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Need help with PC Freezing issues.

Posted: Sun Nov 12, 2017 2:22 pm
by Amuscaria
I've been having my computer randomly lock up for no reason since I've built the thing a year ago. I originally thought it was Chrome and Youtube, which is when most of the freezes happen. I've since updated drivers and switch to Firefox when watching videos. However, it seems to be completely random now. I can be typing in notepad, or be in MS paint and it would lock up. I'm talking about a complete lock when even the NUM LOCK button doesn't work and forcing me to hard-reboot. No idea what the issues is, since I've just updated my drivers from the manufacturer last week.

Any idea where I can find a log of what is happening? Or ways to pin point whether or not it's a hardware or software issue?

Re: Need help with PC Freezing issues.

Posted: Sun Nov 12, 2017 2:35 pm
by Kappes Buur
To first thing to come to mind is the temperature of components.
I use Speccy and GPU-Z to monitor component health.
If the temps are high, open the computer case and use a blast of
canned air to blow away dust clogging up the fans and heatsinks.

Re: Need help with PC Freezing issues.

Posted: Sun Nov 12, 2017 2:47 pm
by Amuscaria
Kappes Buur wrote:To first thing to come to mind is the temperature of components.
I use Speccy and GPU-Z to monitor component health.
If the temps are high, open the computer case and use a blast of
canned air to blow away dust clogging up the fans and heatsinks.
I'll give those a try. I use "Core Temp" software monitor the temp, and they rarely go over 25C normally. The thing is, it never freezes when I'm running a game that is both CPU and GPU intensive. I can play games for 10 hours straight, and it wouldn't haven issue. But I go on Youtube for 30 minutes, or I start typing or drawing, it freezes randomly from time to time. I originally thought it was the sound drives, but it freezes even without music or sound running. I'm going to check the sound drivers next. I remember having 2 sound drivers on the computer which caused issues when I first put the thing together. I thought I fixed the issue, but who knows.

I just ran a windows memory test and nothing was detected. Going to swap out my ram sticks with some new ones and see if that's the issue. Is there a log that I can read that tells me when or what the computer is running when it locks up?

Re: Need help with PC Freezing issues.

Posted: Sun Nov 12, 2017 3:01 pm
by Kappes Buur
I've never used the build-in windows memory test app, so I cannot give you an opinion on its merit.
To check RAM I burned a bootable CD with Memtest 86+ v4.00, although nowadays one would use a
flashdrive stick, and let it run for several hours.

There are a few youtube videos on how to deal with the program.

Re: Need help with PC Freezing issues.

Posted: Sun Nov 12, 2017 4:07 pm
by Clay
this was happening to mine as well. I don't t have the savvy others do with this but I can tell you to look in your task manager for a "Microsoft c register" or something like that. This thing ruined me for a while and no scan would alert me to it. just something to look at.

Re: Need help with PC Freezing issues.

Posted: Sun Nov 12, 2017 5:20 pm
by Nevander
What is your anti-virus? Back when I still used Avast, it would randomly freeze my computer. Hard lock and restart required. Uninstalled that crud and switched to the basic MSE. No problems since.

Re: Need help with PC Freezing issues.

Posted: Sun Nov 12, 2017 8:52 pm
by Amuscaria
Nevander wrote:What is your anti-virus? Back when I still used Avast, it would randomly freeze my computer. Hard lock and restart required. Uninstalled that crud and switched to the basic MSE. No problems since.
It's definitely Avast. :P. I just don't know any free anti-virus thing to use, since I've used Avast for a decade now. I've never had any issue with it before, and my previous computer has never frozen. If MSE is enough for basic protection, then I'll give that a try.

Re: Need help with PC Freezing issues.

Posted: Mon Nov 13, 2017 9:09 am
by wildweasel
MSE/Windows Defender for basic protection, and VirusTotal for on-demand file scans.

Re: Need help with PC Freezing issues.

Posted: Mon Nov 13, 2017 11:33 am
by Reactor
This can very well be a hardware issue. I'd take a short glance on the capacitors around the CPU. I remember having this issue multiple times on Abit Albatron and Asus motherboards. Thankfully the capacitors didn't burst yet, but they were quite lumpy, so I could get it fixed for a rather cheap price, 2000 forint (about 7 dollars). Better take a look just to make sure they're fine and feeling great in there.

Re: Need help with PC Freezing issues.

Posted: Mon Nov 13, 2017 2:25 pm
by R4L
Are you using an AMD video card? My RX-470 would freeze my PC up if I played HD video on YouTube. The solution was to turn off hardware acceleration in Chrome, or whatever browser you use.

Re: Need help with PC Freezing issues.

Posted: Tue Nov 14, 2017 8:44 am
by Amuscaria
R4L wrote:Are you using an AMD video card? My RX-470 would freeze my PC up if I played HD video on YouTube. The solution was to turn off hardware acceleration in Chrome, or whatever browser you use.
Nope; GTX 1070. I've tried turning off Hardware Acceleration. It's not just Youtube videos. I can doing nothing at all and it would freeze. Seems completely random. Gonna take out the CPU and Ram and see if something is wrong with it. It's also possible that my SSD with Windows on it is acting up. Although I dunno how to check it.

Re: Need help with PC Freezing issues.

Posted: Tue Nov 14, 2017 9:27 am
by R4L
Are you overclocking at all? When I built my first rig, I had an AMD Athlon x4 880k OCed to 4.5GHz. Anything higher would cause it to freeze up randomly, and that's even running at cool temps. Same with my RX-470... ASUS has an "overclock" profile under GPU Tweak II, and it made my entire system unstable until I reduced clock speed slightly.

Also, I'd use Blue Screen View to see if Windows is dumping anything when it locks up. I'd also run an elevated command prompt, and do a "sfc /scannow" to check for errors, and do an error-check on your main drive. You'd be surprised how often this fixes things.

If all else fails, you can do a clean boot, where you disable all non-Microsoft services running in msconfig. Then you enable them one by one until you can reproduce the problem. It's tedious as all hell, but still a good idea none the less. We do this at my job some times. I also personally use USBDeview and DevManView to see all drivers installed on my machine, because it also tells you when they were installed, and when they were last used. Really helps if it is a driver issue.

I use Avast as well and have no issues, but if you would like an alternative, AVG is still around and works well. Clam-AV is another one too although it is not aesthetically pleasing.

EDIT: Seems NirSoft has just about everything... try WhatIsHang

Re: Need help with PC Freezing issues.

Posted: Tue Nov 14, 2017 11:02 am
by ibm5155
If not even a blue screen is given so it may (I'd put 100%) be a hardware fault.
-I'd beat one cookie that the gpu is dying, and that guy is weird to debug, like, it may not crash when using some stress software like furmark, but it may even crash while using a simple software like notepad...
If your cpu has an integrated graphics I'd sugest to remove your dedicated gpu and test the system only with the integrated on.

Other thing that you could do is to boot a live cd from ubuntu and while on startup, see if there aren't some error messages that are coming from the gpu

Re: Need help with PC Freezing issues.

Posted: Tue Nov 14, 2017 12:42 pm
by Reactor
I'm not entirely sure that it's the GPU. So far when my VGA card was kicking the bucket, it caused sudden and unrecorded restarts in 90% of the cases (especially during overheat) not a solid freeze. And it also likes to throw out BSoD errors, much like faulty memory modules. And after a while, the computer didn't boot at all. To verify this, you should play games which require no VGA card whatsoever, like old MS-DOS games. If these work flawlessly, then it is indeed a GPU fault. If not, you have to search for the culprit somewhere else...motherboard, CPU, power supply. If you have no leaky capacitors whatsoever, then I'm pretty much out of ideas...I was never good with hardware problems apart from giving the rig a good ol'slapping :D

Re: Need help with PC Freezing issues.

Posted: Tue Nov 14, 2017 4:31 pm
by Amuscaria
I *think* I might have found the problem. I plugged one of the fans into a non-fan power node on my motherboard. Not sure if matters. I just assumed "if it fits, it works". :P I'll see if this helps. Going to check if my MSI Z170a Gaming Mobo is overclocking my CPU for no reason. Will report later.