Question Computer keeps freezing, cutting to grey screen

[beachbum111111]

Hey, I've been having a serious issue with my desktop computer for some time now. The computer will randomly, regardless of what I'm doing, cut to a grey screen, now about a year ago when this started it was different coloured screened with vertical lines going across the screen so I'm unsure if this is the same issue but the result is still the same, system is unresponsive and I have to reboot the whole thing since it wont shut down on it's own. I've tried clean reinstalling my GPU drivers but that hasn't worked.

Now before you write this off as a hardware problem this is the strange part, I borrowed my friends GTX 1060 and lended my GPU (an AMD 7950) to a different friend. For the few months I was using my Friends GPU my computer didn't crash once, but my other friend that was using MY gpu didn't crash at all either, which makes me think there is something else wrong going on here.

These are my specs:

Intel HD i5-3570k (CPU)
Gigabyte windforce Radeon HD 7950 3 GB (GPU)
Gigabyte Z77-D3H (MoBo)
XFX 650 watt 80+ Bronze Certified ATX PSU (Almost positive, might be a different PSU).
8 GB of Kingston ddr3-1600 RAM and 8 GB of some hyperX ram at the same clock speed (both 2-4).

EDIT: right after I made this thread my PC crashed again, this time it had the vertical lines. Right before it crashed I had a program open to check temperatures and everything was below 45 degrees, however once it crashed my fans ramped up like crazy (although I don't believe it's done this the other times).

 

[PC Tailor]

Does this issue still occur when you remove the GPU and run on integrated?
Do you have latest BIOS installed?
Assuming the clean install was to latest drivers for the GPU?
Does the issue still occur in safe mode?

 

[beachbum111111]

Does this issue still occur when you remove the GPU and run on integrated?
Do you have latest BIOS installed?
Assuming the clean install was to latest drivers for the GPU?
Does the issue still occur in safe mode?

Doesn't happen when I'm running on integrated.
I'm 95% sure I have the latest BIOS installed.
The clean install was to the latest drivers for the GPU.
I have not tried running in safe mode. I'll try that today.

 

[beachbum111111]

UPDATE: So it doesn't occur in safe mode but ALSO it doesn't occur when no AMD drivers are present either. So either some other driver is causing conflicts or there is a setting in the default AMD settings that is causing this. Any suggestions? Keep in mind my temperature is sub 50 when the computer freezes.

 

[Deleted member 14196]

You’ve got mismatch Ram which is in doing you any favors. But your GPU is probably going out

 

[beachbum111111]

You’ve got mismatch Ram which is in doing you any favors. But your GPU is probably going out

I don't think it's the hardware because my friend was using it for months under heavy use and it never crashed once, yet both before and after I lended it to him I always experienced these kinds of crashes constantly. Also the RAM wasn't giving me any problems for the two or three months I was using another GPU so I doubt thats the problem either.

 

[Deleted member 14196]

Well you can doubt all you want but until you start testing components you will never know. If it’s not hardware then it’s drivers or messed up windows

 

[beachbum111111]

Well you can doubt all you want but until you start testing components you will never know. If it’s not hardware then it’s drivers or messed up windows

I said in the OP that I tested the suspected components and they aren't the issue hardware wise. I could test my RAM but that seems to be a waste of time since this issue only ever happens with my GPU and stops when it's removed or when it's drivers have been uninstalled.

 

[Deleted member 14196]

AND I SAID MESSED UP WINDOWS OR DRIVERS ISSUES. that is your answer.

 

[onespeedbiker]

Since this does not happen when "no AMD drivers are present", than it is obviously a driver issue as mentioned by Mandark (in all caps nonetheless ). When you say no AMD drivers are present, I assume that means you uninstalled them. You also said you tried a clean install, but it didn't work, does that mean you followed these instructions? https://forums.tomshardware.com/faq...n-install-of-your-video-card-drivers.2402269/ including down loading and using Wagnard tools "Display driver Uninstaller https://www.wagnardsoft.com/ . This is important because many of the Graphic uninstaller leave their drivers on your hard drive so just reinstalling does little good if they are corrupted.

 

[beachbum111111]

Since this does not happen when "no AMD drivers are present", than it is obviously a driver issue as mentioned by Mandark (in all caps nonetheless ). When you say no AMD drivers are present, I assume that means you uninstalled them. You also said you tried a clean install, but it didn't work, does that mean you followed these instructions? https://forums.tomshardware.com/faq...n-install-of-your-video-card-drivers.2402269/ including down loading and using Wagnard tools "Display driver uninstaller https://www.wagnardsoft.com/ . This is important because many of the Graphic uninstaller leave their drivers on your hard drive so just reinstalling does little good if they are corrupted.

I used the wagnard tools to uninstall the drivers, shortly after installing the latest driver my computer would crash. I will say at first I only uninstalled the AMD drivers, but later I decided to also uninstall the nVidia drivers (PhysX and possibly an old GPU) and Intel drivers (integrated graphics) just to make sure there is nothing going on there. I also used the administrator command prompt and sfc /scannow command to check my OS, in which it actually found corrupt files and repaired them. It's been a few hours now and theres been no crash since, however the crashes are random and can occur anywhere from minutes to days after starting up my PC. If there is no crash in the next week I'll come back and tick this as 'solved' as it seems the problem was corrupt windows files.

UPDATE: Aaaaand it crashed again.

 

[onespeedbiker]

Great, I hope your issue is resolved..

 

[beachbum111111]

New problem. Now every time I expand a google chrome tab my computer crashes the same way

it also crashed when I tried to restart it and is crashing even more now. Uninstalling the drivers again seems to stop the crashing.

 

[Deleted member 14196]

I would do a clean windows install—start over. Then only install the graphics drivers for the GPU that you are using

 

[beachbum111111]

That seemed to have worked. Going to wait about a week before closing the topic in case it's a scenario like the previous one.

 

[beachbum111111]

UPDATE: Did not work. Computer crashed same way as before.