Best way to determine an intermittent problem?

StevieP

StevieP

StevieP

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I've been living with an issue on my desktop PC (see specs in sig) for months now but really want to find out what is causing the problem!

Essentially my PC will randomly lock up - the screen will stay on but everything freezes and I'm forced to do a hard reset to get it working again!

This can happen whether I'm browsing the internet, gaming or even if I've just left the machine on to download a Steam game for example!

Annoyingly there doesn't appear to be any pattern as some days it will work perfectly and others it will just freeze - sometimes within 10 minutes and other times it could take hours!?!?! :confused:

I've looked in the event viewer but have zero idea of what I'm looking at or for to be perfectly honest!

Short or systematically removing a component at a time and seeing if that was the issue (and even this is not practical as it's too random!) what is the best way to try and figure out the issue??

Thanks....
 
Possibly the SSD although this was more typical of a HDD really.
Could be a driver issue sitting around somewhere, but would expect a blue screen to follow.

Have you got another HDD you could install windows onto and let that run for a while and see if it does the same?
You might find that it will be one of those issues where a fresh install fixes it.
 
as reaper said, if you have a spare HDD or SSD laying around install windows on to it and see if it still does the same thing as the PC might be accessing something which is causing the PC to lock up.

if this fixes the issue then finish off installing everything and then clone the drive on to your normal SSD you use and it should fix the issue
 
I've actually done a full reinstall a couple of times since the problem started and it's made no difference! (And I've also updated the firmware on the SSD too!)

Unfortunately I don't have a spare drive kicking around so might have to look into borrowing one from somewhere!

Is there any merit in delving into the event viewer or won't that help??
 
Depends how bad the lockup actually is, if it's an entire system lockup then Windows won't have the chance to write anything to it's own logs as it will be stuck/hung.

Normally if it's just a slight lockup the back end still writes it's logs as normal and can tell you what's happened.

If a fresh install hasn't remedied it in the past it might be something else entirely.
Is the RAM running at it's recommended speeds/voltage using the XMP profile.

Would try a CMOS reset on the motherboard & reset the RAM to XMP and see from there, it's one of them problems which could be anything.
 
Best thing to do as a course of principle is run some basic hardware checks, such as SSDLife, HDDtune, Memtest86+, Prime95 etc. Undo any overclocks you might have too.

In my experience, there's no such thing as in intermittent PC problems, some thing has to trigger the event in the first place, so where better look than the Event manager. Check for any critical errors that occurred rough when the problem did. Google anything you find suspicious.
 
have you ran check disk on the HDD yet? might be something worth doing

the PC with the issue, is it the one in your sig?
 
ED209 said:
have you ran check disk on the HDD yet? might be something worth doing

the PC with the issue, is it the one in your sig?
Click to expand...

I've not run any tests - do you mean the in-built "check disk" on the tools tab in "properties" for the drive within Windows 7? (and yes, the one with the issue is the one in my sig!)
 
I'll run memtest now to see if it brings up any issues!

I've run check disk but wasn't in the room when it finished and the PC had just booted into Windows (as it's my OS disk it had to reboot and do it during the boot up) - I assume if it had found anything nasty it would have alerted me or not rebooted???
 
Hmmmm, memtest ran 4 passes with no errors and I also left Prime95 running overnight and all was well this morning!

Anyone have any idea where I go from here?
 
StevieP said:
I've been living with an issue on my desktop PC (see specs in sig) for months now but really want to find out what is causing the problem!

Essentially my PC will randomly lock up - the screen will stay on but everything freezes and I'm forced to do a hard reset to get it working again!

This can happen whether I'm browsing the internet, gaming or even if I've just left the machine on to download a Steam game for example!

Annoyingly there doesn't appear to be any pattern as some days it will work perfectly and others it will just freeze - sometimes within 10 minutes and other times it could take hours!?!?! :confused:
Click to expand...

Hi,
I am still running an old xp spec system and I too have been getting the same issues as you are. Have you downloaded anything just before this started to happen? as I ran a full system check and nothing showed-up in the tests. The only way I resolved it was to clone from a back-up HD. Now my PC is running fine again. This might not be the case with your PC, but you never know it could be software problem. :)
 
I'm doubtful it's a software issue to be honest as I've done a couple of full reinstalls and the problem has still been present!?!?

I fully expected the machine to lock up during the Prime95 test as it's crashed doing a lot less in the past!
 
In my experience most problems are down to the PSU it's also the most random component in a PC, if I was you I'd beg, borrow or steal a PSU and see how you go.
 
Look in Event Viewer, Custom Views and click on Administrative Events. Should see a list of Warnings, Error or Critical events. You just need to look at events prior to you shutting the system down. Then check against previous shutdowns and see if there are any common denominators, you will have to scan through the other logs, as some admim faults can be caused by driver, software or hardware failures.
 
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