Question Persistent Issue: System Freezes

[freswinn]

I am trying to chase down a persistent crash on my computer before I start spending money on the fix.

A few months ago, on Windows 10, I started getting VIDEO_TDR_FAILURE bluescreens at random. I'd had this issue before, many years ago, and managed to fix it. So I tried to fix it again, and it didn't work. Watched a few tutorials including tips from Jayztwocents and digging around forums, and ran into a fun quirk of Windows where it just... ignores your wishes on autodownloading driver updates no matter what you do, so the second you are online your system reverts and borks itself.

Also, I ran a full, hours-long test of the RAM with Memtest86+, and that passed. And I stress tested my video card and processor with Prime95 and Furmark, for hours.

Not that it was helping that much. It was BETTER for the hour or so I had the previous driver installed, but the second it updated it was back to the norm.

That story was necessary preamble to say that I'd had enough of Windows at this point and finally made the switch to Linux Mint 22.

Mint has been better, but not perfect. I reverted to an older driver and the random crashes went from "hourly" to "monthly." Since Linux Mint doesn't have the BSOD, instead I just get a suddenly frozen screen with unresponsive inputs, usually with whatever audio was playing continuing to play in the background unimpeded (until it runs out of loaded data -- for example, this most recent time it played all of its buffered audio from YouTube before it finally went silent).

But here's the other part: Once it crashes, or if I power the computer down, I get what I'm calling a "crash loop."

• It'll make it to the Linux Mint login screen and then instantly freeze.
• Then it'll make it past the login screen and freeze within seconds.
• Then it'll do a couple more of those.
• Then it'll get past the BIOS splash and then stop showing picture (not as in stop sending signal to my monitor, but it just stops sending picture, it's weird; the monitors never show "No Source" it just shows black with seemingly no backlight despite being on).
• Once it's done that crash, it then does the "no picture at all" crash, never even showing the BIOS splash, and sometimes it'll do that one upwards of eight times in a row.
• Eventually it'll get tired of doing this and stop crashing and work fine.

Now. One more thing about these crashes. When it freezes, regardless of the means, the power button no longer works. The reset button does.

Okay. So, doesn't this all point to the motherboard??



Hardware:

• Intel i5-8400 on an MSI Z370-A motherboard
• 32gb ram
• 2x 2TB SATA SSD + 1 M.2 240GB
• Nvidia GeForce GTX 1070Ti from MSI

 

[Lutfij]

ignores your wishes on autodownloading driver updates no matter what you do
It's what got me to retire the Z97 Stinger platform I had since Windows 10 was aggressively trying to download drivers it thought was right, which was causing BSoD's. I managed to migrate over to AM5 and have been on Windows 11 since the migration.

Hardware:
Intel i5-8400 on an MSI Z370-A motherboard
32gb ram
2x 2TB SATA SSD + 1 M.2 240GB
Nvidia GeForce GTX 1070Ti from MSI
When posting a thread of troubleshooting nature, it's customary to include your full system's specs. Please list the specs to your build like so:
CPU:
CPU cooler:
Motherboard:
Ram:
SSD/HDD:
GPU:
PSU:
Chassis:
OS:
Monitor:
include the age of the PSU apart from it's make and model. BIOS version for your motherboard at this moment of time.

So, doesn't this all point to the motherboard??
You've tried some instances of OSes, you might want to migrate the same installers as well as the rest of your hardware over to (borrow, not buy)another (donor)motherboard and see if the issue persists, in order to rule out your motherboard to be the culprit.