I'm stumped. [RESOLVED: NO LONGER STUMPED]
Posted: Mon Jul 02, 2012 3:27 pm
cross-posting from a thread I made on techtalkz.com
Hi there, I hope you take the time to read my post. I have troubleshooted in every path I could think of and I've tried to make it easy to take it all in as I've tried a lot. If you have any insight or experience with this problem please reply! Thanks.
Okay first off, I'll explain the exact symptoms of my issue. Then I'll explain exactly what I've done to try and narrow down the problem and also the things I've tried to fix it.
Windows 7 Unresponsive then crashes.
1. The Symptoms
If I'm playing a game (where I first noticed it), the sound will continue in a loop, the screen will freeze.
I cannot ALT+TAB, CTRL+ALT+DELETE or CTRL+SHIFT+DELETE
Teamspeak still works so I can chat to people as my computer is crashing (my push to talk key is on my mouse). This eventually stops working after about 2 minutes when it is fully crashed.
The only thing I can do is hold down the power button and power off and on.
When I'm not in a game, the crash will show it's first signs by a video stopping and the sound resuming on a youtube video, or if I click something it doesn't do anything then greys out as it goes into 'Not Repsonding' mode. This happens to everything I click, the taskbar (explorer.exe) will show the click animation but nothing will come up and the whole user interface starts to just not do anything til the point where I just have a cursor to move around, everything is locked out. It's almost as if Windows deteriorates in functionality before it's finally locked up.
Again, CTRL+ALT+DELETE and co still don't work.
This can happen between 20-30 minutes after booting up.
2. My Observations
First thing I did was run a virus scan, it reported back with a high priority virus hiding in msconfig.exe. From the nature of the file I thought maybe fixing this would fix it.
After my computer was clean of virii, my computer still crashed in the same way.
At first because my issue seemed to only happen when I played a game (specifically DayZ for Arma2 which is a mod in alpha development). I first assumed it was crashing because of this so spent some time researching into if anyone else had a similar problem with DayZ.
It wasn't until it crashed just browsing the internet that I realised I had a bigger issue on my hands.
Event Viewer, Reliablity Viewer all showed nothing of interest to the reason my computer was crashing.
After getting frustrated with this unknown cause. I left resource monitor open and waited until my computer crashed. I was tabbed out of Arma2 when this happened, here are the two photos.
I'd first like to mention that cooling is not an issue, I have a Fractal R3 case, I even cleared out the dust from the fan filters, all the internal hardware was pristine to my amazement. All my temps are very reasonable/low.
As you can see, disk activity drops off, along with the network driver failing, the CPU is completely fine. The memory showed a small blip after the crash)
A small note: twice my computer went to black and shut off by itself, with one instance I saw graphical archetyping on the screen just before it shut off.
My graphic card is a ATI 6950. The first thing I actually checked was if OverDrive in CCC was causing this crash (because on the above photographs you can see CCC.exe crashes alongside arma2. I decided it was nothing to do with the graphic card itself. The second thing I checked was the driver. I remember I had recently installed 12.6 Catalyst Suite a few days ago, right when this issue started (maybe, foggy memory). I uninstalled all the drivers and CCC and installed 12.4 (two month older) driver for it. I was still crashing so I ruled out my graphic card and driver as a possible hardware issue.
3. What I've Tried.
First, I did a checkdisk, sfc /scannow, and downloaded a couple utilities to check the overall health of my harddisks
No errors or anything to be concerned about. My first hd is a 64gb SSD. The other is a SATA 500gb 7200rpm hdd.
My operating system is installed on the SSD
My games and applications are installed on my other disk 'D:\'
Because the crash was physically effecting Windows, I decided to reinstall Windows 7 on the SSD to see if that'd help.
Fresh install, I crash within 30 minutes again.
Ran memtest on boot, RAM seems to be fine.
CPU temps are fine and shows no signs of increased load upon crash, so no memory leak of sorts.
4. What I haven't tried
Formatting my D:\ drive. I have no way of backing up at the moment. Virus scan on D:\ drive runs clear.
Finding a way to see if the PSU is the issue, if it's power related at all. (It's only shut off by itself twice after scores of instances)
Swapping out RAM/one stick at a time.
Different graphics card
I've had this computer for a year and 3 months, 2500k i5, 8gb RAM, 64GB/500GB ssd/hd, ati 6950, 600w PSU. Built myself and never ever had an issue. The only thing I remember changing was updating the graphic card driver, i rolled it back as i previously mentioned and still no dice.
The fact I've reinstalled Windows leads me to believe there is a hardware issue somewhere, or a software issue on my D:\ drive. I am going to unplug my D:\ drive and boot to see if the crash persists sans the D:\ drive.
What is the liklihood my SSD is faulty? Is it a power issue? I am completely stumped, any help would be greatly appreciated.
Hi there, I hope you take the time to read my post. I have troubleshooted in every path I could think of and I've tried to make it easy to take it all in as I've tried a lot. If you have any insight or experience with this problem please reply! Thanks.
Okay first off, I'll explain the exact symptoms of my issue. Then I'll explain exactly what I've done to try and narrow down the problem and also the things I've tried to fix it.
Windows 7 Unresponsive then crashes.
1. The Symptoms
If I'm playing a game (where I first noticed it), the sound will continue in a loop, the screen will freeze.
I cannot ALT+TAB, CTRL+ALT+DELETE or CTRL+SHIFT+DELETE
Teamspeak still works so I can chat to people as my computer is crashing (my push to talk key is on my mouse). This eventually stops working after about 2 minutes when it is fully crashed.
The only thing I can do is hold down the power button and power off and on.
When I'm not in a game, the crash will show it's first signs by a video stopping and the sound resuming on a youtube video, or if I click something it doesn't do anything then greys out as it goes into 'Not Repsonding' mode. This happens to everything I click, the taskbar (explorer.exe) will show the click animation but nothing will come up and the whole user interface starts to just not do anything til the point where I just have a cursor to move around, everything is locked out. It's almost as if Windows deteriorates in functionality before it's finally locked up.
Again, CTRL+ALT+DELETE and co still don't work.
This can happen between 20-30 minutes after booting up.
2. My Observations
First thing I did was run a virus scan, it reported back with a high priority virus hiding in msconfig.exe. From the nature of the file I thought maybe fixing this would fix it.
After my computer was clean of virii, my computer still crashed in the same way.
At first because my issue seemed to only happen when I played a game (specifically DayZ for Arma2 which is a mod in alpha development). I first assumed it was crashing because of this so spent some time researching into if anyone else had a similar problem with DayZ.
It wasn't until it crashed just browsing the internet that I realised I had a bigger issue on my hands.
Event Viewer, Reliablity Viewer all showed nothing of interest to the reason my computer was crashing.
After getting frustrated with this unknown cause. I left resource monitor open and waited until my computer crashed. I was tabbed out of Arma2 when this happened, here are the two photos.
I'd first like to mention that cooling is not an issue, I have a Fractal R3 case, I even cleared out the dust from the fan filters, all the internal hardware was pristine to my amazement. All my temps are very reasonable/low.
As you can see, disk activity drops off, along with the network driver failing, the CPU is completely fine. The memory showed a small blip after the crash)
A small note: twice my computer went to black and shut off by itself, with one instance I saw graphical archetyping on the screen just before it shut off.
My graphic card is a ATI 6950. The first thing I actually checked was if OverDrive in CCC was causing this crash (because on the above photographs you can see CCC.exe crashes alongside arma2. I decided it was nothing to do with the graphic card itself. The second thing I checked was the driver. I remember I had recently installed 12.6 Catalyst Suite a few days ago, right when this issue started (maybe, foggy memory). I uninstalled all the drivers and CCC and installed 12.4 (two month older) driver for it. I was still crashing so I ruled out my graphic card and driver as a possible hardware issue.
3. What I've Tried.
First, I did a checkdisk, sfc /scannow, and downloaded a couple utilities to check the overall health of my harddisks
No errors or anything to be concerned about. My first hd is a 64gb SSD. The other is a SATA 500gb 7200rpm hdd.
My operating system is installed on the SSD
My games and applications are installed on my other disk 'D:\'
Because the crash was physically effecting Windows, I decided to reinstall Windows 7 on the SSD to see if that'd help.
Fresh install, I crash within 30 minutes again.
Ran memtest on boot, RAM seems to be fine.
CPU temps are fine and shows no signs of increased load upon crash, so no memory leak of sorts.
4. What I haven't tried
Formatting my D:\ drive. I have no way of backing up at the moment. Virus scan on D:\ drive runs clear.
Finding a way to see if the PSU is the issue, if it's power related at all. (It's only shut off by itself twice after scores of instances)
Swapping out RAM/one stick at a time.
Different graphics card
I've had this computer for a year and 3 months, 2500k i5, 8gb RAM, 64GB/500GB ssd/hd, ati 6950, 600w PSU. Built myself and never ever had an issue. The only thing I remember changing was updating the graphic card driver, i rolled it back as i previously mentioned and still no dice.
The fact I've reinstalled Windows leads me to believe there is a hardware issue somewhere, or a software issue on my D:\ drive. I am going to unplug my D:\ drive and boot to see if the crash persists sans the D:\ drive.
What is the liklihood my SSD is faulty? Is it a power issue? I am completely stumped, any help would be greatly appreciated.