Steam Causing System Freezing in Windows 10

[DavidRH]

Hi everyone,

I wasn't sure where to put this so I thought I would start here.

I have been having issues with Steam freezing my PC and looping whatever sound is playing, requiring a hard reboot. This freezing occurs only when the Steam service is enabled. When I disable the Steam process, the PC will not freeze. I do not have to be using Steam for the PC to freeze, I can be listening to music, surfing the web, watching videos etc.

When the process is enabled, the PC will freeze 5 mins to 45 mins after startup. Obviously, Steam does not work without the process. Whenever I click on Steam, and the process is disabled, Steam will ask me to enable the process.

So, my question, does this sound like a normal issue? Is there any way I can troubleshoot this?

Here are my specs:

Windows 10
i5 6500 with onboard Intel 530
Gigabyte Motherboard - GA-Z170XP-SLI
SeaSonic SSR-650RM
Corsair Vengeance LPX DDR4-2400 2x8gb
Mushkin Enhanced ECO3 SSD 240gb (only HD right now)
ASUS DVD Burner
Thermaltake Core V-51

I have installed all the latest drivers from Gigabyte. I installed the Gigabyte update utility and it installed the drivers for me.

Thanks everyone!

 

[notlim981]

Yes there is a way you can troubleshoot that as I don't think it's steam that may be causing this. Install WhoCrashed, start steam and do your normal stuff. If the pc freezes again, see what WhoCrashed reports and let us know here.

http://www.resplendence.com/whocrashed

 

[DavidRH]

Hi, thank you for the response!

I installed whocrashed and configured my system to preform full memory dumps. I ran the whocrashed crash test and two reports were written out. Unfortunately, when my PC froze shortly thereafter, no crash dump was recorded. Neither whocrashed nor Windows seems to recognize a crash. The event viewer does not display any criticals or errors (apart from the kernel power error from holding the power button).

I feel like this happens too suddenly, and the PC is not given a chance to write an error or realize it has crashed. Could this be possible?

Thank you, David

 

[notlim981]

There must be a broken value on Windows registry that may be causing this as well. Run CCleaner to fix the registry and let us know if it works.

 

[DavidRH]

Hi again,

I ran CCleaner and it fixed my registry twice. The first time I scanned, CC found 99 errors and it fixed them all. The second time I scanned, CC found 13 errors and it fixed them all. The third, fourth, fifth time I scanned CC found no errors.

Once again, unfortunately, when the PC decided to freeze shortly after, whocrashed recorded no dump files. I still only have the two dump files from the manual crash test.

 

[notlim981]

Could you please post them here?

 

[DavidRH]

Sounds good! Dumb question, what is the best way of attaching a dump file to this post?