pc random freezes-most items ruled out

scamalert

ok have my current pc for over 3y now or so,built it myself

specs: pentium e5700 3ghz dual core
4gb ddr2
vga:560ti twin frozr
ssd-120gb
psu-600w
6 fans on the case-3 intake 3 out
OS:win 7 ultimate
mob:asus p5g41t-m lx

Now about a good year ago i started getting random freezes,while playing browsing,or just leaving pc alone-and i would come back to frozen screen-reboot only solution,at the time i was having 500gb hdd and external 1tb-basically drives haven't been formatted for years,and freezes kept increasing,to the point where i would need to reboot 10 times in a row to get pc to start.So my thinking was hdds are on the way out as each tasks would keep em buzzing like no 2morrow and space on them was 50gigs or so free.

So it seems hard drives wasnt main issue,now did some digging around the web and tests-ran funmark-basically burning by graphics card to the max for 10 min,but temps never went over 70c-also no errors on open gl.
did windows memory check came back all fine,cpu temps are always low
So now i got an ssd drive-fresh install and minutes into it,im getting freezups for couple seconds blank screens,stuttering windows and same random freezups just after system boots up minutes later or sometimes many hours into the day.Also had instance where it froze on safe mode load with few artefacts one screen,also sometimes it would of been freezing in the bios logo-before ssd was installed.

So it comes down to three parts that i suspect may be a culprit here,psu,my vga,or motherboard itself-since had cheap one asus board before and it died on me as well,but without similar reasons,if i remember correctly.

So not sure now should i be looking at replacing whole mb,or focusing on PSU,since vga might be a culprit with drivers and all,but having all these troubles trickling down to booting and also many times windows would have issues with not recognizing usb ports or whats being plugged in-makes it to looks like MB is on the way out.

Alanstrainor

What exactly do you mean by freezing? Is the screen just black? Or is it showing everything but nothing happens?

scamalert

everything freezes,say im browsing or playing music and suddenly you cant move a mouse and nothing responds,and sound if it plays would start going buzzing.

Now few days in with new ssd ive did a lot of testing and reinstalling of nvidia drivers,also samsung magician seems not to go well with the system,everytime id install it it would start crashing whole pc,think maybe freezing could be rolled out and it has something to do with ssd controllers-since my motherboard is old every time i check event manager there would be hints of atapi or kernel power errors.So far almost 2 days didnt have any freezes as described but ssd sometimes hangs up for couple seconds or so.I have latest firmware on ssd,but reading other samsung forums it seems many are having similar issues with 840 evo model.

yoyo

Did you do a clean Windows install on the SSD? What brand is the PSU?

Nick

scamalert

yoyo wrote: »

Did you do a clean Windows install on the SSD? What brand is the PSU?

Nick

Dont knows whats going on but seems all pc is going rouge on me, turned it on today and it was having consant freezups where it would stop responding and resume back for couple minutes, repedeatly. So did two restarts and issue persisted.then did hard reset with power button off, and now before it tries to boot into windows there would be blue screen dumping some sort of data log id imagine and reset, only other option was launch windows repair, it seems to find somethGing and try fixinf it but it just says constantly fixing. My psu is g7 780w, took it out to see and noticed lumps of dust inside its thard that even hoover cant suck it out.also yes did 2 fresh install when put in ssd.Only way launched it properly with knoopix live cd which seems to work fine Today.might try older psu later on 500w to see would it boot at all, without connecting any un needed fans etc just mb and vga.sorry for stuffed text since typing on tablet.

Vandall

Hi
1/ try different power supply
2/ take a look at capacitors around memory and pci pci-x slots, few might be swollen (google: swollen capacitors on motherboard)

scamalert

yeah know about second issue no swollen caps from looking at.

will hold off changing psu as a lot of wires are in the way fan connectors usb etc.

gonna try windows 8.1 to see if issue persists,as had ssd drives before and ended up sending them back as controllers where pure crap and died on me in couple days.

tried taking out ram stick to no avail.

So if win 8.1 wont work out will focus on MB or PSU-since dont see any other culprit-also to note i usually power off everything at night from the socket,since the extension i have uses up 6 sockets for external,audio,psu and other stuff and it keeps this buzzing sound of current when everything is switched off thus i usually just switch it off.

Vandall

If you see blue screen again, please write down error code, looks like 0x00000007 (8 characters after 0x)
This might help a lot.
BTW can you try to take out GFX card and work for a while with on board ?

scamalert

did fresh install of win 8.1 seems ok at the minute.
as for blue screen it wasn't possible to catch the error code since before windows would load it appeared for max 2 seconds and restart immediately.

scamalert

so windows 8.1 seems to go smoother but still got couple freezes and crashes- event log says 41-kernel power error,reading other forums its either faulty psu,loose cable somewhere or hell knows what as people get them for different situations etc.

Seán MacSuibhne

scamalert wrote: »

so windows 8.1 seems to go smoother but still got couple freezes and crashes- event log says 41-kernel power error,reading other forums its either faulty psu,loose cable somewhere or hell knows what as people get them for different situations etc.

Have a look at the Hardware monitor in the bios. See what the cpu temperature is. If it's overheating then you might need to clean dust out of the cpu heatsink.

The manual is available here:

http://www.manualowl.com/m/Asus/P5G41T-M-LX/Manual/263572?page=54

Have at look at page 53-54 for info on monitoring cpu temperature.

Ádh mór

Seán

scamalert

the temps on normal load is 36-41c on 2 cores , but with that said i know there is protection mode within every MB that prevents overheating that usually results in shutdown or restart.also from experience i think i would be getting huge decrease and loads on on pcu,not sudden frozen screen while browsing or gaming.

Now did some cleaning today-so far disconnected all wires from any external internal hard drives,also cd-rom since it was acting weird for a long time,also replaced sata cable into different socket,unplugged all main power fan cables from the sockets and put them back in to make sure they are tight.
So far didnt had any freezes or crashes even after leaving pc for almost whole day.

anyway to early to say but if it persists will play with ram sticks to see,then psu and MB last as the two seem might be the issue.

also found out that MB doesn't support AHCI mode in bios being so old and everything so basically getting only half speed out of ssd that really sucks.

got some $ to spare but not enough to replace most of the parts,since even decent psu costs same as decent motherboard,then pcu and ram add another couple hundred-which would be lovely to replace to all new but budget is tight and Motherboard would be first priority.