Question My pc has started going nuts, what could this be?

[Corroshi]

So, I have built my pc myself, and it has been working flawlessly for the past 5 years until last month.

Last month I strated having issues, and I can't find na issue whatsoever. I'm posting here to look for some advice in troubleshooting this problem.

My pc starts randomly going nuts. Most of the times the problem is keys being pressed down and held down with no way of unsticking them. Most
Of the time this happens when I'm playing a game. Keys like windows, alt, 2 shift and w get pressed down and my pc starts going nuts. Like 100 chrome tabs with ms office getting opened up and my pc scrolling through the shut down options when I try to restart my computer. I tried reinstalling windows, but it didn't help. I also tried unplugging my keyboard and plugging it back in, which didn't help. I noticed the "ram" LED get lit up sometimes when this happens, so I tried switching off XMP profile, which I had for my 2x16gb DDR4 of 4000mhz ripjaws.

Another reoccurring problem is my pc just switches off randomly and goes to sleep mode.

What's really throwing me off, is the fact that I can't seem to find the cause for this. Sometimes like 3-4h can pass with me playing games and everything being fine. Then it suddenly starts happening. Sometimes it only takes 4-5 rounds of the first match after turning my pc on and it starts happening. It stretches over many different games, so it can't be an issue with the game itself.

I suspect the ram, but again, the LED doesn't always light up when this issue happens. I'm really confused as to why this started happening randomly and how to fix it. For details: I swapped in the Ripjaws about 1.5 years and had to customly tweak the timing and what not, for my pc to run the ram at full 4000mhz. But again, they worked just fine for more than a year.

I can't seem to find anyone having similar trouble, I'm really at a loss here. How do I troubleshoot this?


Here are full specs of my pc:
Msi trio rtx 2080
Intel I9-9900k
Msi z390 tomohawk
2x16gb 4000mhz ripjaws DDR4
Corsair 750W PSU
Arctic freeze II 360mm
A few kingaton 2tb hard drives
Samsung 980 evo 1tb ssd (main C drive)

Tell me of I need to provide any further details. Thanks in advance

As a clarification, I'm still on Windows 10, whixh is activated.

 

[Colif]

Most of the times the problem is keys being pressed down and held down with no way of unsticking them.

Try a clean boot and see if it changes anything - make sure to read instructions and make sure NOT to disable any microsoft services or windows won't load right - https://support.microsoft.com/en-au/help/929135/how-to-perform-a-clean-boot-in-windows

It doesn’t delete anything, it just stops non Microsoft programs running with start. Easy to reverse.

if clean boot fixes it, it shows its likely a startup program. You should, over a number of startups. restart the programs you stopped to isolate the one that is to blame. Take time re adding things since it doesn't always happen.

what keyboard do you have? have you tried another one?
if problem survives a reinstall its likely to be hardware.

It would be strange for it to be ram, as I find ram causes BSOD, not keyboard errors.

 

[Corroshi]

Try a clean boot and see if it changes anything - make sure to read instructions and make sure NOT to disable any microsoft services or windows won't load right - https://support.microsoft.com/en-au/help/929135/how-to-perform-a-clean-boot-in-windows

It doesn’t delete anything, it just stops non Microsoft programs running with start. Easy to reverse.

if clean boot fixes it, it shows its likely a startup program. You should, over a number of startups. restart the programs you stopped to isolate the one that is to blame.

what keyboard do you have? have you tried another one?

I have a varmilo va88m, and no, I have not tried another one. I'll do what you suggested and get back. although I think this might be a tedious thing to do, because the issue happens at great intervals. After the fresh install I literally installed only 7 programs: Steam, geforce experience, chrome, discord, Riot games, spotify and blitz.

 

[Colif]

if problem survives a reinstall its likely to be hardware.

It would be strange for it to be ram, as I find ram causes BSOD, not keyboard errors.

i would try another keyboard and see if it keeps happening.

With so few things installed, its probably not a start up program,

 

[Corroshi]

i would try another keyboard and see if it keeps happening.

With so few things installed, its probably not a start up program,

yeah, tbf my keyboard has been water damaged back in 2022, but after that it has worked fine. Maybe I need to update the keyboard firmware and see if that helps alongside a proper cleaning of the keyboard?

 

[Colif]

varmilo va88m,

interesting, my AV won't let me visit their website... does it use any software?

water damage might be hard to repair. How much can you replace on that? I know on mine I can replace almost everything except the battery and electronics (Nuphy Halo96).

 

[Corroshi]

interesting, my AV won't let me visit their website... does it use any software?

water damage might be hard to repair. How much can you replace on that? I know on mine I can replace almost everything except the battery and electronics (Nuphy Halo96).

So, a small status update. I got down to the pcb of my keyboard and found a burnt grain of rice between 2 connectors. Here's a masterful recreation of the incident with a new grain of rice lol

 

[mojorisin23]

I had something semi similar happen to a six year old custom built PC. I swapped keyboard, speaker system (it was installed near when it started going haywire), and finally hard drive- new install of everything. Nothing worked. In the end I bit bullet and swapped the Nvidia GTX 1060 Ti that i had in another computer- still nothing. Lastly, i changed the RAM- removing the old and buying brand new sticks. THAT DID IT! RAM went bad...

 

[Corroshi]

https://imgur.com/a/yAFbVBu

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

 

[Colif]

So, a small status update. I got down to the pcb of my keyboard and found a burnt grain of rice between 2 connectors. Here's a masterful recreation of the incident with a new grain of rice lol

Hopefully that is the cause. time will tell. possible it worked its way down there through keys?

burn spot is a worry. appears to be under the space bar connection area (based on key labels being in reverse qwerty order (upside down) - could just be dirt? or remains of water damage in 2022.

See if removing rice is enough to fix?

burned rice might have shorted it but as its only sometimes, makes me think typing action might have moved it around sometimes.
I don't know what layers you have in there, some keyboard have foam/rubber layers to dampen sound... and probably block rice.

 

[Corroshi]

Hopefully that is the cause. time will tell. possible it worked its way down there through keys?

burn spot is a worry. appears to be under the space bar connection area (based on key labels being in reverse qwerty order (upside down) - could just be dirt? or remains of water damage in 2022.

See if removing rice is enough to fix?

Tbf, that connector isn't soldered. The main connector for the space bar is in the middle of the space bar. The ones on the side are just for stability with no switch attached. I'll reassemble the keyboard after the cleanup and see if everything is ok

 

[Corroshi]

I had something semi similar happen to a six year old custom built PC. I swapped keyboard, speaker system (it was installed near when it started going haywire), and finally hard drive- new install of everything. Nothing worked. In the end I bit bullet and swapped the Nvidia GTX 1060 Ti that i had in another computer- still nothing. Lastly, i changed the RAM- removing the old and buying brand new sticks. THAT DID IT! RAM went bad...

Hmm, interesting. What kind of problems did you have?

 

[Colif]

I suspect the ram, but again, the LED doesn't always light up when this issue happens. I'm really confused as to why this started happening randomly and how to fix it. For details: I swapped in the Ripjaws about 1.5 years and had to customly tweak the timing and what not, for my pc to run the ram at full 4000mhz. But again, they worked just fine for more than a year.

Did the problems still occur after turning off XMP?

ram errors tend to cause BSOD you can't solve. You can fix one driver just for the problem to move to another. Most of the time you get BSOD from ram errors, since all your data has to run in it. It causes corruption...

Another reoccurring problem is my pc just switches off randomly and goes to sleep mode.

that is odd. Not sure what would cause it to sleep randomly. Is there a button on keyboard that might do that?

 

[Corroshi]

Did the problems still occur after turning off XMP?

ram errors tend to cause BSOD you can't solve. You can fix one driver just for the problem to move to another. Most of the time you get BSOD from ram errors, since all your data has to run in it. It causes corruption...


that is odd. Not sure what would cause it to sleep randomly. Is there a button on keyboard that might do that?

I double checked, and it appears I didn't completely turn off xmp, but now it's done, so I will see. And no, not as long as I'm aware, my neyboard doesn't have any unusual buttons. It's a normal TKL format

 

[Corroshi]

I have the keyboard assembled now, and I will make a new thread if any issues persist, so you can close this one. hopefully turning the xmp off and cleaning my keyboard helped.

 

[Colif]

The issue could occur if there are incorrect power settings on the computer and also because of incompatible display drivers.


Please follow the below steps to troubleshoot with the issue:
1 . Select “Settings” from the Start menu, then click the “System” option.
2. Click “Power and Sleep” from the list of options. Make sure that the options under “Sleep” are set to a desired value.
3. Click “Additional Power Settings” under “Related Settings.” You will be redirected to the control panel.
4. Select “Change Plan settings” under your chosen power plan. Then click “Change advanced power settings” from the resulting screen.
5. On the “Power Options” window, expand each setting to make sure nothing is preventing your computer from going to sleep.
6. Once you are done, click “Apply” to save your settings. This should fix the problem for you.

https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us...f-in-use/73ea6ca1-b9f0-48f7-850b-4e3e153bf1de

okay, I close thread.