: 6628
Joined: Mon Jul 26, 2004 12:59 pm
Location: Growing from mycelium near you.

Re: Need help with PC Freezing issues.

Post by Amuscaria »

The problem is, the freezes are so rare that It's hard for me to reproduce. When I first built it, it was freezes almost every 10 minutes watching a YouTube video with Chrome. I have since disable hardware accelerations and switched to Firefox. It's been getting better with updated drivers, but I still get the occasional lock-up. As for the fan, The mobo has 4 dedicated fan outlets, I already use a fan splitter for one of them. I ordered another one last night that should arrive by the weekend.

I've read quite a few forum posts about people having issues with the MSI network drivers locking up their computer. Going to update that again and see if it helps.
User avatar
Pandut
Posts: 231
Joined: Tue Mar 23, 2010 4:47 pm
Preferred Pronouns: No Preference
Graphics Processor: nVidia with Vulkan support
Location: existential dread

Re: Need help with PC Freezing issues.

Post by Pandut »

Have you checked the Event Viewer? It should log any errors that occur prior to a freeze-up. Control Panel - Admin Tools - Event Viewer, use the Windows Logs, Applications and System.
User avatar
Amuscaria
Posts: 6628
Joined: Mon Jul 26, 2004 12:59 pm
Location: Growing from mycelium near you.

Re: Need help with PC Freezing issues.

Post by Amuscaria »

Pandut wrote:Have you checked the Event Viewer? It should log any errors that occur prior to a freeze-up. Control Panel - Admin Tools - Event Viewer, use the Windows Logs, Applications and System.
I have, but I have no idea what it's saying. :/
User avatar
Pandut
Posts: 231
Joined: Tue Mar 23, 2010 4:47 pm
Preferred Pronouns: No Preference
Graphics Processor: nVidia with Vulkan support
Location: existential dread

Re: Need help with PC Freezing issues.

Post by Pandut »

Amuscaria wrote:
Pandut wrote:Have you checked the Event Viewer? It should log any errors that occur prior to a freeze-up. Control Panel - Admin Tools - Event Viewer, use the Windows Logs, Applications and System.
I have, but I have no idea what it's saying. :/
Yeah it's a bit vague. Sometimes they're detailed, other times they're just half a sentence. I have to google the shit out everything just to make heads or tails. It's weird to use at first but once you get the hang of it, it's a very useful tool for diagnosing computer problems. Scroll through and see if there's any Error, Warning or Critical events in the Systems and/or Applications logs. I'd keep tabs on what time exactly the freeze-ups happen, just to make looking through the log easier.

If you do see Error/Warning/Critical event, could you screenshot them like so?
User avatar
Reactor
Posts: 2091
Joined: Thu Feb 03, 2011 6:39 pm
Location: Island's Beauty, Hungary

Re: Need help with PC Freezing issues.

Post by Reactor »

Event Viewer is good for tracking back software errors. If the event does NOT show up in the Event Viewer, then it's more than likely to be a hardware issue.
User avatar
Amuscaria
Posts: 6628
Joined: Mon Jul 26, 2004 12:59 pm
Location: Growing from mycelium near you.

Re: Need help with PC Freezing issues.

Post by Amuscaria »

Welp, the last changes hasn't fixed my freezing. Looking thru Even Viewer, it lists two sources: It's either MSI Installer or WMI.

I get one error telling me MSI cannot write to the Akamai Network Admintool.exe. Reading some Microsoft posts suggest I uninstall it. So I did.

The second error, I get this:

"Event filter with query "SELECT * FROM __InstanceModificationEvent WITHIN 60 WHERE TargetInstance ISA "Win32_Processor" AND TargetInstance.LoadPercentage > 99" could not be reactivated in namespace "//./root/CIMV2" because of error 0x80041003. Events cannot be delivered through this filter until the problem is corrected."

No idea what this means. Couldn't find anything on google.

EDIT: Found this and ran this script: https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/win ... 515bf52c97
User avatar
Pandut
Posts: 231
Joined: Tue Mar 23, 2010 4:47 pm
Preferred Pronouns: No Preference
Graphics Processor: nVidia with Vulkan support
Location: existential dread

Re: Need help with PC Freezing issues.

Post by Pandut »

Hmm, honestly to me it sounds like a corruption during a Windows update, particularly SP1. Perhaps try to run windows repair? It *might* be possible to uninstall SP1 and reinstall it, but I'm unsure if it'd that a particularly stable route. All in all, it sounds like an Operating System error, not hardware.
User avatar
Amuscaria
Posts: 6628
Joined: Mon Jul 26, 2004 12:59 pm
Location: Growing from mycelium near you.

Re: Need help with PC Freezing issues.

Post by Amuscaria »

Welp, the latest changes I've made didn't make any difference. I just got a freeze 15 minutes ago, and Event Viewer shows no errors aside from the Hard-Reset error. Once again, it was with Chrome while watching Youtube. I'm switching to a plain install of Firefox instead with no Adblock plus to see if that's the problem. But Firefox loads sites MUCH slower than Chrome for some reason.

I've been running Memtest for the past day or so and it found no issues. I've also been running Coretemp and the CPU was at 25C when it froze, so it wouldn't have been Overheating. The Power Supply doesn't seem to have any problems either.

I'm wondering if I configured my SSDs wrong when I first built my computer. I followed some instructions online to configure the SSDs to work with Win7. No idea how I would check this, though.
User avatar
Reactor
Posts: 2091
Joined: Thu Feb 03, 2011 6:39 pm
Location: Island's Beauty, Hungary

Re: Need help with PC Freezing issues.

Post by Reactor »

This is gonna get ugly, Amuscaria. If you are not sure what exactly causes this, but you're unfamiliar with hardware, I strongly recommend you to visit a specialist. Sure, it costs money, however, if you start tinkering around without sufficient knowledge, your rig will end up in a much worse shape. At least this is how usually I handle such mysterious performance errors...so far, it proved useful.
User avatar
R4L
Global Moderator
Posts: 400
Joined: Fri Mar 03, 2017 9:53 am
Preferred Pronouns: He/Him
Operating System Version (Optional): Windows 11 Pro
Graphics Processor: nVidia (Modern GZDoom)
Contact:

Re: Need help with PC Freezing issues.

Post by R4L »

What steps did you take to install Windows 7 on an SSD? I remember when I first tried installing Win7 on a new SSD, a SanDisk 128GB, it originally would not install because it was partitioned with GPT format. Had to use diskpart to convert it to MBR, and then did a clean to make it usable. Also, are you RAIDing your SSDs? If so, what management utility are you using?
User avatar
Amuscaria
Posts: 6628
Joined: Mon Jul 26, 2004 12:59 pm
Location: Growing from mycelium near you.

Re: Need help with PC Freezing issues.

Post by Amuscaria »

Well, the problem seems to have been solved. I looked thru the drivers list and found that I had 2 NVidia sound drivers installed, as well as a RealTek sound driver. I Disabled the NVidia Virtual Wave driver and the Realtek driver. Additionally, I've switched over the Opera browser instead of Chrome. Videos load faster (for some reason), and Youtube hasn't frozen my computer since. I've also updated my NVidia video graphics driver after using DDU for a clean install. So one or more of those things fixed the issue. Hasn't frozen for a week since, despite constant video streaming. I do get a temporary 2-3 second Freeze in Photoshop CC occasionally, but it's not permanent like before. Fingers crossed. :D
Post Reply

Return to “Off-Topic”