Brief random freezes, loud noise during

[tonypajamas]

So, for the past 2-3 weeks I have been experiencing random freezes that last only a few seconds with a loud noise coming through my headphones during, some days it wont happen, some days it will happen quite a bit, and it is pretty frustrating. Usually occurs during gameplay (mostly because thats what im doing all the time) but it has happened while just browsing the internet. All of my drivers are up to date, temperatures on my cpu/gpu are pretty normal (40ish on the cpu and 60ish on the gpu while playing games). Case is clean of dust, I just built this rig from scratch about 2 months ago so this problem is worrying me. Also ran memtest over night, didn't find any errors. Anyone have any ideas?

Specs:

i3 2100
radeon 6870 1gb
kingston 4gb 1333mhz ddr3
western digital 500gb HD
corsair GS600 psu
Gigabyte Intel B75 LGA1155 AMD CrossFireX DVI/D-Sub Dual UEFI BIOS mATX Motherboard GA-B75M-D3V
win 7 64bit sp1

Thanks in advance!

 

[clutchc]

Try cleaning your system of registry errors and other crap with CCleaner. Do the Clean and Registry both.
http://www.piriform.com/CCLEANER

Are you remembering to uninstall the old AMD graphics driver before installing the new one? Better yet, after uninstalling the old driver, run Driver Sweeper from Safe Mode to remove any remnants of AMD/Nvidia graphics drivers. Reboot and install the latest driver.
http://phyxion.net/item/driver-sweeper.html

 

[tonypajamas]

I'll try running CCcleaner and see if it helps. I had forgot to uninstall the old amd drivers the first time i updated, but I then uninstalled again and already ran driver sweeper before installing again.

 

[clutchc]

If cleaning your system doesn't fix the problem, you might want to try temporarily changing the video card. If you have access to a known good card to use for a few days, you can see if the issue is related to your HD 6870. If you have no 2nd card, maybe use the on-board video for the test. Although, that will make it hard to test while gaming... since the HD2000 graphics is pretty useless for gaming.

 

[tonypajamas]

I just ran the CCleaner and it came up with a bunch of stuff to clean. I have to go to class now but I will test it when I get home and see if it still does it.

 

[clutchc]

OK. And run CCleaner a couple times... until it comes up 'clean'. Reboot/Defrag.

 

[tonypajamas]

Alright, it didn't do it for around an hour but it just did it again.

 

[Pearlmam]

This is just a shot in the dark, but try checking the event viewer to see if windows registered an error. search and run event viewer, then check the administrator events.

I think I've experienced this type symptom before, but too infrequent to diagnose. I think it might have been a GPU driver error, because that's what windows told me. It would say: resetting the display driver. During gameplay, this type of error would crash the game. During browsing, nothing would happen except a flash of the screen and maybe a noise.

 

[tonypajamas]

Nothing significant in the event viewer, but honestly I don't really know what im looking for. Nothing stands out to me, and I don't see anything gpu/driver related :\

 

[Pearlmam]

look at the administrative events. You will see all kinds of events there. some will be with a red flag next to them. What you are looking for is the event that occurred when you observed the error. So next time the glitch happens, take note of the time and see if there is an observed error.

I doubt that this will lead to the source of the glitch, but it's worth a shot. To me it sounds GPU/Driver related, but it really could be anything. I see that you have the i3. That has integrated graphics on it, correct? if your mobo supports it. You can try running on that for awhile to see if the glitch occurs. Your gaming experience will be "altered" but it will give you that retro feel we all love. A second GPU would be best. I guess clutch mentioned the same thing, now that I reread.

 

[tonypajamas]

It just happened again and I went straight to the event viewer, no new events! It really ONLY happens if i have a game open + chrome with a stream open at the same time. It happened with game + pandora like once, but really never. its basically only game + streams, i thought it might be chrome so i tried firefox and the same thing happened. could this be of any significance?

 

[Pearlmam]

Well, everything is significant. So, if I was you, I would get my hands on another GPU or use the integrated graphics to see if the error remains. That would check the hardware. You could also reinstall Windows and that would check the software. I really wouldn't know what else to do. I've never had problems with my PSU, but it seems that every problem posted on here, someone always blames the PSU. Could a PSU create this symptom anybody?

Could it be the Hard Drive? You can try checking the Hard Drive with windows. Its easy to do and requires no work to do, so it's worth a shot. You can also try stressing the CPU to see if you can recreate the problem. Use Prime95 for that. That is another thing to do that requires little work.

I don't think it's your CPU or HD, but why not try. In the end, you will have to check the GPU and/or the windows install.

 

[clutchc]

If you are trying to get all those apps to play nice together at the same time, you may have found your problem. I didn't realize you had all that going on at the same time you were trying to game. How much else is running in the background? Look at Taskmaster/Processes. It's always best to keep background activity at a minimum when playing stressful games.