[Tech] PC freezes/hiccups

[Angelic]

Ahey, Tech-mages!
I'm in a need of some technical advice. Will you help me out, please?

Lately (say, two weeks) my PC began freezing up a little. The sound loops, picture freezes, after a couple second the screen goes black and after another couple seconds everything returns to normal. In the meantime I'm unable to affect the computer in any way - Ctrl+Alt+Del, Alt-Tab, anything. The whole "hiccup" takes around 15seconds, I would say, although I haven't measured it. As far as I can tell, it only happens in games - CoD4 and WoW. It has yet to happen when I play a video (even playing a 1.7GB video file with 1500x900 resolution works).

Originally I thought this was just my OS aging (Win XP Home) so I reinstalled and got the Win7 RC (as discussed earlier in another thread). But it happens with this OS too.

I cleared the fans of both my graphics card and my processor. Admittedly, the one on my processor isn't exactly perfectly mounted, the thermal paste between the body of the heatsink and the actual component is year-ish old and there's so little of it I'm not quite sure it can conduct heat at all, but nothing of this changed in the last months.

Also, I'm pretty sure I have the latest drivers for everything - Win7 takes care of that.

So, what am I to do? I seriously hope it's not my hardware giving up on me, that'd cost me money, time and effort to fix >.<

Thank you very much for any of your advice,
Adam

 

[elDiablo]

By the sounds of it, if you've done a clean install of Windows 7, and are getting the same problem (I'm going to assume you reinstalled the games as well, though I may be wrong. I don't, as I have them on a separate drive.) then I'd say it's more likely to be a hardware fault. If you haven't reinstalled the games, do a virus check to make sure you're not being used by a botnet or anything (though I doubt you are).

If it's only happening in games, I'd really say it sounds like your graphics card (as it's under high load), not your CPU, RAM or harddrive (which would all be under high load when decoding a large, high resolution video file). I don't really know what it would be though, as clearing the fans would be my first stop, and checking cables would be my second, but lose cables cause complete stoppage, not brief inactive periods.

If it is a software problem, it could be that if you haven't reinstalled the games, they are looking for a specificly installed package or registry value that is no longer there. In which case I'd say reinstall them to see. Is it all games, or only some of them? Is it always at specific points (loading a new level, first time you see a certain enemy, etc.), or randomly? It might seem random, but there might be a pattern to it.

If it's only specific games, which ones, and we can see if other people have been having the same problems. I know that one of Introversion's games, Uplink (which is quite old now), has problems running on some multi-cored computers. Frame sucks, etc., and setting the CPU affinity (so it only runs on one core) sorts it out easily. Might be that your games have a similar conflict with something (sound card drivers, etc., who knows!).

That's all I've got for now, I'm afraid.

 

[thatbloke]

The fact that the same thing is happening with two different OSes likely means that there is a hardware issue of some sort.

A friend recently had similar issues and I found that the USB bus was failing - I disabled the on-board USB bus in the BIOS and it stopped freezing up.

It might be worth checking the system event viewer (control panel->administrative tools->Event viewer) to see if there is anything is being written in there at the same time as a freeze happens

 

[Angelic]

D, I run a complete scan with Avast and with AdAware, I seem to be clean. Also, WoW wasn't reinstalled but CoD4 was - and it happens in both of those. I couldn't find a specific situation at which it happens - it's not even related to amount of particles or action on-screen, it's just random.

It's only WoW and CoD4, but I haven't played great many others (perhaps some Disciples II, but those are not graphically demanding at all).

Mark, how would an on-board USB affect the visual performance?
I can try disabling it, but won't it kill all my USB devices (like mouse and stuff)?
I'll keep the Event Viewer running and see if anything's written in there when the crash happens. I'm not familiar with the tool, but hopefully I'll figure out how to do it.

Also, I would like to reiterate that this happens on a clean PC, in both fresh installed and previous-OS-kept games and without apparent relation to amount of action going on on the screen or specific place/event in the games.

Thanks for the tips, keep em coming!

 

[thatbloke]

hmmm, sounds like a dying graphics card then.

But yea, the event viewer is a system log. If you know precisely at what time one of these freezes occurred then have a look in the system events in the log and see if there is anything there directly before or after that time that could indicate a problem.

 

[elDiablo]

You say that the PC itself completely locks up (you can't CAD it or anything) so it seems like something is blocking the OS. As bloke said, something like a failing USB hub could, in theory, cause that to happen, if the OS polled it and got stuck with some garbage information returned from it. Do you run anything else when you run the games that isn't usually running (for example, when you are watching video)? TeamSpeak, XFire, anything? Could try disabling all of them for one go to see if it still happens. If not, bring them back one at a time to see.

Also, how often is this happening? Once an hour? Once a day?

Cheers

 

[thatbloke]

Another thing, are you playing online when this happens, with WoW you are but with CoD4 does it only happen in multiplayer or does it also happen in single player?

Also, have you got a virus scanner in the background that is potentially being very aggressive with its resource requirements? Maybe disabling that and/or adding some exclusions on your game folders will have an effect.

When the games "freeze" is the hard drive going mental at the same time or does it appear that there are just no signs of life whatsoever?

 

[KillCrazy]

From the fact that your display is turning blank during this hiccup then I would say it's very likely to be your graphics card that is failing. Do you have an old one lying around you could try and see if you get the same hiccup?

 

[Haven]

First step, check real time scanning AV settings.

Second step, defrag and delete all the crap you possibly can.

Third step, HD scan for errors.

 

[PsiSoldier]

Are you using an ATi card per chance?

 

[Angelic]

Yes, I am using an ATi card, Sapphire HD3870.

When I checked the Event Viewer from yesterday, it said "Display driver atikmdag stopped responding and has successfully recovered.". After some googling it would appear this is a recurring issue with a number of "solutions" that don't always work - one of which is unplugging second monitor - which would fit as these hiccups started around the time when I got my second screen I'll see about the rest of the suggestions first, though.

KC, no, sadly I don't have a spare GFX card lying around and I doubt even any of my friends do - these things are usually sold rather than kept lying around

Bloke, I have the same AV that I had ages ago so that shouldn't really be it. When the hiccup happens, the HDD is not going crazy, it's quite the usual. Yesterday I noticed the CPU being at 56°C and the GFX card at 82°C when the freeze occured. As for the single player, I don't know, I haven't played it much. I don't remember happening it in it, though.

ElD, it happens around once or twice per day, depending on how much I game. I haven't had it happen while not gaming yet. Yes, I have a bunch of programs running at the background - Steam, XFire, Avast, Skype, Hamachi, Last.fm... But I must reiterate, I had these before too and it didn't happen. The only change I can remotely locate to the time this started happening is me getting a second monitor.

Haven, cheers, I'll try doing that, although the error message I'm getting wouldn't point towards HD fault.

Thank you everyone, I'm sure we'll figure it out together Hopefully my new report helps a bit - especially the part with the error message I got from the Event Viewer.

Adam

 

[thatbloke]

Angelic, I have similar problems with my graphics card occasionally, except that my system never recovers and it BSOD's.

I have an ATi HD4870 (see the pattern here?).

The problem is being caused by the graphics driver.

What has (so far) stopped the problem from happening in my case is doing a full uninstall and clean of the ATi drivers and then re-installing them (making sure it's teh latest ones of course, which atm for ATi is the 9.5 catalyst drivers IIRC).

Also make sure you install the control center part as you can use it to manually control the fan speed, I set mine alot higher than its default, and although it generates alot of noise it keeps it (and consequently the rest of my case) ALOT cooler.

 

[Angelic]

What has (so far) stopped the problem from happening in my case is doing a full uninstall and clean of the ATi drivers and then re-installing them (making sure it's teh latest ones of course, which atm for ATi is the 9.5 catalyst drivers IIRC).

Also make sure you install the control center part as you can use it to manually control the fan speed, I set mine alot higher than its default, and although it generates alot of noise it keeps it (and consequently the rest of my case) ALOT cooler.

I'll try the reinstall of drivers, kay.

Also, where in the CCC do you set the fan speed? In the ATi Overdrive section is the temperature meter, but I have yet to find the fan control.

 

[thatbloke]

It's in the overdrive section.

Yoiu need firt to unlock it by clicking the padlock icon, then one of the sliders in there should (or at least does on mine) have a fan control that you can use to manually set the fan speed at a percentage.

 

[Angelic]

Sadly, mine only has GPU Clock and Memory Clock sliders.

 

[PsiSoldier]

In CCC, do you have a feature called "VPU recover"? What you described happening sounds precisely like that kicking in and saving you from a BSOD

 

[Huung]

I have had this problem since I got my graphics cards, and each new set of drivers does nothing to help it. You just have to accept that these flashes happen, and occasionally, you'll get three in a row, and your PC will reboot - fun times

 

[Angelic]

There's a number of fairly unbelievable "fixes" for this error (linky) but all of them sound just too weird - and often do not match my situation.

I tried running on one screen - I got the freeze. I tried maxxing the fan speed - I got the freeze. I'm not removing my RAM sticks, there's no way I'm backing up from 4GB to 2GB. It can't be Vista issue, I got it with XPs too. Hence no Aero either.

 

[waterproofbob]

I'd advise not having the latest Ati drivers. I find with ATi the previous set is always the most stable, as the card is supported back to Dec 07 I believe then you have a wealth of drivers to choose from.

Go on an ATi archive hunt and find one that is as stable as it can be.

 

[PsiSoldier]

I'd advise not having the latest Ati drivers. I find with ATi the previous set is always the most stable, as the card is supported back to Dec 07 I believe then you have a wealth of drivers to choose from.

Go on an ATi archive hunt and find one that is as stable as it can be.

ATi drivers are unstable, period