[SOLVED] My PC has so many problems

[lukesuver]

Hey! My names Luke and I've had my PC for about 2-3 years now and ever since I built it I've had problem after problem after problem.

I have no issues with booting my system, I have a 500gb SSD that I put windows and my driver updates on. It's only when it comes to gaming. Whenever I try and play first person shooters (MW, Cold War, CSGO and even sometimes in low quality games like Terraria and League of Legends!)

My specs are:

GTX 1070ti FTW
AMD Ryzen 7 3700x
Tomahawk B350 Motherboard
550w EVGA B3 PSU
16gb of DDR4 RAM (Ballistix)
500gb SSD
x2 2TB HDD


The biggest problem I face is constant freezing up. My screen will pause for a little less than a second right before I die or when a lot happens on my screen (Terraria boss battles). When playing Modern Warfare I get constant freezes even when I'm just looting and running around. It also uses 90%+ and sometimes even 100% of my memory. It's very frustrating because I worked an entire summer to save up for this PC and all I have are problems, it's making me not want to play it or use it anymore.

Another problem I have is with my desktop. It randomly changes from my wallpaper to a solid pink color and it doesn't go away unless I restart my entire PC.

The last problem I want to ask about it why my PC wakes up from sleep mode every single night at like 2 am. I have everything up to date, my drivers, my windows. But it still keeps happening!

 

[TheLazP]

Hey,
Keep in mind I am not an expert but since I didn't see some replies, yet, I wanted to throw some things at you that you can do to see if any fix your issues. I'm sorry if none of these fix it for you and there's plenty of other things you may do so don't lose hope!

Follow my order just in case:

• You may have your Desktop Slideshow on, you should go check and turn it off if it is, you may do so by going into your Control Panel → Hardware and Sound → Power Options → Click 'Change Plan Settings' → Click 'Change advanced power settings' → Expand the option 'Desktop Background Settings' → Set the slideshow to Disabled on both Battery and Plugged. You may also try to change your background to another one and place the file of such background somewhere else like your Desktop for now and see if it changes again in the future.
• On Control Panel → Hardware and Sound → Power Options be sure you're using the plan: High performance (at least while gaming)
• If your PC randomly wakes up from sleep it's probably something on the background that is doing it for you, if it's always at a certain time there's probably something scheduled to check for updates/run etc.. Check your startup programs and disable anything not needed, that's a good start to see if any of those were doing it, you may also disable automatic windows updates.
• Your antivirus may also not be doing great things for you so you may think about switching, Avast for example has been known to give some issues to games so if you have it I recommend switching to a good alternative, you may check this website for good Antiviruses: https://www.av-comparatives.org/comparison/ & https://www.av-test.org/en/antivirus/home-windows/
• Run a full Antivirus test on your whole system to see if it catches anything!
• Be sure you fully update Windows through Windows Update and let it do its thing, I am aware you said you have it updated but double check
• Create a restore point by simply searching 'Create a restore point' on your Start Menu and name it whatever is better for you to remember, this is in case something goes bad in the following steps even though Windows may do some automatically for you.
• After a fully updated Windows you may think about Updating your GPU Driver, do not Download and have Geforce Experience Software on your PC cause it has been known to cause some issues so lets push that out of the way and only Update the driver and not include the Software (Geforce Experience), you may get it in the future if you really wish to use it. In this case your driver should be this one: https://www.nvidia.com/Download/driverResults.aspx/165686/en-us (Please do double-check before downloading just in case) [Updated Driver is version 456.71]
• If you updated any other drivers hopefully you've done it through Windows Updates or through the official manufacturers website!
• After you've done all of these you may want to run a few commands on CMD, search CMD on your Start Menu → Run as administrator:
  First command: dism /online /cleanup-image /restorehealth (Let it fully finish and move to the next one)
  Second command: sfc /scannow (Let it fully finish)
  After both commands do their thing, restart/reboot your PC so in case they did some changes it'll apply some on reboot since they may need it.

If you really have some time in your hands you can run an extra command on CMD(Run as administrator) if you wish:

• chkdsk /f /r
  If it says it needs a reboot to start it, it will upon restarting/reboot your PC, do keep in mind this can take a really long time, maybe even 10+hours to finish. You may also rerun both commands above if you wish after this Disk Check cause at times they actually may fix things after this one.

─ ─ ─ ─ ─ ─ ─ ─ ─ ─

Q: What does the dism thing do?:
A: Simply put it scans the Operating System for corrupt files. If DISM finds corrupt files, it attempts to repair them automatically.

Q: What does the sfc thing do?:
A: Scans all protected system files and replaces corrupted files with a cached copy that is located in a compressed folder at %WinDir%\System32\dllcache. The %WinDir% placeholder represents the Windows operating system folder. For example, C:\Windows.

Q: What does the chkdsk /f and /r thing do?:
A: From Microsoft - Creates and displays a status report for a disk based on the file system. Chkdsk also lists and corrects errors on the disk. Used without parameters, chkdsk displays the status of the disk in the current drive. /f - fixes errors on the disk | /r - locates bad sectors and recovers readable information

 

[lukesuver]

Hey,
Keep in mind I am not an expert but since I didn't see some replies, yet, I wanted to throw some things at you that you can do to see if any fix your issues. I'm sorry if none of these fix it for you and there's plenty of other things you may do so don't lose hope!

Hey! Thanks for responding

So regarding the GeForce experience. Do I uninstall it completely and manually install new drivers??

 

[TheLazP]

Hey! Thanks for responding

So regarding the GeForce experience. Do I uninstall it completely and manually install new drivers??

GeForce Experience can be uninstalled and there's no issue, first you may want to check your Driver Version and see if you do need Updating, you may update through their website and uncheck the 'Install GeForce Experience' on the installer or you can update through GeForce Experience and then Uninstall the Experience Sofware.

Oh and do keep in mind about Temperatures, on your CPU, GPU, etc.. if you need to get a better stock cooler for your CPU, if you need extra fans for the case, I don't recommend more than 3 case fases since if they're positioned correctly the difference will be little after. I would say anything above 73 is a cause of worry and if anything reaches 80 you should definitely look into cooling, it might be why things freeze up. BUT you might have other issues besides cooling, IF it is cooling at all that could be one of the factors.