PC crash issue

[CLR-GTR]

Ever since I started using my new pc, it seems to be suffering from something that causes it to crash. I first thought it was GTA V, until I one day didn't play V but did something else instead and the pc still crashed the same way.

 

What happens is that when I turn it on, it freezes up entirely. It seems to be happening within the first 10 minutes of actual usage, which seems to be anything that's more intensive than having Google chrome open. When freezing, the very last note of sound will get repeated endlessly, mouse doesn't move, bringing up taskmanager doesn't work, the only thing to do is smacking the reset button. Then, when the pc is done rebooting, it won't happen again (I've been playing GTA V after such a crash for 8 hours without any issues). However the next day, same story again.

I've already looked it up on the internet, and it can be anything between double audio drivers fighting with eachother, to a cd drive even if it's never used, to overheating GPU's/CPU's/motherboards/PSU's. Internet did teach me to find the windows logfile functions. Maybe anybody here has an idea, or has gone through the same.

 

My specs:

Corsair RM650

Intel i7 5820K (3.3Ghz 2011-3 )

Cooler Master Hyper 412S

MSI X99S SLI Plus

Corsair Vengeance LPX (16 gb DDR4 2133)

MSI GTX970 4G Gaming (4gb)

1x Samsung 850 Pro (256 gb)

2x WD Blue 1TB

BenQ GL2460 24"

Windows 8.1 x64 (to be installed)

Cooler Master Trooper

Microsoft keyboard 600

Logitech M560

Logitech Z-553

 

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[TD]0x8000000000000002[/TD]
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[TD]2015-05-06T17:25:54.173911600Z[/TD]
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[TD][b]Correlation[/b][/TD]
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What have I tried:

- go to device manager to view/disable audio devices, and do the same under ''control for sound video and games'' (not exactly sure what it's called in english)

- removed all norton software from my pc, which was also listed as a possible cause

 

What I could do (although I doubt it can show the cause, see below):

- memory testing

 

What I wonder:

- if it's hardware related, like faulty memory, overheating GPU etc, why does it only happen once and then no more for at least 8 hours of gaming? Surely if it's hardware related, shouldn't it then happen all the time?

 

Any suggestions, tips or directions are very welcome. Camels that can explode pc's by touching them are also welcome.

[Andreas¹]

Windows 8.1 x64 (to be installed)

Then what are you running it on now? :p

What I could do (although I doubt it can show the cause, see below):

- memory testing

That wouldn't hurt and RAM was the first thing I thought of when reading your post, though I don't really know why. :cheeky: Still, running memtest86 for a while could show you if your RAM is faulty somehow. In fact you could also try running the sticks separately first.

What I wonder:

- if it's hardware related, like faulty memory, overheating GPU etc, why does it only happen once and then no more for at least 8 hours of gaming? Surely if it's hardware related, shouldn't it then happen all the time?

If it was a serious issue then yeah. Though I remember a really old PC we had that suffered from random reboots and crashes. I don't know who said it but I think it was down to RAM.

 

The first thing though someone said when I Googled a bit was "it sounds like faulty graphics driver trying to recover". What driver do you have atm?

[CLR-GTR]

@windowsthing: lol well now it is running windows 8.1 x64 Pro :p I copied it from the old post before I installed windows on it.

 

Memtest is a sure one to do very soon. As far as GPU drivers: I installed the one Nvidia released specifically for V. It's not a beta one (I don't download beta drivers) and there are no newer ones yet.

[Andreas¹]

How many memory sticks do you have? Try running each one separately and in different channels on the motherboard. People on the internet disagree wildly with eachother it seems but this is at least the easiest to test unless you have loads of computer components lying around.

[CLR-GTR]

It has 4 sticks. I do know they are in the correct channel setup. But wouldn't memtest detect that as well if that is the error?

[Andreas¹]

I didn't mean the quad channel setup, I meant one of the sticks can be broken or maybe one of the slots on the motherboard.

[Camel]

RAM could cause that. A lot of BIOS/UEIEIFIEIFIEIE have a memtest of sorts built in to them so I'd say that should be the second thing to do.

 

The third thing should be a reformat and clean install of Windows. Only put on the necessary drivers and see how it goes just browsing the internet, listening to music or whatever but stay out of games.

 

The first thing would be to double and triple check that everything is seated correctly, including the CPU.

 

How were you monitoring the temps? Was it a log or just the current readings? CPUs cool down very quickly as soon as they're not being utilised.

 

Going back to the second thing. Take 3 sticks of RAM out and run then test, then swap the tested stick for an untested one until all have been tested. This will mean that if one of them is faulty you will know which one it is.

[Ryzza5]

I'll outline the usual way to test this, but you ain't gonna like it (you're going to need lots of time)

 

First thing you want to do is remove as much 'fluff' as possible - by that I mean make the system as barebones as possible for it to boot up. One stick of RAM, no video card (if there's an integrated one), unplug all peripherals besides a basic keyboard/mouse, etc.

 

Then start Windows in safe mode or use some live-CD operating system such as Hiren Mini-XP or Bart-PE or Ultimate Boot CD for Windows. (You may have to create this on another PC).

 

Then you want to run some stress test software, such as Burn In Test, MemTest, Prime95. Go for the first one as it tests multiple components, and run the tests for a few hours at a time, so that a few passes complete. There's a decent chance that the tests will run successfully (which is kind-of what we want, otherwise diagnosis becomes harder).

 

You then want to shutdown and make a change to the system, maybe remove the 1 stick of RAM and insert another to test it, then run the tests again.

 

Then you might boot into normal Windows and try again. If there are faults here, try removing all device drivers in case one is buggy. Test again.

 

Then switch to using 2 slots of memory. Consult your mainboard manual to see which slots to use. Consult its website to see if your memory is on its compatibility list. I once had a similar issue and the fault turned out to be that my mainboard didn't like my Corsair DDR3 RAM. I tried DOA'ing many components but it wasn't until I switched to another brand of RAM that everything magically resolved. This is back when DDR3 was brand new and there weren't many options.

 

Add remaining RAM. Test again.

 

Add remaining internal hardware items one at a time, test again.

 

Connect external peripherals, test again.

 

 

Hope this helps.

[CLR-GTR]

I just got Burn-It, did two runs (trial version, so I got 30 days worth of 15-minute cycles). The only errors it gave me (with all on 100%) was that it couldn't detect an optical disc for data, which is correct, since I had no disc in the drive. Everything else passed both times.

 

I'll try memtest this weekend.

 

Also what I noticed, today the pc didn't do the crash. I did this trick again:

 

Device manager > audio devices > disable all except ''speakers'' and ''microphone'' (it also lists my monitor and a few realtek audio things)

 

Then I do the same under ''control for sound video and games'' (not exactly sure what it's called in english), where it seems to list realtek audio things as well as some Nvidia audio things (???)

 

I already told earlier I did this, but apparently my pc keeps re-adding/reinstalling all that stuff at every start up... In-between question: any idea how I can prevent them from being reinstalled all the time? I already have ''automatically detect drivers'' deactivated under Devices and Printers.

[Camel]

Search devices and printers then right click on the icon for your computer and choose device install settings I think it is. Should be able to stop it from installing any drivers automatically.

[CLR-GTR]

Well that's the problem: it's already set to ''let me decide what to do'' and ''never install drivers via windows update''.

 

And here's what I mean with the ''nvidia audio'' and my screen being in the Audio section:

 

 

First expanded list is Audio devices, happily listing my monitor which eh... I didn't buy for sound purposes. The second is Sound, Video and Game controllers. No idea what those Nvidia things do in there, no idea how they keep getting reinstalled.

 

So with yesterday, I noticed deactivating them and undoing installation of the questionmarked items prevent the crash from occuring. But as you can see, shutting down the pc and starting it up again, relists the nvidia audio stuff and my monitor as audio device (I assume because it's connected via HDMI... but it has no speakers as far as I know). Any ideas how I prevent it from reinstalling it every single time again (other than trashing my GTX970 and getting an ATI card :lol: )

[CLR-GTR]

I can now confirm, I've been playing GTA V for some hours, again after first disabling the two Nvidia audio entries and the monitor from the audio list. So that for now seems to be causing the crashes... Weird but true. Now to find out how to prevent them from coming back every time. Still gonna run memtest this weekend.

[Ryzza5]

Uninstall your nVidia driver, then when you reinstall, go Custom and don't tick the audio components. That will get rid of them. It will also prevent you from pumping audio out via HDMI.

[CLR-GTR]

Will do.

 

In the mean time, while yesterday the trick of disabling that stuff worked, today it did not. Before doing anything I first disabled and removed those drivers again, then I played ETS2, but after 30-45 minutes, it froze again. Great, so it might actually be hardware related, just what I wanted...

[CLR-GTR]

Memtest did 2 passes and found nothing, just like Burn-It found 0 errors earlier.

 

Had to do a complete removal to get rid of SOME of those extra sound related entries in Device Manager, but I still have an MS High Definition Audio Driver and an Nvidia Virtual Audio Device listed. And they keep getting reinstalled at every pc start-up, despite I set windows (as shown above) to NOT update automatically but to ask me.

 

Yesterday the pc didn't crash, today it does. So it seems I can go the deep way of getting all that hardware out and trying it one by one... Last time I'm putting a pc together myself.

[Ryzza5]

Starting to sound a lot like my incompatible RAM problem (which didn't fail any mem tests either)

[CLR-GTR]

That would be very odd though considering they should be compatible, wouldn't it? My memory is this:

 

Corsair Vengeance LPX - 16 GB : 4 x 4 GB - DIMM 288-pins - DDR4 - 2133 MHz / PC4-17066 - CL13 - 1.2 V

 

And on MSI's website, the X99S SLI Plus motherboard (the one I got) is said to support this (* stands for OC):

 

DDR4 2133/2200*/ 2400*/2600*/2666*/2750*/3000*/3110*/3333*(*OC)MHz

[Camel]

A quick gewgul of the motherboard and RAM shows up a fair few barebones bundles so it doesn't look like a compatibility issue.

 

Have you tried starting fresh with a new installation of Windows? Install just updates and the drivers you need without anything else extra and see how you go.

[CLR-GTR]

That's what I started with after I completed the PC. Point is it won't crash then since I won't have anything that really requires some pc power, e.g. games/3dsmax. Those are the things I bought this pc for but those are also the things that seem to get the pc near the crash, whether they cause it or not. I bet 10 to 1 it's me not being experienced in computers that much, but for me it would seem that reinstalling windows cleanly wouldn't be different from installing it on a pc that just got put together.

 

Also, today it hasn't crashed. Been on the web for about 45 minutes to an hour, then played ETS2. PC crashed before on ETS2 as well, but not today it seems. Still doing the routine of disabling Nvidia's virtual audio device and the High Definition Audio driver, leaving only my speakers, mic and the Realtek driver alive.

[CLR-GTR]

Point is it won't crash then since I won't have anything that really requires some pc power, e.g. games/3dsmax.

 

Just to confirm this: PC's been on for over 6 hours already with only google chrome open (several sites open including youtube for a few songs). I just started up ETS2, and after 15 minutes it crashes again. Major difference this time is I don't have to press the reset button anymore since it reboots itself after 5-10 seconds.

 

So no. A windows reinstall is nice and all, but will not help me identify the problem if I have to search for it without installing any unnecessary software, because it's the gameplaying etc that crashes it.

[Camel]

How do you know?

 

First time around something might not have installed correctly or an outdated/incorrect driver has been installed. It does happen. It's all well and good saying a reinstall won't solve the problem but until you try it, you won't know for sure.

 

If it was me having these problems and a hardware fault couldn't be detected I would shrink the size of the partition and make a second partition big enough to install to install a second fresh copy of Windows. If it fixes the issue then great, I can copy all my files over and remove the old partition. If not then delete the new partition and resume using the old one.

[Ryzza5]

Do me a favour and try something that's just popped into my head - install some free RAM Drive software and try creating/filling/deleting RAM disks in progressively larger sizes (i.e. 2GB, then 4, 6, 8, 10)

 

List of RAM drive software - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

[Ozzmcom]

So on this topic I've been having issues with my pc too. It's quite a weird one so here it is:

Whenever there's a steam update and I'm playing a steam game at that time before the update goes live the PC finds several ways to crash. I've got complete freezes, self-rebooting many times (getting oc failure message), many blue screens, last night I got graphics messed up and complete shut down, a blue screen saying driver irql not less or equal. So the weird thing is this ONLY happens when there is a steam update and I'm playing a steam game. Since I've upgraded to god awful windows 8.1 this problem became an issue more and more often. My pc crashes I reboot it, re-launch steam and what do you know there is a steam update. Can anyone give me a feedback on this issue?

[CLR-GTR]

I installed ImDisk. What exactly do I do now? I can make a new virtual drive called X of 2GB large, but then what do I do? How do I 'fill' it? And what exactly am I looking for as identification of something going wrong?

[Camel]

Fill it by copying files onto it. If something goes wrong, it will crash your computer.