[SOLVED] Need Help Troubleshooting Strange Issues

MPTyros

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Feb 2, 2021
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First, I apologize if this is the wrong place to post this, but I'm really not sure of the cause of these issues. I can re-post this elsewhere if someone would direct me to a better place.

Recently my computer had begun to have strange errors. Most notably I would experience bluescreens when gaming, but the computer would also sometimes gradually freeze while on desktop, whether playing a game or not.

The bluescreens happen every week or two while playing Apex Legends usually, I'm not sure if that's an issue with the game or just because I've been playing it the most. Unfortunately I can't do anything to reproduce it on command.

The freezes occur every few days, usually at least once a week. It is difficult to describe how the freezes happens and I can't reproduce it on command either. I can move my mouse, but what I can actually click or interact with is limited. I can hit ctrl+alt+del and try to bring up the task manager, but when I click it it returns to desktop and the task manager doesn't appear to open up. I can hit the windows key to open the start menu, but I cannot open anything within it. I can also click and drag icons on the task bar, but when I release them, they seem to glitch over themselves. Sorry if this is a poor description, but I've included a picture of the taskbar below to try to better illustrate what I'm talking about.

My PC is a fairly new system I built that I had done some upgrades to recently. All components are less than a year old. I first tried to run memtest86 and did not receive any errors. After the issues continued, I updated basically every driver I could find. Issues still persisted so I finally updated my BIOS.

Last weekend I finally threw my hands up and wiped everything and did a clean reinstall. I then re-updated everything. I have no experienced the bluescreen issue yet, but it has only been a few days and that was already pretty infrequent. I still have experienced the freezing issue twice in three days. After restarting it can run fine for hours until a freeze occurs or I turn off the PC for the night.

Also, everyday when I start the PC now, it automatically shuts down and restarts shortly after I log into Windows. The restarts happen very abruptly so I don't believe it is part of an update or anything like that. I read that turning off fast startup could help with this, so I did, but it still occurred this morning.

I have run sfc /scannow without any issues coming up.

While I originally had a light overclock, I currently only have DOCP enabled.

Any help would be appreciated, I'd be happy to provide whatever logs or dumps would help diagnose the issue(s).

Specs:
OS: Windows 10 Pro 64-bit
Motherboard: Asus ROG Strix X570-E Gaming ATX AM4
GPU: ASUS ROG STRIX GeForce RTX 2080TI-O11G
CPU: AMD Ryzen 7 3700X
RAM: G.SKILL TridentZ RGB Series 4 x 8GB DDR4 SDRAM DDR4 3600 (PC4 28800) Model F4-3600C16Q-32GTZRC
PSU: Corsair RM850X

Blue Screen Logs Before the Clean Install: https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1U96jk_H3p9oSjcpwqMB-KDwisaGlxDGD

Image of the Taskbar behavior:
OxJCYIe.jpg
 
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Solution
At least you can test the PSU, you can't test a Motherboard. Only way to know if its motherboard is if you have tested or replaced parts with known working parts and errors continue

PSU
the paper clip method - https://forums.tomshardware.com/threads/what-is-the-paperclip-method-of-testing-a-psu.1336402/
or multimeter, (this is best choice as you can test PSU under load)
or in the BIOS to check the +3.3V, +5V, and +12V. - https://www.lifewire.com/power-supply-voltage-tolerances-2624583
How old is PSU?

RM850x isn't a bad PSU so i would lean more towards MB over it.
PSU wouldn't restart PC like it does, that sounds like a mb problem
There is a new MB bios dated today -...

Colif

Win 11 Master
Moderator
what ssd/hdd do you have?

Last weekend I finally threw my hands up and wiped everything and did a clean reinstall. I then re-updated everything. I have no experienced the bluescreen issue yet, but it has only been a few days and that was already pretty infrequent. I still have experienced the freezing issue twice in three days. After restarting it can run fine for hours until a freeze occurs or I turn off the PC for the night.

Also, everyday when I start the PC now, it automatically shuts down and restarts shortly after I log into Windows. The restarts happen very abruptly so I don't believe it is part of an update or anything like that. I read that turning off fast startup could help with this, so I did, but it still occurred this morning.
this shows its unlikely a software problem. reinstalling windows and still random freezes, not what windows does. I was going to suggest turning off fast startup but I see you already have.
 

MPTyros

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Windows is installed on a Samsung SSD 970 EVO Plus 1TB. I also have a second Samsung SSD 970 EVO Plus 1TB as well as a Samsung SSD 850 EVO 500GB and a Samsung SSD 850 PRO 256GB.

When I reinstalled windows I only had a single drive connected.

Prior to the fresh install, Windows was installed on the 256GB one.
 

Colif

Win 11 Master
Moderator
try running Magician on all your drives, run benchmarks/diagnostics.
As storage could be one reason for freeze.

try turning docp off and see if it makes any difference to freezes.
 
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MPTyros

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Thanks, I'll make sure to run that tomorrow during lunch break or after work.

I'll also try turning docp off like you suggested, though these issues only started in the last couple months and docp had been on since March of 2020, so I hope it isn't that.

I have been checking the Event Viewer and Reliability Monitor when these issues happen and its a bit of a mess. Understanding what it all means is beyond me, but would sharing that help? If so, is there a preferred method of sharing them?
 

Colif

Win 11 Master
Moderator
its unlikely to be ram then if it started a few months later.

Event viewer - Just ignore it. I do, it isn't really helpful for the most part. It tells you of errors that may only happen that one time and every other time the command is run, they work fine. Even the critical errors normally just tell you about restarts, and they after the fact. It is sometimes useful but for the most part its just too much information.

reliability History... I try to ignore it too. it tells you about things you may not have even noticed had you not looked. like i just found one of my programs keeps crashing, I wouldn't have noticed had I not looked... but i guess its useful if you are having problems. It sees unexpected restarts as critical errors.

if your PC randomly restarting just after startup, windows will be full of errors and its to be expected. I don't think windows knows why its happening, as it would be causing BSOD if it did. Leads me to think its hardware to blame.

try running this, it will create a ZIP file. If you can upload Zip file to a file sharing website, I can look at what windows is seeing - https://www.sysnative.com/forums/pages/bsodcollectionapp/
 

MPTyros

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I turned off DOCP and started like normal today. There was no immediate restart. Maybe that fixed it, it resolved itself, or it is going to happen again. Hard to say since the restart was a pretty new issue with a small sample size.

I ran Magician benchmark and diagnostic scan. The drive health of all drives came back as "good" in the benchmark. My two older drives don't support the diagnostic feature, but my two newer 1TB drives both came back good.
 
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MPTyros

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The freezing issue happened every few days or so. The restarting is/was a new issue, so I'll just have to keep an eye on it.

Someone I spoke to suggested I reseat the RAM and test each stick by running with a single stick at a time, so I'm trying that currently. I'll give each one a few days until I encounter an issue. I kind of hoping the RAM is the problem, its probably the easiest and cheapest thing to replace at least...
 

MPTyros

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Quick update on it. While running with a single stick of RAM with DOCP off, I experienced another freeze. I was just leaving my PC running during my workday. I only had Discord and chrome open with a YouTube video running.

I'll be testing again with a different stick.
 

MPTyros

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Another quick follow-up:

I swapped RAM with my roommate and experienced another freeze on desktop. Again while just running discord and YouTube with a video running.

I'm not sure if there is a best next step or likely culprit other than RAM, but I figure we can keep swapping parts from his PC to try to pinpoint if it is a hardware issue.
 

Colif

Win 11 Master
Moderator
Ok, well it probably isn't ram then. I am on my phone or I would give you links, you probably want to run something like Realbench and test more parts out.
Freezing isn't a trait of windows, so it looks like hardware of some sort. Just need to isolate the cause.
 

MPTyros

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I went ahead and ran Realbench benchmark. I'm not sure specifically what I'm looking for but I got these results:

Image Editing: 146259
Time: 36.4285

Encoding: 200890
Time: 26.522

OpenCL: 228124
KSamples/sec: 42033

Heavy Multitasking: 170591
Time: 44.7384

System Score: 186466

I'll run the stress test next
 

MPTyros

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Gotcha. Yeah, I didn't crash. I see I can run various stress tests which I'm doing now, but nothing has happened so far.

I feel like the options are running a bit slim, but would you suggest any other tests to pinpoint what's going wrong? Otherwise, I'm just planning to keep swapping parts with my friend. Luckily all of his components are compatible with my build so I can keep testing one at a time.
 

MPTyros

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One more update here:

I swapped in my friends Ryzen 2600X and experienced the same freezing issue. I try to keep conditions the same when testing for it. Chrome running with a video running in Youtube and Discord open it ran like this for at least 12 hours before the issue occurred.

I did see if I could notice any other irregularities with the issue and I did notice some things:
-Chrome had totally frozen I couldn't close tabs or change to other open tabs or move the window
-I could still drag discords window around, but if I tried to resize it, but areas outside of the size the window was originally just are black. I also could not interact with Discord otherwise, just moving window and resizing
-When I turned off my monitors and turn them back on, they are blank/black.

I feel like Chrome wouldn't take down my whole system, but at this point I'm willing to believe anything. I'm trying to run the same test with Edge at the moment. Same thing happened with Edge.

If its a hardware problem, then I suppose it is either my motherboard or PSU. I've never had issues with either in the past so I'm not sure which is more likely based on these symptoms. This only occurred to me now, but I am using Cablemod cables with my PSU. I'm not sure if that could be a factor, but I always thought PSU issues were a bit more catastrophic than what I'm experiencing.
 
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Colif

Win 11 Master
Moderator
At least you can test the PSU, you can't test a Motherboard. Only way to know if its motherboard is if you have tested or replaced parts with known working parts and errors continue

PSU
the paper clip method - https://forums.tomshardware.com/threads/what-is-the-paperclip-method-of-testing-a-psu.1336402/
or multimeter, (this is best choice as you can test PSU under load)
or in the BIOS to check the +3.3V, +5V, and +12V. - https://www.lifewire.com/power-supply-voltage-tolerances-2624583
How old is PSU?

RM850x isn't a bad PSU so i would lean more towards MB over it.
PSU wouldn't restart PC like it does, that sounds like a mb problem
There is a new MB bios dated today - https://rog.asus.com/us/motherboards/rog-strix/rog-strix-x570-e-gaming-model/helpdesk_bios - never know, it might help
 
Solution

MPTyros

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Feb 2, 2021
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PSU seems fine. I got it along with a new case and some fans in early October 2020 to replace my older full tower. Seemed like a good time since the old PSU was 6 years old and I wasn't sure if I would be getting a 30XX eventually

I tried a couple things. I updated to that new BIOS and and did (another) clean install. I'm a little suspicious of the older SSDs, so I've unplugged those for the time being. Updated drivers and not running with any overclocks at the moment. Seems stable so far, but its gone longer with issue.

Crossing my fingers for the time being.
 

MPTyros

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Feb 2, 2021
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Well, its been several days without incident of any kind. I hope I'm not jinxing it, but either the BIOS or unplugging the other drives must have helped. Thanks for your assistance!