System Freezes in curious situations

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slyronit

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Hi Team,


Frequently, my system has started freezing randomly. By freezing I mean no BSOD, no crash dumps, nothing. Everything freezes and the only way to recover is to to a power reset. Here's a breef descripion of the compoents and history

68ks.png


OS is Windows 8.0, latest build.

Here're the various activities I perform on the computer everyday along with the chances of generating the feeze

ocuw.png


As you can see, some of my parts are less than a month old, so I would asume that my old PSU can no longer take the load and is thus failing. However, the power calculator here says I have plenty of juice to power my components I paid for the Pro version which provides the Ampere usage for each rail (+12V/ 5V etc) and I see that I amsafe even in that area. Currently, I don't know what to do. Any ideas would be welcome.

I can buy a new PSU, if I was somehow sure that the new one would be fine. However, I spent a lot on my hardwre aleady and don't want to buy newcomponents blindly.

Would appreciate your help/tips on this.
 
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p4nz3rm4d

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From what ive seen on the report, most of the freezing occurs when the hard drive is heavily used. The psu could be faulty, but it isnt showing any signs of damage. If it were the problem, your computer would crash totally - as if the power was cut, and gaming would be on the top of that list, as it uses the PSU the most. I see the HDD1 is 5yrs old. When you are syncing your phone, what drive is it from? The other thing it could be is graphics. Try reinstalling the drivers or finding an older stable build of them. The chart specified that the temps are OK, and that it was reseated, but neither of those rules out a possibility of it being the cause.
 
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slyronit

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Thank you for your reply. My music is on the 500Gb hard drive, which is only a few days old. I have tried using the system without the 5 year old drive, but it doesn't matter, it still freezes.

The 4850 GPU is currently using Windows WDDM drivers. I tried using the Catalyst drivers (Not officially available from ATI, as this card is not supported in Windows 8 anymore) from Sapphire, but same problem. I have a new 7870 coming in this weekend, so that will rule out the GPU entirely.

It cannot be either of the HDDs, as I have faced the problem without either of them connected. It can however be the SSD. I know disk tools check for bad sectors etc, but is there a tool that can stress test the SSD? SMARTS reports all fine with it. I also changed the SATA cables of all the disks and moved them from SATA ports 1,2,3 to 4,5,6. Same issue.

By the way, I had a CPU stress test going on now, it was past 1 hour and stable. When I cancelled it and closed the window, it froze.

 
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p4nz3rm4d

p4nz3rm4d

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Was it the exact same freeze? Try replicate it again. If it is your CPU, it might just be chipset drivers. I'm leaning towards saying it is still the gpu, as I have seen similar issues to this blamed on something to do with the card; whether it be drivers or hardware. I highly doubt it is the ssd, as they are generally built tough. The easiest way to stress test it is by simply copying a large file from it to something fast, say a USB3 flash drive. The speed and size of the transfer should push it hard enough to find a fault.
 
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Tom Tancredi

Tom Tancredi

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1) yes the PSU would need to be replaced anyway for the 7870 . First per their own website (http://www.amd.com/us/products/desktop/graphics/7000/7870/Pages/radeon-7870.aspx#2 500W (or greater) power supply with one 75W 6-pin PCI Express power connector ) add in multiple mechanical drives and your looking better at 650W.
2) Yes the old card is going to not handle High Games without just bellying up. Further you knew it was NOT supported by W8, so you kludged together a 'fix', well I don't think it is sticking and won't stick. SO yes the 7870 was already the smart move and your being redundant to ask what else you can do without that card being replaced AND the PSU
3) SSD space, how much is left? You can really hose it up if your under 15% available. Secondary to that did you shift all the Log files, profiles, My Documents, My Videos, etc. to the second drive and NOT to the SSD. If your SSD is constantly running all the temp folders, you still have Virtual Memory (Paging File) enabled on the SSD, etc. There is alot of 'tweaks' and mods to change the way the system works, alot of it was covered with my Samsung SSD included Manager program, that set some of them, but many more have to be constantly done by hand (like installing a new game, or program, going under preferences and remapping by hand to your second drive).
I would HIGHLY suspect that the problem is the SSD is hitting the 'wall' because of the lack of space / not being 'tweaked' to perform as a SSD not as a HDD (the default setting for all Windows based OSes and Programs).
 
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slyronit

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Yes exact same freeze. the gpu will be ruled out by this weekend. I shall test the SSD

 
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slyronit

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You're right. I would need a new PSU for the new card anyway. Does the Antec 650W look good?

Well, the Graphics card is not exactly "unsupported", it just doen't officially support Catalyst drivers, it works fine with Windows WDDM drivers and has been doing so for over a year. Still, the new Graphics card is on its way.

The SSDD is not being ill-treated by me. Here's a screenshot.

vgx2.png


The first 2 partitions are on the SSD. The first one holds only Windows and the Page file, nothing else. The second partition holds softwares. I did this because these are the things I need good read rates from.

The 3rd and 4th partitions are on my new 500Gb hard disk. The last partition is on my old 160Gb hard disk and is the place where all my downloads go.
 
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slyronit

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I ran a few more tests using Heavy Load stress tool. Here's the situation now

1. CPU Benchmark - 100% CPU on all 6 cores for 2 hours, still stable. Temperature stable at 56 degrees
2. CPU/GPU/Memory benchmark - 100% CPU on all 6 cores, 100% GPU load, Memory filled 12Gb out of 16Gb, still stable. Temperature stable at 56 degrees for CPU and 58 degrees for GPU
3. Did SSD benchmark using AS SSD Benchmark many times, stable.
4. Started syncing music from my PC to my phone, froze within 5 minutes
5. Started watching Season 4 of Frasier, froze in 15 minutes (tried both WMP and VLC)

Since the system remains stable under intense benchmarks, I assumed that the problem might note with the hardware integrity of the components, but with the drivers.

I installed AMD chipset drivers(AHCI/USB) (replacing the default MS ones), but the SSD performance turned to crap (bootup now took 9 seconds instead of 4) and the problem prevailed.

I am re-installing Windows in a last ditch attempt to troubleshoot this before the new GPU/PSU come in.

 
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slyronit

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Format/Windows installation rom scratch didn't fix anything. It froze 3 times already which checking for updates/refreshing media player library.

T new GPU will be the next step I guess.
 
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slyronit

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Guys!

The SSD is not the problem, I installed Windows on a different HDD and took the SSD out of the equation entirely, problem persists. The SMPS and the GPU will be replaced this weekend, but I suspect it is the motherboard, which would be bad, as I would have to wait for a replacement for months maybe.

Obbyb1 - Nothing looks wrong with the capacitors on visual inspection.
teddymines - The PSU will be replaced this weekend

un1l.png


The odd part is that everything is stable during the most intensive benchmarks, it just dies in some peculiar situations.
 
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Tom Tancredi

Tom Tancredi

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....
The first 2 partitions are on the SSD. The first one holds only Windows and the Page file, nothing else. The second partition holds softwares. I did this because these are the things I need good read rates from.
....

Understood, but this is in error as your 'need good read rates from' is a HDD reader thinking NOT SSD. SSD you don't 'improve' read rates, the rates stay the same based on several things, mainly the tabling of the items repeatedly used (exe, dll, etc.) to improve the 'first need first load' way SSD works. So partitioning actually causes more issues then resolves. Secondly, SSDs have LESS lifespan then HDDs based on read / writes, so if your GBs per day of Page File reads and writes, you will use up the SSD in no time flat. You need to NOT be running any Paging on the SSD, nor running any temp files, log files, etc. Worst case I seen so far was someone 'burned out' the SSD in 12 months because they just went 'default' on everything, then were downloading / ripping DVD movies weekly, so alot of Gbs written during proccessing, reading during processing, then storage and wondered why 'things' weren't working right on such a 'new' system.
 
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Tom Tancredi

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Falls over laughing hysterically!!! OMG!!!! You had to wait a extra 5 seconds? How would you have ever survived in the 1990s-2000s when we turned on the PC as we took off our jackets at work, then went and got a cup of coffee, came back and that would been just enough time for the computer to get to 'Login' window.

I am sorry but that was the most funniest thing I seen in a long time. WOW.
 
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Tom Tancredi

Tom Tancredi

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I do note your running DDR2 memory instead of DDR3, is there a reason?
Second question is: Have you confirmed the phone is Win8 compatible drivers?
Third question is: Have you installed 8.1 over the reinstall of Win8, and see if this clears the issues as well? I know alot of drivers (Catalyst, etc.) are for 8.1 and maybe not fully Win8.0 compatible if you mistakenly installed one (just taking a stab).

Well none of this resolves things, may I suggest this solution then:
Head to Walmart / Walmart.com, pick up a new i5 Core PC for $399. GO through setup (make it the same name user account and PC name), make backup disks, etc. Then after confirm out of the box works 100% of the time, with free antivirus like AVAST/ AVG, added Malwarebytes, got rid of bloatware, etc. Make a backup image of it using Windows Backup. Now try your 'test failures' and see if you still have the problem.

If no problem, then install your new Video card and PSU, and boot, see if it all works nicely and 100%. Now try your 'test failures' and see if you still have the problem.

If everything is still great then get the DVD backup Disks out and wipe the HDD with DBAN, install the SSD, and do a restore to the SSD, noting to make the changes (read the top 10 search result articles by the Pros here https://www.google.com/search?q=Add+SSD+to+PCtweaks&oq=Add+SSD+to+PCtweaks&aqs=chrome..69i57j0j69i64.12814j0j1&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8) and then see if things stay stable. Now try your 'test failures' and see if you still have the problem.

If everything keeps working correctly, then yes the Mobo/Cpu/Memory failure was occuring. IF during this process you find it 'fail again' then you know which device (first step tests a out of the box system against your phone, etc.; second step test the video, etc.) is the final culprit and you can make your decisions on what you want to do next.
 
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p4nz3rm4d

p4nz3rm4d

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Of course this seems silly on paper, but if you think about it, it is a bigger deal. The bootup time has more than doubled. If it were a spinning hard drive, it could be a matter of minutes instead on 30 seconds. That would be more noticeable. This observation is one of grave importance if cause and effect have anything to do with troubleshooting, which they do at this stage. So now we know that the MS drivers are the way to go.
 
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Tom Tancredi

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Actually your both mistaken on that. Any testing done with a SSD requires at least 5 uses (that is boot, open normally used programs, then shut down and repeat) before the SSD sets the table to use the correct files should load first, causing a 'faster' boot time. So YES, if just switching drivers from MS to the Manufacturer and reboot once or twice, yes you won't see 'speed' right off (see Tom's Hardware review of SSD and how they performed the testign they specifically mention this when comapring to SSHD and HDD).
What should have been done was to use the drivers from the Manufacturer's website, then wait a few reboots to see IF then a difference occurs. Normally the results are ACTUALLY OPPOSITE to his, because the Microsoft drivers are usually generic in nature, while the Manufacturer will include specialized tweaks to maximize product / model performance and marketable 'differentials' between brands / models.

 
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slyronit

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Hi Tom,

The SSD is not causing the freezing. I removed it, installed Windows on the HDD and still saw the same issue.
Thanks for the tips though. Will move some frequently read/written stuff off the SSD.

Well, I was just trying to say how the AMD AHCI drivers did not help, but just sowed down the SSD performance. And yes, I was around in the 90s and had a computer starting with the 486DX, I know how low things were then.
 
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slyronit

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Hi Tom

That was a typo. Its DD3.

I am in India, I just can't pick up a new computer and then return it later. I would rather replace my motherboard/PSU instead of spending 300$ on things I can't return later.

I wish I knew a computer enthusiast who could loan me the parts, but they are all for Laptops/Tablets/Consoles these days
 
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slyronit

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Hi Tom,

Yes, I read on forums later that AMD AHCI drivers are actually not very good.
 
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slyronit

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The SSD performance remained slow after multiple bootups. Anyways, the SSD is not the problem.

I am going to get a new PSU now. IT might not solve the problem, but mine is 5 years old anyways and with the 7870 on the way, I might need a better one anyways. IF that doesn't solve the problem, the GPU will be replaced this weekend.

If even that doesn't solve the problem, I will get the Motherboard, Processor and RAM all replaced under warranty, as they are only a month old.

Will report if the new PSU changes anything.

 
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slyronit

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Also, the phone is a Windows phone 8, so the drivers it pulls from Windows Update are definitely Windows 8 compatible. The problem is not only with the phone though (or any other USB devices, as I vacated all USB ports except a mouse), it freezes while watching videos as well.
 
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