IDLE state real meaning

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Makku293

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May 4, 2017
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What IDLE state really means?. What is the speed of IDLE in a system? Can its speed be 0.8 GHz or 3.5GHz?. Can IDLE's speed be establish? When Windows enters in a IDLE, when I have some open programs, but not using any of them or when none program is open and I just leave the system there without any kind of movement?. Please... I've got a mix of concepts here, so confused around here.

Regards
 
When the static discharge knocked your PC out, it could have damaged something. That thing gets worse and starts failing a week later. If it's the right part, it could mess up idling but be fine under load. Do you remember what got touched when your computer got shocked?

Another thing you can try is to pull the CMOS battery for an hour or so, to see if the shock corrupted some settings. It would restore your BIOS to stock settings so copy them down first so you can restore them afterwards.
 


The reboot by static happen in two cases, the 1st one and the most common is when I rub my socks without notice the left side of the chasis, at the same time when this occur, the system reboot automatically, and the 2nd case, this was only once, when I plugged a gamepad into the USB.

Observation: my bedroom carpet has too much static.

Can I by removing CMOS battery, induce a side effect, regardless of the BIOS default values?
What do you mean by "See if the shock corrupted some settings"? How can I do that?
What is "Copy them down first"? Back-Up BIOS values w/ the BIOS feature or copy them in a paper?
What does CMOS battery has to do w/ a static issue?. Sorry for my ignorance.

About the static discharge that knocked my PC out. I found this reading the manual:

TUF ESD Guards 2: provides protection against electrostatic discharges, which can damage the M/B components. The ASUS exclusive Anti-Static chip and circuit design, and the I/O shield provide four times better protection and ensure the M/B's lifespan.

So, what is this telling to me (It's just an assumption based on my experience and knowledge)... Is not a static discharge issue the IDLE freezing.

 
You have protection against electrostatic discharges somewhat for certain specific portions of the mobo, but no mobo is fully protected against static discharge.
Removing and then putting back CMOS battery basically resets your bios. If anything in the bios got borked, this should set it back to default values. Copying down values means if you overclocked your memory or your cpu etc, or changed anything in settings manually at some point, you'll have to redo this once bios is reset, so you might note down any changes you did before.
 


By resetting the CMOS can I do it w/ BIOS default option?

 
Not sure what you mean by this. If you're asking whether you can go within bios and set everything back to default that way, then yes, bios should have within it an option to reset everything and it's equivalent to taking out the battery.
 


That is what I was talking about. That is what I meant. Thank You.

Can be possible that the CPU voltage on IDLE is too low?
 
Meanwhile this thread did stay in my mind while I was off doing some other stuff, and I kept an eye on my clocks to see what they did. If I loaded up an intensive game, they went up to max, and stayed that way, but after turning off the game, they went back to ~800MHxz in a few minutes so something is definitely strange with yours. That being said they continue dipping into max territory even when I'm relatively idle but always come back down in the next second.
Do you have a motherboard utility where you might be setting this somehow? Like I own an msi board and have command centre for this, where I can actually adjust the clocks (but don't obviously). Could you have altered it in some way from within a utility like this?
Also...for power options for windows and cpu, do you have it set at max performance or high performance or whatever it's called, instead of balanced?
 


In fact, the 1st paragraph describes the same situation as mine w/o problems. Regarding the 2nd paragraph. I don’t have a M/B utility, the only way to adjust the clocks is within the BIOS or Windows power plan. Yes, I have altered it in some way, by changing the minimum clock speed at 30% (1100MHz) on Balanced Power Plan what is the current plan I’m using, cause, I don’t want to clock speed runs at maximum all the time.

 
How bout doing the utility then if you don't have it default. From here:
https://www.asus.com/us/Motherboards/SABERTOOTH-Z170-S/HelpDesk_Download/
I think it's called AI Suite though the extreme tuning utility might be able to give you control as well. Try setting it from within there to lower when it's stuck on highest clocks? So that if in some way bios is forcing it to the highest clock, after startup, utility might take over and force it back down? I suggest this just to test out if it can in fact go back down.
 


I cant' set it to low, cause, when this happens, the PC turns completely unresponsive.

This may sounds stupid, but, could be the IDLE process be more heavy than yours? I'm just guessing...
 
I guess it could be. I turn off almost everything in my processes that I don't need, turn off most intrusive windows options and am pretty paranoid about any bloatware installs. That being said my default idle clock is around 800MHz and you'd have to be pretty bloated on idle to be hitting max clocks. Could be I guess? What do you have running in your task manager list of processes?
 


http://www.uploadmb.com/dw.php?id=1501202996

There is more, but, w/ less usage.
 
Ok try this instead. go into task manager, then performance tab, on the bottom click open resource monitor. now you should see two little boxes, one with cpu usage and one with max frequency (represented as green and blue lines in the first window at the right). Is the blue one constantly at the top over time? Mine is around 35-50% on average.
 


Green: 2-3% CPU Usage Blue: 31-36% Maximum Frequency
 
Well....that's not bad. I had to re-read the thread and realized it's the idle that's freezing you, not high clocks and this started happening after static discharge.
If it's a hardware issue where you've somehow fried your board at least partially I'm not sure what to tell you short of bios reset (which you've already done) or RMA of the mobo (last resort).
If it's a software issue, where something in your windows power settings maybe or something else got borked during the surge, you could try getting your windows install cd/usb and running it on reboot, to get to repair utility and run the repair. You can also do it like this:
https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/wiki/windows_10-update/system-file-check-sfc-scan-and-repair-system-files/bc609315-da1f-4775-812c-695b60477a93
if you can't find your windows install cd. If that indicates no issues, you've updated and reset bios, and run all the hardware tests and they're coming up fine, I'd talk to your mobo manufacturer about rma if it's still within warranty.
 


I can’t RMA, I’m out of warranty period. I just only fix it by my own and I’m out of money. I’ve performed a several times all the tests that I found and nothing seems to show me the reason why. This is so frustrated, it’s pissing me off. I’m running out of options!!!

 
Hmm honestly not sure what to tell you. There could be a way to get around this issue, not saying there isn't, but I wouldn't know how personally. Have you tried contacting msi, not for rma then, but just to ask what the issue could be in such likely cases of static shock and if there is any way of saving things?
 


If this were your case. What would you do?

 
Oh I'd have been complaining to msi long before this 😛 I have posted on their forums for far less, and for this I'd likely contact their tech support online. After all you can't rma anymore, so you're not really losing anything by asking and providing all the relevant info.
Having melted portion of my motherboard in my laptop before, I also went around trying to find someone who would repair water damage on the motherboard itself but this was very tricky and predictably they all said no once they saw the issue, saying mobos are too compactly made, trying to repair components on them is too tricky (and expensive and time consuming and difficult was left unsaid) and none of them would do it. To this day that laptop is in storage now, I could replace the whole mobo but though it's old, its replacement is so expensive it isn't worth it. Obviously in a desktop this is a little different, as you have the option to change the mobo, but since you can't at this moment, you lose nothing by bugging msi.
 


I understand. Well, I will keep struggling with it, until get to an answer to this <Removed> puzzle. Thank you so much for your help and time.