Question Christmas lights on my screen?

[pastapan]

So, weird things started happening to my PC some year ago. I was playing a card game (not very GPU intensive), and suddenly red, blue, green lights were flashing across the screen, very Christmas lights-like. My game froze, I force quit it, started again. Same thing happened. On the third time, it didn't happen anymore. From time to time, this would happen, mostly in the first minutes after starting the PC, and only in this game. and I blamed the game, I thought it was buggy.
For different reasons, I changed my PSU a few days ago. Since then, I had this happen in two more games (Green Hell and Cities Skylines 2). For the first one, after I played and was exitting it, in the menu, and for the second, cities skylines 2, as I was playing, I had some red lights (in various quantities, but bundled together) gradually appear and disappear. I have a recording, so it's not a monitor problem:

https://imgur.com/a/UavJqiB

View: https://imgur.com/a/UavJqiB

What's going on!? Is it a drivers problem? I don't know where to look. Thank you.

OS: WIndows 10
GPU: EVGA Geforce GTX 1070
MOBO: Asus Prime x370 Pro
CPU: Ryzen 5 1600
RAM: Corsair Vengeance 16 gb (2 sticks)
PSU: Asus Prime 850W Gold, new since a few days
Disks: HDD for games, 160/2000 GB free, ~5 years old, SSD for OS 50/250 GB free, 2 years old

 

[Ralston18]

Update your post to include full system hardware specs and OS information.

Include PSU: make, model, wattage, age, condition (original to build, new, refurbished, used)?

Disk drive(s): make, model, capacitiy, how full.

Make and model monitor?

What other games are you playing? Source?

Look in Reliabiity History/Monitor for any error codes, warnings, or even informational events that occured just before or at the time the colored lights appeared or dissappeared.

Try uploading the video via imgur (www.imgur.com) and post the link herein.

 

[pastapan]

Update your post to include full system hardware specs and OS information.

Include PSU: make, model, wattage, age, condition (original to build, new, refurbished, used)?

Disk drive(s): make, model, capacitiy, how full.

Make and model monitor?

What other games are you playing? Source?

Look in Reliabiity History/Monitor for any error codes, warnings, or even informational events that occured just before or at the time the colored lights appeared or dissappeared.

Try uploading the video via imgur (www.imgur.com) and post the link herein.

Thanks, updated and uploaded the video. Will check the reliability monitor too, thanks!

 

[Ralston18]

That 5 year old almost full 2000 GB HDD (games) is a likely suspect.

Being that that is the "games" drive and the problems occur during game play.

Drive could be starting to falter and fail.

General rule of thumb is to limit a drive to around 70-80% of capacity.

Where is virtual memory stored? Configuration setting?

Are both drives backed up to locations away from the current host computer?

 

[pastapan]

That 5 year old almost full 2000 GB HDD (games) is a likely suspect.

Being that that is the "games" drive and the problems occur during game play.

Drive could be starting to falter and fail.

General rule of thumb is to limit a drive to around 70-80% of capacity.

Are both drives backed up to locations away from the current host computer?

Unfortunately I don't think it's that simple, because the very first game that I started getting this on a year ago, was on my OS drive.

Some chosen folders are backed to an external drive, yes, why?

Where is virtual memory stored? Configuration setting?

Not sure what you mean?

 

[Ralston18]

"Chosen folders"

-Many posters have not backed up their sytems and/or important files. And when problems occur (or get worse) it may simply be too late or otherwise not possible to recover data. That is the reason for having backups. Good that the chosen files are backed up - an external drive is better than nothing. However, I recommend one more backup that is not connected to the problem computer.

"Virtual Memory"

FYI:

https://www.makeuseof.com/how-incre...ou use all,virtual memory is extremely useful.

You can easily find other similar links with explanations etc..

Virtual Memory should be left alone (i.e., let Windows manage it).

However, if disk drive space is low or fragmented (HDD) then Windows will be working harder swapping between RAM and Virtual Memory.

And the GPU may be involved in some way. Especially if the problem has been occuring for a year. May be getting worse as the drive(s) have filled up.

Use Task Manager and Resource Monitor to observe system performance. Look for changes that occur just before or at the time the Christmas lights effect appears.

Work with both tools but only one tool at a time.

 

[pastapan]

Hmmm, alright, so there's one culprit to my PC slowing to a crawl sometimes. Apparently, I had paging file set to my gaming HDD and nothing on my OS drive. I changed it. Will look into christmas lights today.

 

[pastapan]

Work with both tools but only one tool at a time.

Please check this out. As I was experiencing red dots in CS2, this is how my resource monitor looked. CPU and disk were both at 50% or so, physical memory was at 50% too, some other memory at less than 50, and then there were lots of errors, but I'm not sure if they're a norm. Didn't see anything unusual in processes list. After a while of this, the game just crashed

https://imgur.com/a/28sYhtx

View: https://imgur.com/a/28sYhtx

 

[pastapan]

Update: I started the game with debug mode enabled in nvidia control panel and it's running without issues. What does debug mode do exactly?

 

[Ralston18]

Moving the page file from the HDD to the OS host drive (C is a good start.

Keep an eye on the Physical Memory bar at the bottom of the screen when the Memory tab is selected.

Continue observing system performance without changing anything for the time being. Become more familar with the tools and learn how to select and sort the presented data. Note the small upward and downward pointing arrows in the column headers. Clicking the arrow will change the sort order.

I noted in Resource Monitor quite a number of what may be extraneous or not necessarily beneficial processes etc. running. Likely that some are being launched via Task Manager at Startup (see the tab) and others may be being launched via Task Scheduler. Perhaps unknown to you.

Ensure that you know what each one is and what it is doing. (Or supposed to be doing.....) Print a screen shot to use as a checklist and work your way through the list process by process. I would start with those that are both the least necessary (if really necessary at all) and using up one or more resources.

Take your time and keep notes. Especially if things go astray and you must undo some change. Hopefully you will find a few more processes etc. to cull out and thus improve performance. Think of it this way: too many performers on the stage at one time can get in each other's way and the performance as a whole then suffers.

= = = = Nvidia debug = = = = (Noted your post above)

I will defer to Nvidia's explanation(s).

A quick "Nvidia debug" google found the following link:

https://docs.nvidia.com/deploy/gpu-debug-guidelines/index.html

And there are other such links to be found - not sure about how reliable and accurate some of those links may be.

The following link was interesting:

https://us.forums.blizzard.com/en/w...ocked-video-cards-might-corrupt-driver/592051

I do not know (full disclosure) why enabling debug made the game run without issues.

However it could now be coincidence. Before the page file was moved, memory issues were causing problems.

Look in the logs, if any are available, prior to the moving the paging file. Compare the before and after entries. May be a clue or two.

There may be other ideas, comments, and suggestions posted regarding Nvidia, Page Files, Debug Mode etc..

I have no problem with that.