Computer freeze

bazzabear

bazzabear

bazzabear

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Joined
2 Nov 2013
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4,242
I'm asking for help here, but I don't have a lot of information to give! I'll share what I know, and maybe you guys will know what extra I need to find out for you to help.

I've had this PC for 5+ years now, and always been very stable. But for the last couple of weeks I've had a few occasions - maybe 5-6 - where it has just frozen up completely. Screen stays on, but no mouse or keyboard input does anything. Have to hold down the power to close it down, restart, and then everything is back to normal.

on one of those occasions I immediately ran a hardware monitor to check temperatures, and everything seemed normal.

I've not noticed any particular pattern, except maybe it's always happened with Chrome running and in focus. But then that's true 90% of the time, so maybe means nothing.

Any obvious things I should try, or additional information I need to provide to help diagnose?

I could try switching to Firefox to see if it helps? Or does latest Geforce drivers seem a likely issue (the only thing I can think of that's changed) and I should rollback?

Basic computer details are:
ASUS Prime Z370-P motherboard
i7-8700k
2070 super
16GB RAM
Windows 10 home

Oh - there's a thought. I did enable the TPM 2.0 thing in the BIOS recently, just out of interest to see whether it would make it Windows 11 compatible. I'm not sure whether these crashes have followed that action, but maybe I'll try switching that back and see if it makes a difference.
 
TPM can definitely cause problems, but I thought that was limited to Ryzen systems, I haven't heard of it with Intel.

Have you checked the event viewer around the time of the freezes?

Run CrystalDiskInfo and checked SMART values?

Did you change anything else in the BIOS?

Any new devices at all? Particularly wireless & USB.
 
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I haven't checked event viewer (forgot it existed!)
Not a program I have much experience with. Seems to be showing 2 'critical' errors in the last couple of days:

Kernel-Power 41.

I don't know, but a suspicion that is the act of me having to hard-reboot, rather than the actual error itself.
I've tried to look for an event which just precedes that shutdown in each case, as that might indicate the lockup - but nothing popping out. I will definitely look at that again in case of another lock up.

I did not change anything else in the BIOS, and have no other hardware or software changes that I am aware of (apart from I think there was a recent Windows update, and possibly an nVidia update).

I do have some HDDs, although windows itself is on SSD.

Having turned off TPM again, I will leave everything else well alone for now, so we can see if that appears to have been the cause. Fingers crossed!
 
OK, that's what I did above but the only consistent item I found was actually the error from turning off without shutting down (which I did after the lock up of course).
 
Not wanting to jinx things, but no lock ups since I turned TPM back off, which was on Thursday. During the timer with it enabled, was crashing about once a day. So fingers crossed, issue identified and resolved.

It'd be nice to know why but I'll cope without.
 
I had (have?) the same problem.

I built my PC around September 2021, AMD CPU and Nvidia GPU, as i remember at the time it worked fine for a month and then i started to get random freezes just like you described, power button was the only solution. These freezes would happen randomly and occur a few times a week.

I also thought Chrome was the problem, perhaps an issue when playing a video, so switched to Firefox and that seemed to solved the problem.

Around five or six months later it started happenng again, was baffled as to what was causing it, perhaps RAM was faulty or maybe GPU, because the GPU was the only component i bought used. Just like last time it happened for a month or so and then stopped on it's own.

Have since bought a new GPU, but i don't think the GPU was the problem.

It hasn't happened for a while now but i got a feeling it will return sometime. Will update if i ever figure out what's causing it.
 
bazzabear said:
Not wanting to jinx things, but no lock ups since I turned TPM back off, which was on Thursday. During the timer with it enabled, was crashing about once a day. So fingers crossed, issue identified and resolved.

It'd be nice to know why but I'll cope without.
Click to expand...
What is TPM as i am having this exact issue and i have tried everything.the difference is every single part is brand new apart from the GPU.
 
This will explain it better than I can:

What is TPM? - Microsoft Support

A TPM, or Trusted Platform Module, improves the security of your PC by securely creating and storing cryptographic keys. TPM 2.0 is a key part of making Windows 11 even more secure.
support.microsoft.com support.microsoft.com

But the point for this purpose is that it is likely something that has to be enabled on your motherboard via the BIOS.
 
bazzabear said:
Not wanting to jinx things, but no lock ups since I turned TPM back off, which was on Thursday. During the timer with it enabled, was crashing about once a day. So fingers crossed, issue identified and resolved.

It'd be nice to know why but I'll cope without.
Click to expand...

What’s even more odd is I’ve installed 11 on a handful of devices bypassing restrictions and not had a single crash/reports on any of them.

When I say multiple I would say about 20 machines in total that don’t meet the specifications.
 
bazzabear said:
This will explain it better than I can:

What is TPM? - Microsoft Support

A TPM, or Trusted Platform Module, improves the security of your PC by securely creating and storing cryptographic keys. TPM 2.0 is a key part of making Windows 11 even more secure.
support.microsoft.com support.microsoft.com

But the point for this purpose is that it is likely something that has to be enabled on your motherboard via the BIOS.
Click to expand...
Thanks for the reply.
I disabled anything related to TPM in the bios and had no freeze/lockup for 2 days,thought it was cured but apparently not as its just done it now.
i'm at the end of my tether with it.brand new build ordered all the parts from ocuk as per usual and followed all the correct procedures as i have done for years.mem test fine,temps fine.all screws tight.no loose wires.bios up to date.tried windows 11 and it does the same as windows 10.
had 1 dump file at the start of it all and now they don't even appear and all i ever get is kernal power event 41 in there.whats odd is it seemingly only freezes and locks up when not in use.never has it happen while moving the mouse etc.once it freezes all i can do is power it off via power button.

Did your problem ever come back or is it fixed.
thinking about phoning OCUK up but i'd expect i'll be told its out of their hands and i'd have to RMA,well every part? which is just going to be a massive inconvenient headache.i build my kids machines all the time,problem free,seems to be when ever i build one for my self i get unlucky and find these rare issues.

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from the only dump file created this is what i got in bluescreen viewer.haven't been able to come up with any fixes from this info

022723-6468-01.dmp 27/02/2023 17:47:30 0x00000124 00000000`00000007 ffff8181`76499088 00000000`00000000 00000000`00000000 ntoskrnl.exe ntoskrnl.exe+91ad3b x64 ntoskrnl.exe+91ad3b 022723-6468-01.dmp 12 15 18362 262,144 27/02/2023 17:47:34
 
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Since I re-disabled TPM, I have had one crash which seemed similar - but left nothing at all in event viewer. So that's in nearly two months.

So I'm worried about that one - but hopeful it was just a one-off.
 
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