[SOLVED] Newly built PC freezes in weird ways.

[badattech]

Please excuse me, I'm really not good at this kind of stuff. This issue has really been frustrating me.

I bought all my parts brand new and built my PC in late October. I've had this problem since the beginning, I thought I'd eventually sort it out but I haven't yet.

My specs are:
CPU- AMD Ryzen 7 3700x 8-Core
RAM- OLOy DDR4 Ram 16GB
GPU- Nvidia GeForce RTX 206
System: Windows 10
SSD: Western Digital Blue 1TB M.2
PSU: Corsair RM (2019) 750 W

The issue that I've been having is that my PC will freeze while idle, browsing through Google Chrome, or downloading something on Steam. However it works great and has never crashed while I'm playing games. The time frame for when it freezes ranges from 15 minutes apart to 1 day apart. Like recently, yesterday I went the whole day without any problems, yet this morning it has frozen 3 times in the past 2 hours.

When it freezes it acts like something I've never seen before with my past computers. When frozen I can still move my mouse, and if I hover over something it shows the little graphic that I've hovered over it. I can move the windows of programs around the screen but I can't exit or minimize. I'm not able to ctrl + alt + delete or esc, I can't open task manager. I can't shut down through the start menu. The only thing I can do is shut it off by pressing the power button on the PC.

All my drivers are up to date and when I troubleshoot it doesn't detect any issues. I've seen a couple threads on here where people describe the same problems I'm having but they are on older PCs so I thought I'd make my own post.

Please help! Thanks.

 

[rgd1101]

make and model of the psu?

 

[badattech]

Sorry, I forgot to include that. It's the Corsair RM (2019) 750 W

 

[newryzenmasochist]

I'm getting the same issues as you have described with my new setup:

" When frozen I can still move my mouse, and if I hover over something it shows the little graphic that I've hovered over it. I can move the windows of programs around the screen but I can't exit or minimize. I'm not able to ctrl + alt + delete or esc, I can't open task manager. I can't shut down through the start menu. The only thing I can do is shut it off by pressing the power button on the PC. "

Maybe it's a windows issue and not a hardware issue? I'm on Windows 10 Version 20H2 (KB4586853), OS build 19042.662.

I wish I could provide more information, but so far I've tried disabling the RAM XMP profile, and also Precision Boost Overdrive.

What is your motherboard model?

My specs for comparison:

CPU: Ryzen 7 5800x
RAM: G.Skill DDR4 3600Mhz 2x16GB F4-3600C16D-32GVKC
GPU: EVGA GTX 1660Ti SC Ultra Gaming
MOBO: MSI MPG B550 Gaming Edge Wifi
PSU: Seasonic Focus GX-750

 

[jinhao]

I'm getting the same issues as you have described with my new setup:

" When frozen I can still move my mouse, and if I hover over something it shows the little graphic that I've hovered over it. I can move the windows of programs around the screen but I can't exit or minimize. I'm not able to ctrl + alt + delete or esc, I can't open task manager. I can't shut down through the start menu. The only thing I can do is shut it off by pressing the power button on the PC. "

Maybe it's a windows issue and not a hardware issue? I'm on Windows 10 Version 20H2 (KB4586853), OS build 19042.662.

I wish I could provide more information, but so far I've tried disabling the RAM XMP profile, and also Precision Boost Overdrive.

What is your motherboard model?

My specs for comparison:

CPU: Ryzen 7 5800x
RAM: G.Skill DDR4 3600Mhz 2x16GB F4-3600C16D-32GVKC
GPU: EVGA GTX 1660Ti SC Ultra Gaming
MOBO: MSI MPG B550 Gaming Edge Wifi
PSU: Seasonic Focus GX-750

I have the exact same problem with my new PC too!
Also, recently i got a BSOD while gaming, but it only lasted for 3-5secs before restarting on its own, weird.
Not sure if its a Windows issue though, a friend of mine is also running on 20H2 without any freezing problems.

My specs are:
Ryzen7 3700x
msi x570 tomahawk WIFI
gskill trident z neo 3600mhz 32gb kit
samsung 970evo plus 500gb nvme m.2
toshiba p300 2tb 7200rpm
msi rtx2060 super 8gb gaming x
seasonic focus+ gx 750w 80+ gold

 

[newryzenmasochist]

I have the exact same problem with my new PC too!
Also, recently i got a BSOD while gaming, but it only lasted for 3-5secs before restarting on its own, weird.
Not sure if its a Windows issue though, a friend of mine is also running on 20H2 without any freezing problems.

My specs are:
Ryzen7 3700x
msi x570 tomahawk WIFI
gskill trident z neo 3600mhz 32gb kit
samsung 970evo plus 500gb nvme m.2
toshiba p300 2tb 7200rpm
msi rtx2060 super 8gb gaming x
seasonic focus+ gx 750w 80+ gold

Well it wasn't the XMP profile causing it.

I'm going to try rolling back nvidia graphics drivers. I'm currently using 457.51, I'm going to try an earlier version 452.06. I will report back.

EDIT: I tried 452.06, still have the odd freezing issue. Going to try 451.48.

EDIT: rolling back Nvidia drivers do not seem to fix the issue.

 

[newryzenmasochist]

Other users have reported similar issues with NZXT CAM software, so avoid using that:

New PC - strange Windows freezes (probable cause: NZXT CAM)

Hi there, I need some help here. I have build a new computer (partlist at the bottom), so far, so good. It runs very good, performance is ok. But after a while (30-120min) of using it, Windows start to behave strange. Here the symptoms: - Windows kind of freezes but I can still move the mouse, mo...

linustechtips.com

I can reliably reproduce the issues with youtube videos, so I'll just try that without using any other monitoring software and see what happens.

 

[johnbl]

to debug problems like this you have to do the following:
- change the windows memory dump type to kernel
google "how to change windows memory dump type to kernel" for the location in control panel for the setting

- make a registry setting so that you can trigger a memory dump via the keyboard.
you can google for instructions or maybe look at this:
Generate a memory dump by forcing a system crash (trendmicro.com)

-reboot then the next time the system gets in a confused state you force a memory dump, make a copy of the file c:\windows\memory.dmp
put it on a cloud server, mark it for public access and post a link to the file here.
you can also send me a message and I will try to take a look at what is going wrong.

seems to be a lot of issues with people using a "x" version of a AMD cpu.
but hopefully it is something more simple than that.

I would also go here for a fix related to your processor:
AMD Drivers and Support for Radeon, Radeon Pro, FirePro, APU, CPU, Ryzen, desktops, laptops
it shows one for the amd 3700x cpu

 

[newryzenmasochist]

Good tip with the kernel mode memory dump. I'll have to try that out some time.

Through my brief research, it seems that there are many people on AMD systems that are encountering similar odd crash/freeze issues.

As far as drivers go, I and OP have already made sure that the chipset drivers, as well as all drivers are up to date.

Since my last update, I've tried to reproduce this soft crash/freeze issue while in safe mode with networking. I didn't do rigorous testing, but I did not encounter any crash/freeze. I would like to test more extensively, but hopefully this means that it's a software/driver issue, and not a hardware issue.

Then, following the theory that hardware monitoring was causing the freeze/crash, I tried some fixes:

I disabled low level IO driver in MSI afterburner.
I enabled stealth mode in Rivatuner statistics server.
I uninstalled my mouse tuning software.
I turned off hardware accelerated GPU scheduling in Windows settings.
I turned on 95W eco mode in BIOS settings.

I'll continue to do stability testing throughout the week, and will report back.

 

[johnbl]

Good tip with the kernel mode memory dump. I'll have to try that out some time.

Through my brief research, it seems that there are many people on AMD systems that are encountering similar odd crash/freeze issues.

As far as drivers go, I and OP have already made sure that the chipset drivers, as well as all drivers are up to date.

Since my last update, I've tried to reproduce this soft crash/freeze issue while in safe mode with networking. I didn't do rigorous testing, but I did not encounter any crash/freeze. I would like to test more extensively, but hopefully this means that it's a software/driver issue, and not a hardware issue.

Then, following the theory that hardware monitoring was causing the freeze/crash, I tried some fixes:

I disabled low level IO driver in MSI afterburner.
I enabled stealth mode in Rivatuner statistics server.
I uninstalled my mouse tuning software.
I turned off hardware accelerated GPU scheduling in Windows settings.
I turned on 95W eco mode in BIOS settings.

I'll continue to do stability testing throughout the week, and will report back.

I would be looking at the CPU power management functions as a source of the problems.
some hackers posted code to attack these CPU by attacking the BIOS then I think AMD did some CPU revisions and BIOS patches. I think the patches were not so good or should not be applied to certain CPUs from the china grey market. AMD did have some updates for some of these chips but not for others. it is kind of a mess right now.

• patches from motherboard vendors bios not matching the new CPUs,
• patches for known bugs in the various AMD CPUs
• patches from AMD not matching the old bios versions that the motherboard vendors have installed,
• motherboard vendors that have custom drivers that access the bios directly and tweak settings.
• microsoft wanting to secure the BIOS if the system is in secure boot to block these programs bios access
• and conflicts with the microsoft AMD microcode patches that will not work with various versions of the AMD chipset drivers

all this and the raw stacks that have unrelated function calls. (idle loop, that has a network function right in the middle, for example)
It makes you suspect a virus code insertion or a cpu bug. so far all of these that I looked at were in the new cpus from china.
my best guess is the AMD knows about this and installing their drivers will be the first fix, then a month or so later the motherboard vendors will roll out a patch. Microsoft will also detect this and try to get amd to give them a patch for their amd cpu microcode update to windows but they can only install it under certain conditions.


and microsoft installing their own amd cpu microcode driver to try to patch the CPU bugs.

 

[jinhao]

Other users have reported similar issues with NZXT CAM software, so avoid using that:

New PC - strange Windows freezes (probable cause: NZXT CAM)

Hi there, I need some help here. I have build a new computer (partlist at the bottom), so far, so good. It runs very good, performance is ok. But after a while (30-120min) of using it, Windows start to behave strange. Here the symptoms: - Windows kind of freezes but I can still move the mouse, mo...

linustechtips.com

I can reliably reproduce the issues with youtube videos, so I'll just try that without using any other monitoring software and see what happens.

This worked out for me. Disabled NZXT CAM from running in the background, and my PC hasn't freeze since. Seems like there are a ton of victims in that forum too.
Thank you!