- Aug 27, 2015
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- 0
- 4,510
Hello people, I have a problem that I can't get rid of.
You see, last week, on Dec. 21 I installed a new SSD, of 120GB. Of course, I had a bootable USB with Windows 10 on it so I went and intstalled Windows on my new SSD. I re-installed programs, etc. Everything was fine. I installed Skyrim on the SSD so I could see how it ran. Everything was perfect, I played skyrim for like a week.
Then, I bought Rise of the Tomb Raider. Installed it on the HDD (did so to save space on the HDD). I played for a few hours. Everything fine.
But then, on Dec. 27th, I read an article about Avira being a good antivirus so I installed it. But when it got at like around 99%, the computer crashed. I could still move the cursor, I could still Alt+tab between desktop, Chrome and steam, but I couldn't click anything. After a few minutes I force-shut down the computer.
I turned it on again expecting the problem to go away but nope, after a few minutes, regardless of if I was signed in or not, or regardless of what I was doing, the computer would freeze. But a really weird kind of freeze. I couldn't use Ctrl+Al+Del.
This happened several times, (because I turned off and on several times, happened every time)
Sometimes the screen would go completely white, sometimes it would just freeze. Sometimes it would go white and the "The program is not responding" prompt appeared, but clicking it did nothing. After a few tries, I decided to just let it be and after like 5 minutes everything went back to normal. It unfroze and I kept doing whatever I was doing.
That same night I played Rise of the Tomb Raider for about 4 hours.
The day after, I started playing again, but after a few hours it just crashed. But, again, a really weird crash. It was as if the GPU disconnected. The screen would go black, and then the monitor changed as if the computer was off, or as if it was disconnected.
Then the day after it got worse. I started investigating. The computer has crashed on me with different results. With Tomb Raider, I open the game, it launches, logos appear and stuff, but when it gets to the menu, it happens. Sometimes it would let me into the menu, but it would happen again mid-benchmark.
With Overwatch, (installed on SSD) it only crashed once, as the game launched and showed me less than a second of menu. The other two times I tried it it launched fine, although I didn't play any match, I just screwed around the menus for a few minutes.
With Skyrim, Game would launch, let me into the menu, but when I loaded the game, the game would crash. Only the game, mind you. I figured it was something to do with mods so I uninstalled all of them (and also made a new game) and both times it worked. Didn't crash at all. EDIT: Tried again. Game launched, menu launched, and when I clicked on "Load" to load the game file, it crashed completely. Not just the game, everything else as well, as explained.
The witcher 3 had no effect, I was able to run around the world fine. I only tested it once, though.
And even worse, it would sometimes happen at random. Well, not random because I figured it out and as it turns out, the 3 times it happened outside a game were just as I opened a picture.
I kept investigating and tried a few different things. I put on some music on youtube, then launched tomb raider. As expected, when I got to the menu, it happened again. But the music would keep playing! I could listen to it! I even clicked around and I even changed video! I pressed alt+left and I got back to the previous video, which means that both mouse and keyboard still worked, even if the monitor was "disconnected". Mind you, it behaved in a weird way, too. The music would still be playing when it crashed, after 2 seconds it would stop, and after two more seconds it would continue, as if the page had reloaded.
Here are some pictures of when it happened. The blue and green screen are the only two times it happened that way. I think one or two times it went totally white, then those two instances, and all other times it would just look as if I'd disconnected the monitor from the computer. The monitor light would even flicker telling me to turn it off to save energy. http://imgur.com/a/X42ww
All my investigating led me to the conclusion that the problem might be the GPU, but not much was out of the ordinary with it. I kept track of all that I could think of and didn't notice anything too weird. Temperatures were as they've always been, GPU usage would go to 99% when launching game but other than that everything was as it's always been.
I did all I could think of. I uninstalled Avira, I updated all Nvidia Drivers, I even formatted the SSD and reinstalled windows. I have no idea what else to do.
I have an ASUS STRIX GeForce 960, the version with 2GB. The computer (and therefore everything in it except the SSD is a bit more than a year old, being born in November of 2015.
I thank everyone in advance for any help you could give me.
UPDATE: So I did something that I didn't think of before. I opened up my PC and disconnected the SSD. Booted it up, and try everything again.
Apparently, that worked. I ran Tomb Raider's Benchmark twice, I played a match of Overwatch. Sure, stuff took longer to load but nothing break. Which leads me to this conclusion (for now):
The PSU couldn't handle everything at once. As I added the SSD to the build, the PSU had something else to feed. For some parts it was fine, but when I started up a game as demanding as Tomb Raider, the GPU would increase the load and the PSU wasn't able to take it anymore and turned off the GPU to avoid creating bigger problems. This could explain why I was able to still hear music or click. This would also explain why it happened during Tomb Raider benchmarks, which is when the GPU is being used the most. This however would not explain why it only happened until now, and not the entire week I played Skyrim. (I guess because Tomb Raider was the last straw that started a chain of problems?)
Anyway since disconnecting the SSD seemed to fix it for now, I'll continue without it and I'll make more tests throughout the week. I'll update if anything happens.
So, now that I said that, do you guys think it's possible that my theory is right? Is such an example even possible? For reference, my PSU is a Corsair CX500, and every website seemed to agree that my load was about 300 before the SSD.
You see, last week, on Dec. 21 I installed a new SSD, of 120GB. Of course, I had a bootable USB with Windows 10 on it so I went and intstalled Windows on my new SSD. I re-installed programs, etc. Everything was fine. I installed Skyrim on the SSD so I could see how it ran. Everything was perfect, I played skyrim for like a week.
Then, I bought Rise of the Tomb Raider. Installed it on the HDD (did so to save space on the HDD). I played for a few hours. Everything fine.
But then, on Dec. 27th, I read an article about Avira being a good antivirus so I installed it. But when it got at like around 99%, the computer crashed. I could still move the cursor, I could still Alt+tab between desktop, Chrome and steam, but I couldn't click anything. After a few minutes I force-shut down the computer.
I turned it on again expecting the problem to go away but nope, after a few minutes, regardless of if I was signed in or not, or regardless of what I was doing, the computer would freeze. But a really weird kind of freeze. I couldn't use Ctrl+Al+Del.
This happened several times, (because I turned off and on several times, happened every time)
Sometimes the screen would go completely white, sometimes it would just freeze. Sometimes it would go white and the "The program is not responding" prompt appeared, but clicking it did nothing. After a few tries, I decided to just let it be and after like 5 minutes everything went back to normal. It unfroze and I kept doing whatever I was doing.
That same night I played Rise of the Tomb Raider for about 4 hours.
The day after, I started playing again, but after a few hours it just crashed. But, again, a really weird crash. It was as if the GPU disconnected. The screen would go black, and then the monitor changed as if the computer was off, or as if it was disconnected.
Then the day after it got worse. I started investigating. The computer has crashed on me with different results. With Tomb Raider, I open the game, it launches, logos appear and stuff, but when it gets to the menu, it happens. Sometimes it would let me into the menu, but it would happen again mid-benchmark.
With Overwatch, (installed on SSD) it only crashed once, as the game launched and showed me less than a second of menu. The other two times I tried it it launched fine, although I didn't play any match, I just screwed around the menus for a few minutes.
With Skyrim, Game would launch, let me into the menu, but when I loaded the game, the game would crash. Only the game, mind you. I figured it was something to do with mods so I uninstalled all of them (and also made a new game) and both times it worked. Didn't crash at all. EDIT: Tried again. Game launched, menu launched, and when I clicked on "Load" to load the game file, it crashed completely. Not just the game, everything else as well, as explained.
The witcher 3 had no effect, I was able to run around the world fine. I only tested it once, though.
And even worse, it would sometimes happen at random. Well, not random because I figured it out and as it turns out, the 3 times it happened outside a game were just as I opened a picture.
I kept investigating and tried a few different things. I put on some music on youtube, then launched tomb raider. As expected, when I got to the menu, it happened again. But the music would keep playing! I could listen to it! I even clicked around and I even changed video! I pressed alt+left and I got back to the previous video, which means that both mouse and keyboard still worked, even if the monitor was "disconnected". Mind you, it behaved in a weird way, too. The music would still be playing when it crashed, after 2 seconds it would stop, and after two more seconds it would continue, as if the page had reloaded.
Here are some pictures of when it happened. The blue and green screen are the only two times it happened that way. I think one or two times it went totally white, then those two instances, and all other times it would just look as if I'd disconnected the monitor from the computer. The monitor light would even flicker telling me to turn it off to save energy. http://imgur.com/a/X42ww
All my investigating led me to the conclusion that the problem might be the GPU, but not much was out of the ordinary with it. I kept track of all that I could think of and didn't notice anything too weird. Temperatures were as they've always been, GPU usage would go to 99% when launching game but other than that everything was as it's always been.
I did all I could think of. I uninstalled Avira, I updated all Nvidia Drivers, I even formatted the SSD and reinstalled windows. I have no idea what else to do.
I have an ASUS STRIX GeForce 960, the version with 2GB. The computer (and therefore everything in it except the SSD is a bit more than a year old, being born in November of 2015.
I thank everyone in advance for any help you could give me.
UPDATE: So I did something that I didn't think of before. I opened up my PC and disconnected the SSD. Booted it up, and try everything again.
Apparently, that worked. I ran Tomb Raider's Benchmark twice, I played a match of Overwatch. Sure, stuff took longer to load but nothing break. Which leads me to this conclusion (for now):
The PSU couldn't handle everything at once. As I added the SSD to the build, the PSU had something else to feed. For some parts it was fine, but when I started up a game as demanding as Tomb Raider, the GPU would increase the load and the PSU wasn't able to take it anymore and turned off the GPU to avoid creating bigger problems. This could explain why I was able to still hear music or click. This would also explain why it happened during Tomb Raider benchmarks, which is when the GPU is being used the most. This however would not explain why it only happened until now, and not the entire week I played Skyrim. (I guess because Tomb Raider was the last straw that started a chain of problems?)
Anyway since disconnecting the SSD seemed to fix it for now, I'll continue without it and I'll make more tests throughout the week. I'll update if anything happens.
So, now that I said that, do you guys think it's possible that my theory is right? Is such an example even possible? For reference, my PSU is a Corsair CX500, and every website seemed to agree that my load was about 300 before the SSD.
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