[SOLVED] Computer recently started randomly freezing, but the display doesn't shut off/turn black, and doesn't restart

Mar 20, 2022
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Hey all, recently my computer's been randomly freezing. It can be idle, it can be playing a game with 50% gpu/cpu usage, it can be watching a youtube stream - in any of these scenarios, it can just randomly freeze.
Some quirks about this freeze that I noticed:
  • Initially, there's massive lag before it finally freezes - my mouse will update once a second for ~3-5 seconds before the display freezes.
  • During this lag, there's an erratic, monotonous, shrill sound that plays (E-E-E-E-E-E-E). If I have music on, it'll play the latest second of the music repeatedly until it finally freezes, which it then becomes a (EEEEEEEE) sound.
  • The display doesn't turn black, it stops on the last frame of whatever I was doing. So if I was watching a video, it'd freeze on the latest frame that it was playing before it froze.
  • The computer never reboots if it freezes. I always have to manually reset it by holding the power button.
  • The fans go quiet if I was playing a game/doing something intensive before it froze, i.e. it goes WHIRRR and as soon as the lag kicks in and the freeze occurs, it'll quieten down becoming almost silent.
  • Event Viewer shows nothing with respect to any errors or critical-level warnings around the time that the freeze occurs, it'll simply show an error on the next reboot regarding the fact that the shutdown wasn't clean.
  • I disconnect from the internet during the lag, and during the freeze. I was playing a game and during the heavy screen lag (it goes to 1fps) it told me that it disconnected from the net.
What could the cause of this be? I haven't added any new sources of power intake, the gpu and cpu hasn't changed in the past few months, and I haven't changed the BIOS config in the past month either. Could this be due to a virus? Any help or direction would be greatly appreciated.
 
Solution
CPU: Intel i5-10400F @ 2.9 GHz
GPU: Asus Nvidia GeForce GTX 1060 6GB
RAM: 2x 8GB DDR4-3200MHZ Corsair
Motherboard: Gigabyte Z480M Gaming X

CPU sits at 40-50 when idle, 70-80 when performing anything stressful
GPU sits at similar temperatures, maybe 60-70 when gaming instead.

I think the temperatures are fine, doesn't seem like there's any issues.



I'll try this - but does the problem you described usually freeze computers and put them in a non-rebootable state (aside from hard resets)?
I was making a guess that you have a realtek sound hardware on the motherboard.
they made a fix to the driver so it would not mess up the other drivers anymore...
update your motherboard sound drivers or disable it in bios if you do not have speakers connected to it. reboot
then go to windows control panel, find device manager and disable any sound source that does not have a speaker attached to it. for example if you gpu provides sound to the monitor via hdmi cable but you don't have a speaker in your monitor you can disable the gpu sound driver.

basically, you could also update the various sound drivers. there were bugs in a common motherboard sound driver such that it would respond to other sound drivers request then overflow driver memory buffers and cause strange problems. mostly people do not hear the sound because they don't all ways have a speaker attached to the victim sound driver.
 
Mar 20, 2022
2
0
10
full system spec? include brand and model of the psu
what the cpu/gpu temp?

CPU: Intel i5-10400F @ 2.9 GHz
GPU: Asus Nvidia GeForce GTX 1060 6GB
RAM: 2x 8GB DDR4-3200MHZ Corsair
Motherboard: Gigabyte Z480M Gaming X

CPU sits at 40-50 when idle, 70-80 when performing anything stressful
GPU sits at similar temperatures, maybe 60-70 when gaming instead.

I think the temperatures are fine, doesn't seem like there's any issues.

update your motherboard sound drivers or disable it in bios if you do not have speakers connected to it. reboot
then go to windows control panel, find device manager and disable any sound source that does not have a speaker attached to it. for example if you gpu provides sound to the monitor via hdmi cable but you don't have a speaker in your monitor you can disable the gpu sound driver.

basically, you could also update the various sound drivers. there were bugs in a common motherboard sound driver such that it would respond to other sound drivers request then overflow driver memory buffers and cause strange problems. mostly people do not hear the sound because they don't all ways have a speaker attached to the victim sound driver.

I'll try this - but does the problem you described usually freeze computers and put them in a non-rebootable state (aside from hard resets)?
 
CPU: Intel i5-10400F @ 2.9 GHz
GPU: Asus Nvidia GeForce GTX 1060 6GB
RAM: 2x 8GB DDR4-3200MHZ Corsair
Motherboard: Gigabyte Z480M Gaming X

CPU sits at 40-50 when idle, 70-80 when performing anything stressful
GPU sits at similar temperatures, maybe 60-70 when gaming instead.

I think the temperatures are fine, doesn't seem like there's any issues.



I'll try this - but does the problem you described usually freeze computers and put them in a non-rebootable state (aside from hard resets)?
I was making a guess that you have a realtek sound hardware on the motherboard.
they made a fix to the driver so it would not mess up the other drivers anymore.

https://www.gigabyte.com/Motherboard/Z490M-GAMING-X-rev-10/support#support-dl-driver
you might look at the other drivers and bios update but I would skip the utility programs.
 
Solution