Question Windows 10 softlocking

[drewdecurtis]

I recently built a new pc.

Working fine. However, most more recently it has been softlocking after about 1 hour of use. I can close windows, move my mouse around, even type with my keyboard. But spotify loops the last 1 second of music, i cant open the windows start menu, and programs/files wont open.

On startup my pc has been doing disk checks consistently I am suspicious of a drive problem. But, I checked for bad sectors and did a drive check, clean boot, the whole deal and it reported no errors. The drive is also brand new, so I am stumped.

Any solutions come to mind? I'm at my wits end.

Here are my specs.

CPU: AMD Ryzen 5 3600 3.6 GHz 6-Core Processor
CPU Cooler: NZXT Kraken M22 Liquid CPU Cooler
Motherboard: Gigabyte B550I AORUS PRO AX Mini ITX AM4 Motherboard
Memory: G.Skill Trident Z RGB 16 GB (2 x 8 GB) DDR4-3600 CL18 Memory
Storage: Samsung 970 Evo 500 GB M.2-2280 NVME Solid State Drive
Video Card: EVGA GeForce GTX 1080 Ti 11 GB SC2 Video Card
Power Supply: EVGA SuperNOVA GM 650 W 80+ Gold Certified Fully Modular SFX Power Supply


Edit: This seems to happen mostly when I am not putting the PC under a lot of load. I've been playing games without a problem for many hours... But watching shows or just browsing the internet is when this happens the most.

 

[Bob.B]

I recently built a new pc.

Working fine. However, most more recently it has been softlocking after about 1 hour of use. I can close windows, move my mouse around, even type with my keyboard. But spotify loops the last 1 second of music, i cant open the windows start menu, and programs/files wont open.

On startup my pc has been doing disk checks consistently I am suspicious of a drive problem. But, I checked for bad sectors and did a drive check, clean boot, the whole deal and it reported no errors. The drive is also brand new, so I am stumped.

Any solutions come to mind? I'm at my wits end.

Here are my specs.

CPU: AMD Ryzen 5 3600 3.6 GHz 6-Core Processor
CPU Cooler: NZXT Kraken M22 Liquid CPU Cooler
Motherboard: Gigabyte B550I AORUS PRO AX Mini ITX AM4 Motherboard
Memory: G.Skill Trident Z RGB 16 GB (2 x 8 GB) DDR4-3600 CL18 Memory
Storage: Samsung 970 Evo 500 GB M.2-2280 NVME Solid State Drive
Video Card: EVGA GeForce GTX 1080 Ti 11 GB SC2 Video Card
Power Supply: EVGA SuperNOVA GM 650 W 80+ Gold Certified Fully Modular SFX Power Supply

What speed are you running the ram?

 

[drewdecurtis]

What speed are you running the ram?

As far as I know, default speeds. I'm not quite sure if the MOBO set an overclock automatically. Could it be an unstable overclock?

 

[Bob.B]

As far as I know, default speeds. I'm not quite sure if the MOBO set an overclock automatically. Could it be an unstable overclock?

Task manager/performance/memory.
What speed does it show for the ram?

 

[drewdecurtis]

Task manager/performance/memory.
What speed does it show for the ram?

it says 2133 MHz... but I bought 3600 MHz ram? and btw i reset my bios settings to default just now.

 

[drewdecurtis]

Task manager/performance/memory.
What speed does it show for the ram?

After talking with a friend I found out that XMP profiles need to be enabled for the memory to run at manufacturer speeds... I was under the impression that enabling this setting would overclock my ram and I wanted to avoid that. I was wrong, and have now enabled this feature. There is no way for me to test if this solved my problem other than to wait and see if I experience any soft locking.

Thanks for your help. I will report back in a couple days if I experience no more issues.

EDIT: After enabling XMP profiles, task manager now reports the RAM is running at the manufactuer speed of 3600 MHz.

 

[drewdecurtis]

Turning on XMP profiles did the trick. Thanks for the help.

 

[alceryes]

Technically, XMP is an overclock as far as CPU manufacturers are concerned. Memory manufacturers may disagree.
Glad you got it going.

One more thing. Just because it boots to desktop doesn't mean it's 100% stable. I suggest booting from a Memtest86 USB and go through 1 full pass of stress testing to be relatively sure of stability.

 

[drewdecurtis]

Technically, XMP is an overclock as far as CPU manufacturers are concerned. Memory manufacturers may disagree.
Glad you got it going.

One more thing. Just because it boots to desktop doesn't mean it's 100% stable. I suggest booting from a Memtest86 USB and go through 1 full pass of stress testing to be relatively sure of stability.

Interesting suggestion, as I return to revive this thread I am having the same issue come up again. Windows has begun soft locking after being idle for some amount of time between 15-20 mins.
I had updated the XMP profile to the manufacturer's settings and the issue initially disappeared. But now it's come back? I'm lost....

 

[alceryes]

Did you try the suggestion?