I came home one day and the power had been out. My computer would not turn on, it played a number of beeps which I looked up and determined the video card was bad. Once I replaced the video card, it would turn on, but it took close to five minutes to go to the first screen. From there, the computer started freezing instantly without warning. Sometimes it would freeze on the POST, sometimes while loading Windows, sometimes not until after several games of Overwatch. When it froze before Windows loaded, I'm 99% sure it just showed what was on the screen when it would freeze but it's been a while now and I could be remembering that wrong. When it would freeze in Windows my monitors displayed colored horizontal lines, mostly in pastel colors. If I had audio playing, the last .25 seconds or so would play on a loop until I shut the computer off. Up until it froze there was nothing unusual after the long hang on startup.
I had the problem with the horizontal lines when I first built my computer and was playing around with overclocking. I changed the overclock back to 0% and the frequency of the failures was reduced to where I could go for hours or days without it freezing up. So I replaced the CPU with a new one.
Once I replaced the CPU, I started getting a bit of a warning before the computer would freeze if I was playing a game. The audio would stutter a bit and the monitor may or may not have some artifacts appear on it. I also started getting blue screens occasionally. In one instance, the audio started stuttering and the video got all garbled. I thought it had frozen but then the audio came back so I hit alt-tab, waited a second and went back to the game. It ran fine for a bit and then froze without further warning.
I ran MemTest for close to 24 hours and it didn't show any failures, I assumed that meant the RAM was good, so I replaced my old and super noisy power supply with a new high efficiency one that's nearly silent just to see if maybe it was a power issue. I'd been meaning to replace it for five years but this was a good reason to actually do it. It also seemed like the computer was slightly more likely to freeze under heavy loads, like loading a game or watching two movies at once, or playing a game while watching a movie. The power supply wan't bad - or at least there were no electrical faults - but it is nice to be able to hear myself think now.
The freezing got so bad last night that I decided to just keep it off and find a probable solution before turning it back on. I couldn't do more than watch a video on YouTube without it freezing, even opening more than about a dozen tabs in Chrome OR having the tabs open between two windows would make it freeze. This morning, I forgot about last night and turned it on, it froze on the Windows load screen. I shut it off and figured I'd do something productive for a bit. I started cleaning my desk and found a single stick of 2 GB memory from before I upgraded from 2x2GB to 4x4GB. I took my 16 GB out and installed the 2 GB just to see what would happen.
I should have mentioned at some point - after the problem started, my computer would freeze 100% of the time while loading a world in 7 Days to Die, this was the first test I used to see if the CPU and PSU upgrades fixed anything. So I loaded 7 Days to Die and I actually got the world loaded and moved around a bit. Of course with only 2 GB RAM installed and running a program I've seen use 8 GB, it was painfully slow and not even remotely playable. It took almost 15 seconds for pressing the escape key to register, and when I clicked on 'settings' the program stopped responding for about 5 minutes before i ended it. But it did load and didn't make the computer freeze.
The long hang on startup got shorter as time went on, now it's about 20 seconds of a blank screen before the flashing underscore appears, and then it goes. Except for last night - if I turned the computer back on immediately, it would just sit there for a couple minutes and then go like nothing was wrong. If I let it sit for a couple minutes and then turn it back on, it would go at around 20 seconds. I don't believe the reduction in hang time was related to anything I did, for a while I believe it might be 20 seconds one time and a couple minutes the next. I think it's been a month since it's taken longer than 20 seconds. The different memory didn't change that at all, but the computer has been on for nearly three hours now.
Is it possible MemTest can miss bad memory under certain circumstances? My RAM is already maxed out, so I'd rather not just buy another set of almost identical RAM and still have the problem. What should my next step be?
Thanks,
Jason
I had the problem with the horizontal lines when I first built my computer and was playing around with overclocking. I changed the overclock back to 0% and the frequency of the failures was reduced to where I could go for hours or days without it freezing up. So I replaced the CPU with a new one.
Once I replaced the CPU, I started getting a bit of a warning before the computer would freeze if I was playing a game. The audio would stutter a bit and the monitor may or may not have some artifacts appear on it. I also started getting blue screens occasionally. In one instance, the audio started stuttering and the video got all garbled. I thought it had frozen but then the audio came back so I hit alt-tab, waited a second and went back to the game. It ran fine for a bit and then froze without further warning.
I ran MemTest for close to 24 hours and it didn't show any failures, I assumed that meant the RAM was good, so I replaced my old and super noisy power supply with a new high efficiency one that's nearly silent just to see if maybe it was a power issue. I'd been meaning to replace it for five years but this was a good reason to actually do it. It also seemed like the computer was slightly more likely to freeze under heavy loads, like loading a game or watching two movies at once, or playing a game while watching a movie. The power supply wan't bad - or at least there were no electrical faults - but it is nice to be able to hear myself think now.
The freezing got so bad last night that I decided to just keep it off and find a probable solution before turning it back on. I couldn't do more than watch a video on YouTube without it freezing, even opening more than about a dozen tabs in Chrome OR having the tabs open between two windows would make it freeze. This morning, I forgot about last night and turned it on, it froze on the Windows load screen. I shut it off and figured I'd do something productive for a bit. I started cleaning my desk and found a single stick of 2 GB memory from before I upgraded from 2x2GB to 4x4GB. I took my 16 GB out and installed the 2 GB just to see what would happen.
I should have mentioned at some point - after the problem started, my computer would freeze 100% of the time while loading a world in 7 Days to Die, this was the first test I used to see if the CPU and PSU upgrades fixed anything. So I loaded 7 Days to Die and I actually got the world loaded and moved around a bit. Of course with only 2 GB RAM installed and running a program I've seen use 8 GB, it was painfully slow and not even remotely playable. It took almost 15 seconds for pressing the escape key to register, and when I clicked on 'settings' the program stopped responding for about 5 minutes before i ended it. But it did load and didn't make the computer freeze.
The long hang on startup got shorter as time went on, now it's about 20 seconds of a blank screen before the flashing underscore appears, and then it goes. Except for last night - if I turned the computer back on immediately, it would just sit there for a couple minutes and then go like nothing was wrong. If I let it sit for a couple minutes and then turn it back on, it would go at around 20 seconds. I don't believe the reduction in hang time was related to anything I did, for a while I believe it might be 20 seconds one time and a couple minutes the next. I think it's been a month since it's taken longer than 20 seconds. The different memory didn't change that at all, but the computer has been on for nearly three hours now.
Is it possible MemTest can miss bad memory under certain circumstances? My RAM is already maxed out, so I'd rather not just buy another set of almost identical RAM and still have the problem. What should my next step be?
Thanks,
Jason
Facebook
Twitter
Instagram