Need Help Solving A Pesky Freezing Problem

[sam5959]

So I built my own PC maybe a year or two ago, enjoyed the experience and so far everything has gone well. The only issues I've had are:

A) When I shut down my PC sometimes it will restart instead of staying off. I've read up and heard it may be that the computer is experiencing an error on shut down and that's why it is coming back on. Anyway, it was never something that bothered me, but thought I would mention it in case it could help solve problem B which is my main issue.

B) While I'm using my computer, seemingly randomly, my computer will have small (maybe something like 1-2 second) freezes sometimes half an hour apart sometimes it will never happen in a sitting. To give more detail, the freezes occur sometimes when I have been on the PC for a while or sometimes just after start up. It can depend.

Things like YouTube videos and music still run during the freeze, but if i'm typing for instance and I happen to be pressing a certain key then it will be like i was holding down the key, producing multiple of the same letter until the freeze is over. The freeze also effects the mouse cursor. If I am video editing and playing the sequence, the playback will run like it is in fast-forward until the freeze finishes.

Again, this issue is something that I think has been around for months (I can't quite remember to be honest when it started which sounds silly, I know, and I can't remember if it's been here since the initial build) and it hasn't bothered me up until now. However, I've started recording game play footage while doing voice over using Audition, but I'm finding when it comes to editing that the voice over has points in it where the program has seemed to freeze for a second and so the audio cuts out there for a second and then continues as normal. This leaves my voice over and game play out of sync for the rest of the video if left unedited. So, I'm linking these stutters in the voice over perhaps to this stutter issue.

Please, if anyone helpful could give me a hint as to what might be causing the issue I would really appreciate it. When checking open hardware monitor all temperatures seem to be reasonable and when looking at task manager I'm not seeing any CPU spikes when the freeze occurs, so not sure where to look. Thanks so much for reading my essay 😛.

Hardware specs:
430w EVGA PSU
Gigabyte H81m-S2H Motherboard
Core i3 4160 CPU
Hyper X 4gb Memory 1600mhz
GTX 560 TI GFX card
SanDisk SD7SB6S128G1122 SSD Boot drive
1tb hard drive that I can get the model number of if it is needed.

 

[capt_taco]

I'd be interested in knowing the full specs of your RAM; if it's unstable, that can cause seemingly random freezes, although usually it's worse - computer locking up entirely, crashing out of programs, etc.

Since you only have 4GB of RAM, it's also worth investigating whether things are being constantly written to and from the pagefile, which is basically an area on your hard drive where the system dumps information that overflows from the RAM so that it's not lost. So if some program is filling your RAM all the way up at certain points (which would not be unexpected given the gaming and recording 4GB), it could be writing the excess to the pagefile; since that is significantly slower than accessing the RAM, it can cause the kind of mini-hiccups you're experiencing.

Note that if this is indeed the case, the solution would be to add more RAM, not disable the pagefile. Some people will tell you to do that as a quick fix, but then all you'd be doing is losing data and likely crashing out of programs if they are actually using the full RAM.

As for the restarting, there are several "wake on" options in the BIOS, usually under power settings or something similarly titled. "Wake on LAN" is one that often restarts a computer seemingly for no reason, and there are also options for the keyboard, mouse, USB devices, etc. to turn the machine on. So disabling some/all of those is my best guess at solving that issue.

 

[sam5959]

I'd be interested in knowing the full specs of your RAM; if it's unstable, that can cause seemingly random freezes, although usually it's worse - computer locking up entirely, crashing out of programs, etc.

Since you only have 4GB of RAM, it's also worth investigating whether things are being constantly written to and from the pagefile, which is basically an area on your hard drive where the system dumps information that overflows from the RAM so that it's not lost. So if some program is filling your RAM all the way up at certain points (which would not be unexpected given the gaming and recording 4GB), it could be writing the excess to the pagefile; since that is significantly slower than accessing the RAM, it can cause the kind of mini-hiccups you're experiencing.

Note that if this is indeed the case, the solution would be to add more RAM, not disable the pagefile. Some people will tell you to do that as a quick fix, but then all you'd be doing is losing data and likely crashing out of programs if they are actually using the full RAM.

As for the restarting, there are several "wake on" options in the BIOS, usually under power settings or something similarly titled. "Wake on LAN" is one that often restarts a computer seemingly for no reason, and there are also options for the keyboard, mouse, USB devices, etc. to turn the machine on. So disabling some/all of those is my best guess at solving that issue.

Thanks for replying.

Think these are the specs of the RAM:
Capacity 4GB
Frequency speed 1600MHz
CAS latency 10-10-10-30
Voltage 1.5V
Operating temperature 0C to 85C
Storage temperature -55C to 100C
Dimensions 133.35mm x 32.8mm
Compatible with P55, H67, P67, Z68, Z77, Z87 and H61 Intel chipsets, as well as A75, A87, A88, A89, A78 and E35 AMD chipsets

As I've been recording on a capture card from console I didn't think I would be reaching my RAM limit. Would I see the RAM topping out in task manager while recording?

How would I find out if things were being written to pagefile?

 

[sam5959]

I'd be interested in knowing the full specs of your RAM; if it's unstable, that can cause seemingly random freezes, although usually it's worse - computer locking up entirely, crashing out of programs, etc.

Since you only have 4GB of RAM, it's also worth investigating whether things are being constantly written to and from the pagefile, which is basically an area on your hard drive where the system dumps information that overflows from the RAM so that it's not lost. So if some program is filling your RAM all the way up at certain points (which would not be unexpected given the gaming and recording 4GB), it could be writing the excess to the pagefile; since that is significantly slower than accessing the RAM, it can cause the kind of mini-hiccups you're experiencing.

Note that if this is indeed the case, the solution would be to add more RAM, not disable the pagefile. Some people will tell you to do that as a quick fix, but then all you'd be doing is losing data and likely crashing out of programs if they are actually using the full RAM.

As for the restarting, there are several "wake on" options in the BIOS, usually under power settings or something similarly titled. "Wake on LAN" is one that often restarts a computer seemingly for no reason, and there are also options for the keyboard, mouse, USB devices, etc. to turn the machine on. So disabling some/all of those is my best guess at solving that issue.

So I bought more RAM this week (bringing the PC up to 12gb). I'm almost sure the problem has decreased in frequency, but I'm still getting the stuttering issue as mentioned in the original post (it could be the same frequency and just the placebo effect though). Any thoughts?

Edit: Oh and I've reset Windows since, too.

 

[sam5959]

I'm certain now the RAM is not to blame as I'm reaching nowhere near the limit now and I even tried taking my old stick out and running with the new one just to see if this was causing the issue. Still the same issue. Mouse and keyboard freezing as often as once every two minutes at points.

If anybody has any suggestions at all I'd really appreciate it. It's really beginning to become difficult when editing my let's plays because I have so many sentences that are missing parts due to the freezes.