Question Steam Games Randomly Freezing

[ChaZz182]

I have tried asking all over the internet with no luck. Hopefully someone here can help.

I've had this problem for a while now and I have no idea what the problem is.

Randomly steam games won't load. Mostly they will just freeze at the startup. This doesn't happen to all games either. The odd time the games start fine. Sometimes they start but won't have sound. If I exit and enter the game it usually fixes it.

It just seems completely random whether they'll work or not. I never get an error, they just freeze. Also, other then playing games, everything else seems fine.

I have tried to reset windows, reinstall video card drivers (in same mode using DDU). I have installed games to different hard drives. When I use my onboard video they seem to work (with limited testing), but these symptoms seem odd for a video card problem.

This might be a coincidence or maybe I'm going crazy. It's seems like it works more often the second time I try and launch the game, or if I play with my volume slider a bit. I have no idea why that would do anything, but on the slight chance it makes sense to someone else. I thought I would post it.

i7-8700
16 GB RAM
500 W EVGA Power Supply
B360M Pro-VDH Motherboard
120 GB SSD
XFX Radeon RX 480

I would really appreciate some help. I'm out of ideas and I haven't really been able to play games since this has started. My kids would like to play there LEGO game.

Thanks for reading.

 

[Phaaze88]

Are the motherboard's drivers up to date? https://www.msi.com/Motherboard/support/B360M-PRO-VDH#down-driver

Brand of the ram, and how many sticks?

Need to know the exact model of the power supply. I think I know which one that is, but I need you to confirm this for me: https://www.evga.com/products/product.aspx?pn=100-W1-0500-KR

Using System File Checker in Windows 10 <-click link and follow the instructions and let me know if it did anything.

Have you verified the integrity of the game files on steam?

 

[ChaZz182]

Are the motherboard's drivers up to date? https://www.msi.com/Motherboard/support/B360M-PRO-VDH#down-driver

Brand of the ram, and how many sticks?

Need to know the exact model of the power supply. I think I know which one that is, but I need you to confirm this for me: https://www.evga.com/products/product.aspx?pn=100-W1-0500-KR

Using System File Checker in Windows 10 <-click link and follow the instructions and let me know if it did anything.

Have you verified the integrity of the game files on steam?

Thanks for your help!

I believe all the drivers are up to date, but I'll double check the motherboard drivers. I didn't original have this problem, everything worked fine for at least a year.

RAM is Corsair, 2 8GB sticks.

That is the correct power supply. I have since learned it apparently isn't very good.

I'll run the system checker and let you know what it says.

I have verified the games files and everything seems fine. I have also reinstalled the games serveral times as well. It doesn't happen to all games either. I have tried around 6 (what I currently have installed and with limited testing, I haven't played any of them extensively) and it seems to happen to 3. The other 3 are lesser demanding Indy games.

The only thing that seems to work is playing with the volume slider first. I thought it was some weird issue with an audio driver or something broken on my Video card, but I'm basically just guessing at this point.

 

[Phaaze88]

The ram is of the same kit?

What are the 3 games in question?

Please click the green human to continue - UserBenchmark

Go here^and link your results.

 

[ChaZz182]

The ram is of the same kit?

What are the 3 games in question?

Please click the green human to continue - UserBenchmark

Go here^and link your results.

The RAM sticks are exactly the same, I'm not sure if that means they are from the same kit.

The games are Surviving Mars, Lego Marvel Super Heros 2 and Civ 6. All worked fine until a few weeks ago. The other games are Prison Architect and some Jackbox games seem to be fine.

When I used onboard video everything seems to work fine, which is why I though the video card didn't work, or some weird driver issues.

I'll get on my computer give you the results from the other stuff you asked sometime today.

 

[ChaZz182]

The ram is of the same kit?

What are the 3 games in question?

Please click the green human to continue - UserBenchmark

Go here^and link your results.

So I ran all the test. I updated everything I could.

This is what I got for the file checker. The first operation complete successfully. The system scan said this:

Windows Resource Protection found corrupt files and successfully repaired them.
For online repairs, details are included in the CBS log file located at
windir\Logs\CBS\CBS.log. For example C:\Windows\Logs\CBS\CBS.log. For offline
repairs, details are included in the log file provided by the /OFFLOGFILE flag.

Here is the link for my user bench mark. Hopefully this helps.

https://www.userbenchmark.com/UserRun/18986261

 

[Phaaze88]

Neat, so there were some some funky files on your drive and windows was able to repair them.
That just leaves the gpu. Now that I know which model RX 480 you have, via userbenchmark, I can narrow down what may be happening here - overheating or insufficient psu, maybe both.

Download and run Msi Afterburner, and detach the monitoring window. Click settings(large cog-shaped icon), click monitoring tab, scroll down and check fan speed and gpu voltage, then hit apply.
You have just one monitor, right? Start up one of the 'problem games' in windowed mode and adjust it and the monitoring window so you can easily see gpu behavior while you play.
10 minutes is fine - or until the freezing happens, then take note of the gpu temp, gpu usage, fan speeds, and gpu voltage - or you can just take a screenshot and then post it via imgur.com

 

[ChaZz182]

Neat, so there were some some funky files on your drive and windows was able to repair them.
That just leaves the gpu. Now that I know which model RX 480 you have, via userbenchmark, I can narrow down what may be happening here - overheating or insufficient psu, maybe both.

Download and run Msi Afterburner, and detach the monitoring window. Click settings(large cog-shaped icon), click monitoring tab, scroll down and check fan speed and gpu voltage, then hit apply.
You have just one monitor, right? Start up one of the 'problem games' in windowed mode and adjust it and the monitoring window so you can easily see gpu behavior while you play.
10 minutes is fine - or until the freezing happens, then take note of the gpu temp, gpu usage, fan speeds, and gpu voltage - or you can just take a screenshot and then post it via imgur.com

Will do. I'll give it a try. Usually if it freezes it happens right away, like within the first 5 or 10 seconds. The Lego game usually freezes on the very first screen I see I haven't really played the games very long to see what would happen if they didn't freeze right at the beginning. I did check a quick temperature check yesterday and didn't notice anything that look off to me, but I'll try that program and post it tonight, you very well could see something I'm missing.

 

[ChaZz182]

Neat, so there were some some funky files on your drive and windows was able to repair them.
That just leaves the gpu. Now that I know which model RX 480 you have, via userbenchmark, I can narrow down what may be happening here - overheating or insufficient psu, maybe both.

Download and run Msi Afterburner, and detach the monitoring window. Click settings(large cog-shaped icon), click monitoring tab, scroll down and check fan speed and gpu voltage, then hit apply.
You have just one monitor, right? Start up one of the 'problem games' in windowed mode and adjust it and the monitoring window so you can easily see gpu behavior while you play.
10 minutes is fine - or until the freezing happens, then take note of the gpu temp, gpu usage, fan speeds, and gpu voltage - or you can just take a screenshot and then post it via imgur.com

OK, sorry I was a bit late. I hope I set everything up correctly. I couldn't find anything that was called GPU voltage, so I just went to with something called power. If I have any setting incorrectly, please let me know and I can redo it. So I launched Surviving Mars (I played with the volume slider and it launch fine and didn't crash, which still seems weird but maybe it's just a coincidence) played for ten minutes.

Here is the screen shot

https://imgur.com/FmdFoDB

View: https://i.imgur.com/FmdFoDB.png?1


If I did anything incorrectly, please let me know. Does that tell you anything?

Thanks again for the help.

 

[Phaaze88]

Sorry, but you're gonna have to do it again. I can't see all the graphs.
In the image right below driver version, there's a 'detach' button(it's kinda small). Click it, and play the game again in windowed mode.

 

[ChaZz182]

Sorry, but you're gonna have to do it again. I can't see all the graphs.
In the image right below driver version, there's a 'detach' button(it's kinda small). Click it, and play the game again in windowed mode.

Sorry, here is my second attempt. Where everything dropped, is when I exited the game. Seems like everything increased when I started playing and then stabilized. Once I quit everything started to go back to normal. Let me know if I set up the correct meters, if I missed any I can try again.

https://imgur.com/skJ6yL1

View: https://imgur.com/skJ6yL1

 

[Phaaze88]

I'm not seeing any issues with the card, but it could do with a little more aggressive fan curve. 80C is still safe, but it will become an issue if it were over 85C.
There appears to be a new driver available for the 480 too.

Hmm, the Windows repair might've actually fixed the cause of the freezes.

There are a couple of other things I'd like you to try, if you're ok with it.
Download CrystalDiskInfo, and check the health of all your drives. Link: https://crystalmark.info/redirect.php?product=CrystalDiskInfoInstaller
Malwarebytes Free AdwCleaner Download: https://downloads.malwarebytes.com/file/adwcleaner

 

[ChaZz182]

I'm not seeing any issues with the card, but it could do with a little more aggressive fan curve. 80C is still safe, but it will become an issue if it were over 85C.
There appears to be a new driver available for the 480 too.

Hmm, the Windows repair might've actually fixed the cause of the freezes.

There are a couple of other things I'd like you to try, if you're ok with it.
Download CrystalDiskInfo, and check the health of all your drives. Link: https://crystalmark.info/redirect.php?product=CrystalDiskInfoInstaller
Malwarebytes Free AdwCleaner Download: https://downloads.malwarebytes.com/file/adwcleaner

I actually had the newest drivers, I tried to remove and reinstall the drivers again and I just haven't installed the latest version.

Usually when it freezes it either happens right away, or I don't have sound and I know it's going to freeze if I try and load a game or even if I try and quit the game. So any problems with the graphics card would show up right away.

I actually use CrystalDiskInfo and all my drives show up as good. I actually tried install to different hard drives to see if that was the issue.

I will try the adware program as well. I don't think I have a malware program, as I have a virus scan running, but I'll give it a shot.

 

[ChaZz182]

I'm not seeing any issues with the card, but it could do with a little more aggressive fan curve. 80C is still safe, but it will become an issue if it were over 85C.
There appears to be a new driver available for the 480 too.

Hmm, the Windows repair might've actually fixed the cause of the freezes.

There are a couple of other things I'd like you to try, if you're ok with it.
Download CrystalDiskInfo, and check the health of all your drives. Link: https://crystalmark.info/redirect.php?product=CrystalDiskInfoInstaller
Malwarebytes Free AdwCleaner Download: https://downloads.malwarebytes.com/file/adwcleaner

So I checked Crystal Disk Info and everything said it was good. One drive had a 94% ranking and all the rest didn't indicate any percentage. I also ran Malwarebytes and it didn't find anything.

I tried running Surviving Mars and load a game. First the game loaded with out sound and then froze when I tried to load a game. I tried playing with the volume slider until it made a noise through my speakers and then the game played properly.

It also seems like there is some weird software issue with the sound drivers. Even when I'm in the properties for the AMD High Definition Audio (from the device manager), it would also seem to disappear randomly and say the device didn't exist or something. I also had weird issues where I would get static on the screen or my TV would lose connect to the computer and I would need to unplug and re plug in the HDMI cable or turn the TV off an on again (I have tried multiple HDMI cables)I thought the issue was the TV and got it repaired, but I'm wondering if maybe something is wrong the video card? Also, I didn't always have this problem, so maybe something is starting to fail.

Is there anything else left to try? I have reinstalled everything from nothing a few times with the same problem, the only thing I can think of is a hardware issue. It's just really confusing, but I thank you for your help so far.

 

[Phaaze88]

If there's a driver conflict with the audio drivers - you may have more than one driver installed, the default windows drivers and the ones packaged with the gpu.

Fortunately, DDU can also uninstall audio drivers too. You'll just need to select audio instead of graphics in the drop-down menu, and reinstall the Radeon drivers, since the audio drivers are packaged with it.

Again, make sure your internet is disconnected before uninstalling the drivers, so windows doesn't put those default ones back in after the PC restarts.

Are there any other external devices connected to your PC?

 

[ChaZz182]

If there's a driver conflict with the audio drivers - you may have more than one driver installed, the default windows drivers and the ones packaged with the gpu.

Fortunately, DDU can also uninstall audio drivers too. You'll just need to select audio instead of graphics in the drop-down menu, and reinstall the Radeon drivers, since the audio drivers are packaged with it.

Again, make sure your internet is disconnected before uninstalling the drivers, so windows doesn't put those default ones back in after the PC restarts.

Are there any other external devices connected to your PC?

I have the AMD audio drivers as well as the ReakTek audio drivers, which I believe are my on-board audio drivers. Would those because a conflict?

Currently my set up is this; I play games on my TV which is connect to the PC via HDMI cable. Then I run an optical cable from my TV to my receiver for sound. The other device that are connect to my PC are a external hard drive, a few USB device that connect to my wireless mouse and keyboard and a USB Bluetooth device.