[SOLVED] Random freezing of Video and Audio!

[ICameon]

On February 9, I received 3 blue-screens in a row. The first two stop codes were "DRIVER_POWER_STATE_FAILURE" and then the third stop code was "DRIVER VERIFIER DETECTED VIOLATION." I am not very familiar with blue screen stop codes, and I looked them up and found no problems that might have caused these bluescreens.

So, after the third blue screen, I got a message saying that windows needs to rollback to a safer state (which was about a day back). Then I downloaded IObit's driver booster, and updated all of my drivers, thinking that something got updated wrong and may have caused these bluescreens to occur. I researched IObit's driver booster software, and everyone seemed to be saying that it is safe and legitimate, so I am ruling that out, in my head.

Everything seemed fine the next few days, but then that's when things started getting weird. And I am not sure what day this has started, but my screen will freeze, and whatever sound was playing when the freeze started will loop (kind of like when Team Fortress 2 crashes, but the sound loop duration is a LOT shorter so it sounds all demonic). This freeze will last 1 to 2 seconds, no flickering of my screen, just freezing, and then everything goes back to normal like nothing ever happened. I have found that this happens when I am either gaming, watching youtube, listening to Spotify, Discord or watching Netflix (which are what I spend most of my time doing on my computer). It happened 2/23/2020 near midnight, and again, somewhere near 2:30 a.m. today on 2/24/2020. I would say this happens every day at least once, if not every other day. I am a daily user.

I have run Malwarebytes several times, and nothing pops up. CrystalDiskInfo says that all my Hard drives look good, and updating windows hasn't fixed the issue either (I check for windows updates manually at least weekly). Also, my BIOS is updated to the latest version (2401) as I just manually updated it a few days ago, and that hasn't solved the issue. As far as I know, all of my drivers are up-to-date, and I have tried using GeForce experience to reinstall the latest "Geforce Game Ready Driver." I just built this PC myself a little over a year ago, sometime in January of 2019, and this problem has never come up. There have only been two hardware changes since I built this PC, I added 2 more sticks of ram 2x8GB (yes all of the RAM sticks are exactly the same), and an extra hard drive (the third hard drive listed below).

PC Specs:

I am running Windows 10 Pro Version 1909 (OS Build 18363.657) and it is activated.
Motherboard: ROG STRIX Z370-E GAMING
CPU: Intel Core i7-8700 @3.20GHz
RAM: Corsair Vengeance LPX (4x8GB | 32GB @ 300Mhz)
GPU: Nvidia GeForce GTX 1080 Ti
Hard Drives:
1.) Local Disk: Samsung SSD 860 EVO 250GB
2.) Seagate BarraCuda ST2000DM006 2TB 7200 RPM 64MB Cache SATA 6.0Gb/s 3.5"
3.) Seagate BarraCuda ST2000DM008 2TB 7200 RPM 256MB Cache SATA 6.0Gb/s 3.5" (2 Months old)

I'm not sure what other information to post, so if there is anything anyone would like to see to help me with this issue, then please, do request.

 

[Oussebon]

Driver booster / driver updater software is generally best avoided like the plague. It's often fine, until it isn't, and hands you the wrong driver. And you don't need driver updater software - drivers, such that they need updating for the odd security patch or new feature, can be got from hardware manufacturer websites.

The best platform for automatically feeding you drivers is probably Windows Update in Win 10 itself.

Geforce Experience, while much better than it used to be way back when, can still bork driver updates. When installing a new driver, it can be best to manually download and install (I tend to do clean installs each time).

Having had errors relating to drivers, and then having installed a 'driver booster', I'd suggest a clean reinstallation of Windows (where you delete all partitions on the OS drive - back up data first)
https://www.groovypost.com/howto/clean-install-Windows-10/

Let Windows handle driver installation, though you may want to manually install the latest Geforce drivers yourself.

Install a minimum of software needed to provoke the issues you've been having. e.g. Steam, a game that you've had this issue while playing. Use the browser included with Windows.

See if you get the problem. If you do, it's quite possibly a hardware issue. If you don't get the issue, you know it was a software/driver issue.

 

[ICameon]

Driver booster / driver updater software is generally best avoided like the plague. It's often fine, until it isn't, and hands you the wrong driver. And you don't need driver updater software - drivers, such that they need updating for the odd security patch or new feature, can be got from hardware manufacturer websites.

The best platform for automatically feeding you drivers is probably Windows Update in Win 10 itself.

Geforce Experience, while much better than it used to be way back when, can still bork driver updates. When installing a new driver, it can be best to manually download and install (I tend to do clean installs each time).

Having had errors relating to drivers, and then having installed a 'driver booster', I'd suggest a clean reinstallation of Windows (where you delete all partitions on the OS drive - back up data first)
https://www.groovypost.com/howto/clean-install-Windows-10/

Let Windows handle driver installation, though you may want to manually install the latest Geforce drivers yourself.

Install a minimum of software needed to provoke the issues you've been having. e.g. Steam, a game that you've had this issue while playing. Use the browser included with Windows.

See if you get the problem. If you do, it's quite possibly a hardware issue. If you don't get the issue, you know it was a software/driver issue.

Okay, "Driver Booster" has a history of drivers that I updated using that software, do you think I could just go find those driver's, from the manufacturer's websites and then update them myself, and then just uninstall "Driver Booster?" Do you think it would be worth at least giving it a shot before reinstalling windows?

 

[Oussebon]

I would go straight to the clean install. If it did give you a bad driver, or install a driver poorly, trying to remove the old driver and installing a different one manually may not remove all traces of what the software did.

Even if you fix this problem, who knows what other presents it may have left you that could cause an issue down the line...

A clean install is the most effective and simplest way of wiping out whatever is wrong with your Windows install. or confirming it's not software-related...

You can copy steam games back in and steam will rediscover existing files. Other clients often let you manually 'locate' existing game files. So you won't need to redownload all your stuff.

 

[ICameon]

I would go straight to the clean install. If it did give you a bad driver, or install a driver poorly, trying to remove the old driver and installing a different one manually may not remove all traces of what the software did.

Even if you fix this problem, who knows what other presents it may have left you that could cause an issue down the line...

A clean install is the most effective and simplest way of wiping out whatever is wrong with your Windows install. or confirming it's not software-related...

You can copy steam games back in and steam will rediscover existing files. Other clients often let you manually 'locate' existing game files. So you won't need to redownload all your stuff.

Alright, well I will give it a go when I find the time. And I do have a pretty hefty game amount so redownloading it would take ages, so that's nice.

 

[ICameon]

I would go straight to the clean install. If it did give you a bad driver, or install a driver poorly, trying to remove the old driver and installing a different one manually may not remove all traces of what the software did.

Even if you fix this problem, who knows what other presents it may have left you that could cause an issue down the line...

A clean install is the most effective and simplest way of wiping out whatever is wrong with your Windows install. or confirming it's not software-related...

You can copy steam games back in and steam will rediscover existing files. Other clients often let you manually 'locate' existing game files. So you won't need to redownload all your stuff.

Just recently reinstalled windows to find that the problem still occurs. Even after cleaning all the fans, filters, and the radiator. I'm not sure what else to do, and it has just left me so frustrated.