What causes my computer freezes?

Ornlu Wolfjarl · 7 Nov 2013 at 22:20

Hello, i have a 2-year old custom built gaming PC with parts purchased from overclockers. it's been working fine, until recently when it started freezing on me.

My specs are:
Asus Crosshair IV Formula AMD 890FX (Socket AM3/AM3+) DDR3 Motherboard
2x G.Skill RipJaw 8GB (2x4GB) DDR3 PC3-10666C9 1333MHz - 16gb total
XFX ATI Radeon HD 6870 1024MB GDDR5 PCI-Express Graphics Card
AMD Phenom II X6 Six Core 1090T Black Edition 3.20GHz (Socket AM3)
windows 7 ultimate

So, the screen will freeze randomly, usually when i play games, but lately it just
freezes upon windows startup. if im in a game, the computer will usually not freeze completely... the game will still run, but im not able to do anything [not even ctrl alt del my way out of it], except restart or shutdown, using the power buttons on the case. as i said the game still runs, but pressing anything [mouse or keyboard] causes the sound to enter a high frequency repeat loop, so it sounds sort of like the blue screen of death sequence from the it crowd starting credits, only much louder and faster and longer [sorry, best way i could describe it]. in some games, the game stops running altogether and the ominous sound effect is constant, whether i press any key or move the mouse. when the freeze occurs on startup or the system is idle [happens very rare on idle], the system just freezes completely and no sound is generated. on bios boot, the issue also occurs but very rarely.

i've tried reinstalling all drivers, games and programs, removing any old driver traces, cleaning up my processes and startup, clearing the registry resetting the bios by removing the motherboard battery, cleaning the graphic card sockets, cleaning ram sockets, swapping the ram, using another power supply [same watts - 750w] and now formating my pc.

i dont know if the format has worked yet, as i just did it yesterday and im about to install the drivers, but my question is, could this be related to any hardware issue? has anyone any idea as to why this might be happening?

thank you

update: well, the format didnt work, pc keeps freezing

Danny75 · 8 Nov 2013 at 01:16

Ornlu Wolfjarl said:
i've tried reinstalling all drivers, games and programs, removing any old driver traces, cleaning up my processes and startup, clearing the registry resetting the bios by removing the motherboard battery, cleaning the graphic card sockets, cleaning ram sockets, swapping the ram, using another power supply [same watts - 750w] and now formating my pc.

In there you don't mention unseating the processor, cleaning the old thermal paste, adding new paste, and fitting the cooler again. So if you haven't tried that yet, do so. It happened to be the fix for a similar freezing issue I was experiencing. Worth a try.

Avenged7Fold · 8 Nov 2013 at 01:25

Danny75 said:
In there you don't mention unseating the processor, cleaning the old thermal paste, adding new paste, and fitting the cooler again. So if you haven't tried that yet, do so. It happened to be the fix for a similar freezing issue I was experiencing. Worth a try.

I had freezing on one of my PCs for no reason i could find, I ignored it though and put it down to OC becoming unstable. After re-doing my wcing loop, problem went away too but oddly enough, temps were the same (only added a RAM block and VRM block).

Ornlu Wolfjarl · 8 Nov 2013 at 02:25

Danny75 said:
In there you don't mention unseating the processor, cleaning the old thermal paste, adding new paste, and fitting the cooler again. So if you haven't tried that yet, do so. It happened to be the fix for a similar freezing issue I was experiencing. Worth a try.

Hmm, I have considered the CPU, but since the temperatures were always stable and the voltage was within the set parametres, I decided to leave it alone. I'll order a new paste and try and see what happens. In the meantime, if anyone else has any other suggestions they are welcome

Thank you for the reply

Arthur Hucksake · 8 Nov 2013 at 06:17

What power supply do you have in there?

Problems like this are hard to troubleshoot unfortunately.

Ram or PSU is often the culprit in these cases, when you rule out temps being an issue.

Ornlu Wolfjarl · 9 Nov 2013 at 06:47

I have an OcUK Crusader 750W, which has been working fine for 2 years now. It's not the PSU for sure though, because I've used my housemate's Corsair CX750 with the same wattage and the problem persisted.

I actually thing I've figured out what's causing the freezes, but I don't understand why: ATI Catalyst Control for graphics card. I noticed that the PC would freeze mostly when I was playing taxing games or watching high quality videos or during start-up and then, during start-up, it would freeze only when the higher GPU fan speed was initiated by Catalyst. I tried disabling the manual fan overdrive, and it didn't work, and then I uninstalled Catalyst completely and my PC has been running smoothly since then (about 10 hours ago). I've been putting it to some heavy use to stress-test my hypothesis, and it seems that everything is ok. And now that I think about it, the problems started shortly after Catalyst updated itself.

Does anyone have any idea why Catalyst would behave this way? I made sure to exhaust most of possible common hardware issues, and I did uninstall and clean up all drivers twice (the second time I formatted my PC completely), so it must be a problem within the program itself, which is conflicting with my hardware or with another driver. I'm not sure, but it's possible that it conflicted with my ASUS motherboard drivers, which use Catalyst to be installed as well.

riskyfrisky · 9 Nov 2013 at 09:15

Download a program called WhoCrashed - it can usually pinpoint specific driver crashes. You should be able to find it on filehippo.com. That will confirm Catalyst for sure as the trouble maker. I'm not sure whether it will pick up crashes from a program that is no longer installed; you may well have to bite the bullet and put it back on.

When you uninstalled Catalyst did it also remove all the drivers? I'm pretty sure getting the latest Catalyst graphics driver package and installing it also scans for NB/Chipset drivers you may need too, then it installs them. My point is you should only need to go through the install process once with Catalyst.

DarrenM343 · 9 Nov 2013 at 12:06

These problems are hard to diagnose. The catalyst control centre software might seem to be causing it (and could be), but it could be the graphics card causing it. And graphics card could mean power supply causing the graphics card to note operate properly which in turn causes an error to appear in the Ati software. But could also be motherboard

I expect overclockers see this quite often. I don't push hardware myself but believe errors start appearing as hardware reaches its limits and it can manifest in the drivers failng to respond etc.

I would be tempted to try to get my hands on another ati graphics card to try if you can. If that works fine with same version of drivers then could be your graphics card.

The reason why it might not hang with catalyst uninstalled might be because the default driver that then gets used is not optimised to the card.

I would say if the problem started appearing and you made no hardware changes, no software change, then it's like to be hardware in my opinion.

Ornlu Wolfjarl · 9 Nov 2013 at 14:53

Well, I'm not overclocking myself either, but perhaps you are right. I'm trying to find someone who has a compatible card with me actually, to test if it's indeed a software problem or if it's the hardware.

All the drivers are installed, it's just that I uninstalled the actual Catalyst Control Center, that allows manual handling of your settings. I made sure of that before and after uninstalling, because I feared it would cause optimization problems.

I've found some other cases of people suffering crashes due to Catalyst, although none like mine. They mostly suffered crashes during installation of the program and likely due to driver conflicts. I am not certain if this could be a reason, but the motherboard and the graphics card both install Catalyst when you install the drivers, but according to their manual, it doesn't create two Catalysts, it rather upgrades an existing one with new settings. I'm thinking that perhaps something is generated between the two installations that causes the system to enter infinite loops (my freeze sounds like an infinite loop to me at least).