PC Freezing Randomly

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Pdagger

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Feb 25, 2021
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I built my PC over a year ago and it has run flawlessly until about a month ago when I started getting random freezes. The screen just completely locks up. The mouse doesn't move and the keyboard doesn't do anything. I have to press and hold the power button until it shuts off and then turn it back on again. It will typically run for an hour or two before freezing again.

PC specs should all be listed below in my sig. It is not overclocked, running all stock specs.

Things I've tried so far:

1. Run scans for viruses/malware, found nothing.
2. Turned off all hibernation/sleep modes, including screen savers, lock screens, etc.
3. Made sure all drivers are updated
4. Run file system scan, repair windows, scanned HDD for failures - All clean
5. Rolled back to a previous version from about a month ago
6. Checked all hardware, made sure RAM, HDD, video card, etc were fully seated
7. Pulled 2x of the RAM modules, still froze. Swapped with the other two, still froze.
8. Replaced PSU, still freezes.
9. PSU is plugged into a surge protector, which is plugged into a Cyberpower PR1000RTXL2U UPS. Tried plugging it directly into the wall. Still freezes.

I do see some errors in the event logs, but don't know what they mean. There are currently 5 listed under "Error" for event type:
2 - KernelEventTracing
1 .NET Runtime
2 DistributedCOM

The only ones listed under critical look like they have to do with me rebooting the system without cleanly shutting down.

I'm kind of at a loss as to what to try next. I'm a little reluctant to wipe the computer and just reinstall the OS, but am almost at that point. It's just a PITA to reinstall everything the way I had it.

Any ideas on what else I should try before I do that?
 
You havent said "when" it happens.
ie what were you or the machine doing, how long after boot or cold powerup, temps of things when it happens ...
 
It's random, but usually within an hour or two of restarting the machine after it froze the last time. I normally leave the machine running all the time. I've had times when I've been using it and suddenly it just freezes (ie just web browsing). I've had times when I've walked away from the machine when it was working fine and came back and it was frozen. It doesn't seem to be tied to any activity.

I don't game a lot, so I haven't had it happen during that and CPU temp has been around 35-40C when it's frozen.
 
Possibly do a GPU driver cleaner and install an older driver.
In Task Manager see what is running (check Start-up as well) and remove programs that you don't want running.
Switch browsers and do not load your old one and see if problems persist.
Do a complete dust out/blowout.
Unplug all non-needed USB and SATA device temporarily to see if any impact. Switch mouse/keyboard to new USB ports.
Check to see if all case and system fans including GPU are running fine.
Run a benchmark/stress test and see if that accelerates the freezing issue.
Change the wall plug to see if that make a difference.
 
You try a memory test?

You can also pull the boot drive, install another boot drive, and do a clean install on the secondary drive to see if it's software-related.
 
I tried the windows memory test and it said everything was fine. Is that sufficient, or should I try a 3rd party test? If so, which one?

The boot drive is a good idea. I'm going to try that.
 
Have you tried Windows Performance Monitor? In my experience freezing is always a hardware/driver related issue, of course that's not always the case. The diagnostic may be able to point to an issue within Windows which seems possible considering you swapped out all your critical hardware components. Also try taking out the gpu entirely. If you can leave it running overnight without issue, it's possible it's your gpu or driver.
 
Running memtest now. Finished two passes with 0 errors. Default was 4 passes I believe, but so far so good on the memory.

I’m also thinking GPU driver related. How am I supposed to run the PC overnight without the GPU in it and know if it freezes? My only display ports are on the GPU. When it freezes there’s no indication on the box. All the fans are on, lights running, etc. It’s just the screen that’s frozen up.

Also, what’s the fix for that? I believe that the current driver is just whatever windows chooses through Microsoft update. Should I go directly to MSI’s website and download the latest from them for their GPU? Or roll it back to an older one?

Lastly, how do you boot into the BIOS on this motherboard? It’s supposed to be the DEL key, but I’ll be mashing it and it still just boots into windows. I had to finally just remove the HDD to get it to go into the BIOS. When it first boots, if the HDD is installed it says ”MEG” on the screen and then boots into windows. There’s no message about what key to press to boot into the BIOS. However, once I removed the HDD then under the “MEG” logo it says to press DEL to boot into the BIOS.
 
It’s not solved yet. Still finishing up the memtest, but so far that’s clear. Assuming it finishes all clear my next thing to try is to mess around with the GPU drivers.
 
Pdagger said:
Also, what’s the fix for that? I believe that the current driver is just whatever windows chooses through Microsoft update. Should I go directly to MSI’s website and download the latest from them for their GPU? Or roll it back to an older one?
Click to expand...

You should get the driver straight from the chipset manufacturer. Never use the Windows drivers unless they're the only ones you can find, or, if for some unusual reason they work better. If the driver has a "reset" or "clean install" option use it. You can also use a driver cleaner to uninstall old drivers, but be careful, since a lot of them will also "clean" your registry at the same time. That never works and will fuck up your computer.

In fact, some of us make a point of putting all of our drivers on a thumb drive or memory card when we do new Windows install, so that we don't touch Windows Update without first installing all of the latest system drivers.

It's best to get your system drivers from the chipset manufacturers, such as AMD, Intel, and Nvidia, then get any OEM drivers from your component manufacturers, such as Asus, Asrock, Dell, HP, Lenovo, and MSI, then use Windows Update, in that order.
 
Quit memtest. Made it through 3 passes with no errors and I got impatient. Just installed the latest nvidia driver for the GPU. Now we'll wait and see...
 
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Pdagger said:
Quit memtest. Made it through 3 passes with no errors and I got impatient. Just installed the latest nvidia driver for the GPU. Now we'll wait and see...
Click to expand...

If your PC wouldn't run for more than a couple of hours but didn't throw any codes running a memory test in say, four hours, then the memory's probably fine. If you do decide to overclock, you still want to run a memtest overnight, but for this, yeah, go for it.
 
Well, that didn't work. I used the computer for maybe an hour or so, left and got lunch and it was frozen when I got back. Not sure what to try now.
 
Sucks.

I would back up everything off your boot drive for two reasons: it could be that the OS is corrupted somehow, or drivers, or whatever, and in order to fix them, you'll have to do a repair install, or failing that, a clean install.

The other reason is that it could be a sign that your hard drive is failing (even a non-boot drive). It hits a bad sector, fails to recover, and just goes brrt. Run checkdisk if you can. Doing a clean install on another drive will rule out both, but you'll need those backups no matter what.
 
So I actually have two of the Samsung 980 Pro 1TB drives. The original HDD that this was happening on was pulled and I reinstalled the OS on the second drive and that's what I've been running while trying to troubleshoot. I already ran repair install on the original drive as well as checkdisk and got nothing.

So, I don't think it's the HDD failing. I feel like it either has to be a driver issue or another piece of hardware failing. It pretty much leaves just the GPU, motherboard and CPU as culprits if it's hardware.
 
Well, you can run Prime95 and Furmark to stress-test you CPU and GPU, respectively.

When motherboards start to go, usually they work but a bunch of USB ports won't, or the sound doesn't work, or an expansion card slot doesn't run. They don't typically fail intermittently. And seeing how your test drive doesn't have any problems, I think it's getting safe to assume your old boot drive is corrupt somehow.

Make sure your GPU has good cooling before running Furmark, it is pretty intense. Or find another GPU stress test.
 
My new boot drive is having the exact same problem as the old one, so I would think that would rule it out as being corrupt? I tested the original boot drive and found nothing.

I'll give the stress tests a go and see what I find.
 
Oh, I thought it was working fine, yeah, no, that definitely sounds like a hardware problem then. Since you've already tried alternating RAM sticks, you're going to have to alternate the CPU and GPU next. I'd start with a different GPU first, since that's easier.

Which begs the question, do you have an older GPU at hand?
 
I don't have another GPU that will work on this motherboard. I do have a Ryzen 7 5800X I can run on this motherboard though.

The good news is that I've been wanting to build another PC anyway, so I might as well just buy the components and then I can swap stuff out and test.
 
Well, work with what you've got, and start with a CPU swap. You might be able to find someone to loan you a GPU for a day to test that.
 
On a whim, I just ran sfc/ scannow and it found corrupted files and repaired them. That's odd, because the original boot disk was fine, but had the exact same problem as this one.

After doing that I've been running FurMark for over 20min and so far so good. How long should I run this BTW?
 
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I stopped FurMark. It seemed like stressing the GPU didn't do anything.

After that I walked away for a while and came back to the PC and it had obviously restarted. Looking at the event viewer I finally see something that looks interesting, or at least looks like it might be a clue I can easily interpret:

"A fatal hardware error has occurred.

Reported by component: Processor Core
Error Source: Machine Check Exception
Error Type: Bus/Interconnect Error
Processor APIC ID: 0

The details view of this entry contains further information."

So, does that indicate the CPU may be bad?

I'm running Prime95 right now.
 
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No, it's not overclocked. Everything is running stock speeds.

I don't know what version of the BIOS I'm running, but I've never updated it. I will have to pull the stupid HDD to boot into the BIOS and check (probably tomorrow).

Anyone know how you are supposed to boot into the BIOS without having to pull the HDD on this Motherboard? This is ridiculous. It's supposed to be the DEL key, but when I mash that repeatedly during boot it skips right past and loads windows. The only way I've been able to get into the BIOS is pulling the HDD.

All that being said, this is the first time I've come back to my machine in a while and it wasn't frozen. It's been running Prime95 the whole time too. Probably several hours at this point.
 
Pdagger said:
No, it's not overclocked. Everything is running stock speeds.

I don't know what version of the BIOS I'm running, but I've never updated it. I will have to pull the stupid HDD to boot into the BIOS and check (probably tomorrow).

Anyone know how you are supposed to boot into the BIOS without having to pull the HDD on this Motherboard? This is ridiculous. It's supposed to be the DEL key, but when I mash that repeatedly during boot it skips right past and loads windows. The only way I've been able to get into the BIOS is pulling the HDD.

All that being said, this is the first time I've come back to my machine in a while and it wasn't frozen. It's been running Prime95 the whole time too. Probably several hours at this point.
Click to expand...

Update the bios and it will probably magically work properly.
Is one reason why bios updates are worth doing, things get fixed!
 
Pdagger said:
Anyone know how you are supposed to boot into the BIOS without having to pull the HDD on this Motherboard? This is ridiculous. It's supposed to be the DEL key, but when I mash that repeatedly during boot it skips right past and loads windows. The only way I've been able to get into the BIOS is pulling the HDD.
Click to expand...

Turn off all the quick boot stuff.
 
According to CPU-Z the BIOS version is 1.B0 - AMD AGESA ComboAM4v2PI 1.1.0.0

This morning was the first time in a long time that my computer wasn't frozen up. It would have frozen by now for sure, so apparently it's fixed? Maybe I just needed to do the scannow thing after updating the video driver? I don't know, I'm stumped, but at least it's working now.
 
Pdagger said:
I don't know, I'm stumped, but at least it's working now.
Click to expand...

Don't look a gift horse in the mouth. You may want or need to update the BIOS at some point, but FWIW, if it screws something up, you can always flash to an older version as long as you have a copy.
 
I did flash the BIOS with the latest update. So far so good. Best guess is that it was always the video drivers, but something also got corrupted with the OS with the freezes, so I had to both update the drivers and then do sfc/ scannow to completely fix it.

Anyway, thank you all for your help!
 
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