Question PC constantly freezing - no apparent software cause

[YUNoJump]

Hi,
I’ve been having this problem for a while now and after trying almost everything I can think of, I’ve come no closer to solving the problem.

Basically, at pretty much any given state of Windows, my PC will occasionally just totally freeze. The display freezes instantly, audio immediately cuts out, and as far as I can tell keyboard and mouse inputs don’t do anything either, visually or otherwise. Unplugging then reconnecting a USB peripheral during the freeze won’t send power to it (e.g. my LED keyboard doesn’t turn its lights on) The attached monitors can turn off as if going into sleep mode while the freeze is occurring, but I can’t wake them from that sleep, they don’t detect the PC’s input. The PC has never recovered from the freeze in the few months I’ve had the issue (even after leaving the PC for several hours), and my only option has been to restart the device altogether.

The freeze will frequently happen within a minute or two of booting into Windows, occasionally it will even freeze before login. However, the freeze never seems to occur when I’m running a game. I usually try to get Warframe running as soon as possible after logging in (uniquely, its launcher can stop the freeze unlike other game launchers), but just about any game that has actually started up seems to work. Other than games, I haven’t been able to find anything else that prevents freezing, such as running more or less programs at startup or playing videos etc.

I’ve checked system logs, however they don’t show any error at the time of the freezes or any other errors that could be causing it, the only relevant errors are the “Windows recovered from an unexpected shutdown” ones when I restart. I tried enabling dump logs but none are created by the freeze or my forced restart afterwards. I’ve also updated my drivers and did a clean reinstall of my graphics drivers with no change. I also tried running the Windows diagnostic/repair tool at startup but unsurprisingly it didn’t turn anything up.

The freeze doesn’t seem to occur in Safe Mode, but it does in a Clean Boot. Unplugging all peripherals before startup doesn’t seem to have an effect either. The real kick in the shins is that I’ve just tried to do a clean install of Windows 10 from a bootable USB drive (following the guide I found on this site), but the freeze is occurring during the installation process as well, effectively rendering my PC useless for the time being.

At this point I’m pretty sure its hardware-related, but I don’t want to go out and spend money on a new part that doesn’t solve the problem just because I don’t have a way of checking. I want to believe its the PSU, but I don’t have a tester or a multimeter to be sure of that. I’m hoping that people on here will have better knowledge of the symptoms of hardware faults and will be able to advise what part to replace or what magic button to press.

Any help at all with this would be much appreciated, this issue really has me at my wit’s end. Sorry about the big pile of text but I wanted to make sure as much information was available as possible.

Specs:
Motherboard: MSI 970 Gaming
CPU: AMD FX-6300
RAM: G.SKILL Ripjaws DDR3-1600MHz - 4GBx4
PSU: Corsair CS Series Modular CS550M
GPU: EVGA GeForce GTX 1070 with Hybrid Cooling
CPU fan: be quiet! Dark Rock Pro 4
Case: Corsair Carbide 300R
Drives: 1x optical, 1x 7200RPM 500GB HDD, 1x 7200RPM 1TB HDD
Peripherals: 2x monitors (1xDVI, 1xHDMI), gaming keyboard and mouse, Xbox wireless adapter, 3.5mm microphone and headphones (separate), 1x wireless network card

 

[cin19]

The freeze doesn’t seem to occur in Safe Mode, that means the problem related to the hardware driver(s), like Xbox, GPU, microphone, etc.

You may try to uninstall the driver first, use CClearner to run "Registry cleaner". After that update these hardware driver.

For uninstalling the GPU driver, use the DDU. https://www.guru3d.com/files_details/display_driver_uninstaller_download.html

 

[Grobe]

How old are each component you listening ?

Have you built the computer yourself, and have you upgraded some components since it was built ?

Did you make any change or moved the computer before first occurrence of the fault/freeze ?

 

[YUNoJump]

The freeze doesn’t seem to occur in Safe Mode, that means the problem related to the hardware driver(s), like Xbox, GPU, microphone, etc.

You may try to uninstall the driver first, use CClearner to run "Registry cleaner". After that update these hardware driver.

For uninstalling the GPU driver, use the DDU. https://www.guru3d.com/files_details/display_driver_uninstaller_download.html

Thanks for the quick response. Unfortunately it seems like Windows is a bit dead currently what with the USB installer freezing, currently booting into the Windows HDD just shows some "EFI shell" command line stuff that I don't know anything about. I'll try the installer again when I'm back in front of the PC later today, just to see if I can get lucky and avoid the freeze during the installation.

I did try reinstalling the GPU driver recently (I also uninstalled GeForce Experience and downloaded the driver directly), but I didn't try using DDU. I tried disconnecting stuff like the Xbox adapter and it didn't seem to do much but I don't know if that has the same effect as actually cleaning out the registry and drivers, so if Windows does reinstall, I'll avoid installing those peripherals and see if it helps.

How old are each component you listening ?

Have you built the computer yourself, and have you upgraded some components since it was built ?

Did you make any change or moved the computer before first occurrence of the fault/freeze ?

Thanks for the help. Everything other than the GPU and the CPU fan was bought and assembled by myself in early 2016, I bought and installed the GPU with its cooling system in early 2017 and the CPU fan a little later. The GPU was replacing an MSI Radeon R9 380 bought at the same time as the rest of the PC parts. The CPU fan just replaced the stock fan that came with the CPU. I'm pretty sure I cleaned out the old AMD GPU drivers at the time of the upgrade, besides that the issue didn't start occurring until quite a while after installing the new GPU.

I can't think of when exactly the issue started occurring or if it started after a particular change or move, but the issue has been ongoing for several months now. The computer has seen some general movement in that time but nothing too extreme comes to mind from before the issue started occurring.

 

[cin19]

If you did not use the DDU to uninstall the AMD GPU driver, there will be some of AMD driver left over, which will cause the problem.

Recommend to use DDU to uninstall all the driver, before you switch or upgrade the GPU.

Other way to check your PC problem will be the "Reliability Monitor Tool ". You should try it out next time.

Reliability Monitor is the Best Windows Troubleshooting Tool You Aren't Using

When it comes to hidden gems in Windows, nothing beats the Reliability monitor tool, hidden behind a link inside of another tool that you don't use either.

www.howtogeek.com

 

[Grobe]

Also check dust accumulation inside the cabinet, especially near GPU and CPU, and also the PSU.

Did you applied thermal paste properly (very important that not too much is applied) ?

Could it be that the CPU cooler have got loose over time?

 

[YUNoJump]

If you did not use the DDU to uninstall the AMD GPU driver, there will be some of AMD driver left over, which will cause the problem.

Recommend to use DDU to uninstall all the driver, before you switch or upgrade the GPU.

Other way to check your PC problem will be the "Reliability Monitor Tool ". You should try it out next time.

Reliability Monitor is the Best Windows Troubleshooting Tool You Aren't Using

When it comes to hidden gems in Windows, nothing beats the Reliability monitor tool, hidden behind a link inside of another tool that you don't use either.

www.howtogeek.com

Is this what would be causing the installer to freeze as well, or would that be another thing? I'll try to update the BIOS later to see if that helps with the installer and then I'll run DDU if I can get into Windows proper after that.

Also check dust accumulation inside the cabinet, especially near GPU and CPU, and also the PSU.

Did you applied thermal paste properly (very important that not too much is applied) ?

Could it be that the CPU cooler have got loose over time?

I'll make sure to give it a thorough clean tonight just to be sure. The cooler should have the correct amount of paste on it, but as it hangs off the board I wouldn't be surprised if it has loosened. I'll check that out too, thanks.

 

[YUNoJump]

Ok, so I’ve updated the BIOS and also given the whole thing a pretty good clean. The CPU cooler was still screwed on as tight as it will go, and the thermal paste seems fine, nothing leaking out or anything like that. I could take the cooler off and reapply it to be certain but I don‘t currently have any spare paste to do that with. All of these changes don’t seem to have had an effect; the Windows install USB is still freezing, mostly at the “getting files ready” stage.

I’ve also tried installing on a different HDD and using a Windows CD instead of the USB with no change in outcome either time.

 

[Grobe]

See if your computer will pass Memtest. You'll find Memtest on startup menu on most of the popular Linux distros (Mint, Ubuntu, etc). Let it run for several hours and see how it goes.

 

[tworley4125]

I would suspect that you've probably got a case of just old components (memory or CPU or both most likely) that have simply worn out. Combine that with Windows (which eats up a lot of memory and processing power), a cluttered HDD (old driver files, cluttered registry, maybe the HDD is getting full, etc...), slow memory, or even a PSU that is being over taxed and you could definitely get the problems that you're seeing. The freezing isn't occurring in safe mode because the load is being taken off the components (safe mode only runs the computer with the bare minimum files needed).

 

[YUNoJump]

See if your computer will pass Memtest. You'll find Memtest on startup menu on most of the popular Linux distros (Mint, Ubuntu, etc). Let it run for several hours and see how it goes.

So I ran Memtest86 (the PassMark version) from a USB, it finished a default scan (I didn't change any options), which took about a day, it completed successfully but in my wisdom I closed it before I actually took note of how many errors were reported. I do have a log file but I have no idea how to read it.

After that test I tried running another one with different settings to confirm that all the cores on the CPU are being checked, and every test other than the default options failed (outside of just choosing the number of passes). Trying to test each single core other than #0 froze instantly; before the test timer could even start. This required me to restart the computer.
I also tried running each type of multi-core test; round robin consistently froze at the same step ("moving inversions, ones and zeroes"), sequential also froze shortly after it started, and parallel actually restarted my computer after a few seconds each time I tried it. Unfortunately I assume this just means the problem is anywhere other than in the RAM.

I would suspect that you've probably got a case of just old components (memory or CPU or both most likely) that have simply worn out. Combine that with Windows (which eats up a lot of memory and processing power), a cluttered HDD (old driver files, cluttered registry, maybe the HDD is getting full, etc...), slow memory, or even a PSU that is being over taxed and you could definitely get the problems that you're seeing. The freezing isn't occurring in safe mode because the load is being taken off the components (safe mode only runs the computer with the bare minimum files needed).

I guess this is pretty likely. It's a shame because it still keeps up with all the games I'm currently interested in playing. It would be good if I could figure out a single part to replace even just as a stopgap while I save up for a full replacement, at this point the only reason I'm not just continuing to use it is because I wiped it and I'm unable to reinstall Windows without a freeze. In any case, thanks for the advice.