weird pc issues (PC lockups)

[nelis]

Hi there

I'm having the strangest issues. this started a while ago but it went away and now it's back again.

My pc will sometimes freeze for a few seconds then back to normal and then freeze again. it can happen when i'm on desktop or when I'm browsing. Today was playing BF4 and suddenly I got lag spikes like a BIG lag/stutter every now and then and after each freeze 1 core will spike to 100% usage and then back down. This is my HDD I use for my pc.

1x OCZ vertex 2 60GB for Operating system(windows 8.1)
1x Liteon SSD for some games
1x WD Blue 1TB for some software downloads and games.

Thing I tried:

1. Heaven benchmark
2. Aida64 stress test for few minutes
3. MEMtest latest version
4. latest windows 8.1 updates
5. check ssd health via SSDlife and all seems fine (but can I trust it)
6. run malwarebytes and spybot scan and clear system from spyware
7. Run aida64 with gpu, cpu and memory stressed all at the same time and also did a seperate HDD test with aida64

So is there anything else I can check? I don't overclock for now as my motherboard doesn't support it and GPU is not overclocked. Temps max for cpu = 45-50C and gpu = 75C Can it be my SSD that is busy dying.

Oh forgot to add. I'm using free download manager and whenever I just want to do a quick download and set my c driver (SSD) as download location then my pc will freeze after a few minutes. So maybe the SSD is faulty.

Please ask if you need more details.

Thanks

 

[Rudimental]

Free Download Manager always used to do this for me when I was using the browser plugin and something with flash came up in the browser, and so I stopped using it. So try uninstalling that first.

 

[|tera|]

Download SysInternals Autoruns and check all Startup and Winlogon Entries. If you are unsure what to delete, Google it. If you don't want to delete, just uncheck it from starting up.

Check the Drivers Tab in Autoruns as well for missing/removed drivers for removed hardware and delete those as well.

Check the Scheduled Tasks section as well, but don't remove Microsoft entries.

Reboot your PC after changes and see if there's an improvement.

Also. Check for updated chipset drivers for your system. Use a tool like ma-config.com.

 

[nelis]

So i uninstalled free download manager and my pc started doing it again. usually when I load a couple of youtube videos at the same time...lol.

I also checked with SysInternals and couldn't find anything wrong there. One thing I noticed after the freeze checking task manager I see system interrupts having high cpu usage for a few seconds

 

[|tera|]

Could be your Graphics Card as well. How are the temps on your card and are there any driver updates available?

Edit: my bad. See in the OP you did mention temps. As I said. Check for driver updates.

 

[HavocXphere]

Open events log create a custom filter set to 1 hour & warnings or above.

Next time you hit a freeze, memorize the time and check the log.

My money is on ****ty hdd controller/SSD/WD hdd.

If the above doesn't show anything then I'd disconnect the WD and roll like that for a few days. Possibly connected to the power saving on the WD

 

[mintydroid]

Open events log create a custom filter set to 1 hour & warnings or above.

Next time you hit a freeze, memorize the time and check the log.

My money is on ****ty hdd controller/SSD/WD hdd.

If the above doesn't show anything then I'd disconnect the WD and roll like that for a few days. Possibly connected to the power saving on the WD

Doubt it is the 1tb drive. The WD blue is one of the most reliable you can find.

 

[CamiKaze]

Open events log create a custom filter set to 1 hour & warnings or above.

Next time you hit a freeze, memorize the time and check the log.

My money is on ****ty hdd controller/SSD/WD hdd.

If the above doesn't show anything then I'd disconnect the WD and roll like that for a few days. Possibly connected to the power saving on the WD

I'm with you on that. It must be a drive issue.

 

[nelis]

Could be your Graphics Card as well. How are the temps on your card and are there any driver updates available?

Edit: my bad. See in the OP you did mention temps. As I said. Check for driver updates.

Like I said I did heaven benchmark, And aida 64 built in Graphics benchmark and nothing wrong there. So today BF4 was telling me i need directx 10.0 at least to play the game...lol I have windows 8.1 and r9-280x so I should be dx11 ready. i decided ok let's just reboot and bang could only see a curson and had a black screen. So I reinstalled windows now and let's see how it goes. I was thinking maybe it's could be the ethernet cause I have this killer e2200 network card on my motherboard.

To be honest it all started mainly after windows 8.1 update 1 so After i installed windows i disabled windows updates for now. so will see how it goes.

 

[Rickster]

Last time my pc started freezing the PSU packed up, check it out.

 

[nelis]

Last time my pc kets freezing the PSU packed up, check it out.

how can i check the voltages etc etc on the psu. But it's not freezing it's like a freeze then go then frezze then go but not all the time

 

[PhireSide]

My first PSU (Corsair HX650W) also did very strange things. I hooked up a multimeter to the 12V rail and I noticed that in games, the voltage drops by 0.1V every 10 or so seconds. When it dropped from 12V to around 11.08V my PC would lock up as you described.

Maybe worth checking out?

 

[Rickster]

how can i check the voltages etc etc on the psu. But it's not freezing it's like a freeze then go then frezze then go but not all the time

Here

My Result:

 

[nelis]

Here

My Result:

ok will check now and post. Will monitor it for a while. I just played a round of bf4

This is my result after a round of bf4 and so on

here

Can i really trust that app to give me accurate results?

oh and also why does crystal disk info and ssd life report health then as 100% if my ssd is faulty.

 

[Rickster]

ok will check now and post. Will monitor it for a while. I just played a round of bf4

This is my result after a round of bf4 and so on

here

Can i really trust that app to give me accurate results?

oh and also why does crystal disk info and ssd life report health then as 100% if my ssd is faulty.

And Idle figures?

 

[nelis]

And Idle figures?

it's about the same results. I'm going to leave this open and when I start getting issues again I can also check the voltages. This problem doesn't happen all the time but when it does it's a pain in the a**

Maybe my os was faulty some how. After that black screen before I re-installed my os i went into safe mode and Desktop windows manager couldn't start. So maybe that was the thing that was messing with me. Maybe it's time to get rid of my old OCZ vertex II ssd and get something better. I'll do that cause I'm planning on getting a new motherboard and cpu anyway when haswell refresh comes out so I can crossfire again.

 

[howardb]

Might sound silly, but check if your HDD(s) is going into power saving mode - in your power settings. I had this a few years ago and it annoyed the hell out of me till I found the culprit. Was an IDE drive going into standby then powering up again, causing major lag and freezing - could be the same with your SSD vs the Sata HDD.

 

[nelis]

Ok guys should I move the page file to my WD HDD or just keep it on my main SSD? I just changed my drives not to go on power savings mode

 

[howardb]

Ok guys should I move the page file to my WD HDD or just keep it on my main SSD? I just changed my drives not to go on power savings mode

How much system RAM do you have nelis? If 16GB+ try not using a page file and see what happens - I have this setup currently with no issues (OS=SDD, Data=HDD, 16GB RAM, no page file).
Alternatively, have the page file on the HDD opposed to SDD, although you should see little difference on the issue you're experiencing imo.

 

[nelis]

How much system RAM do you have nelis? If 16GB+ try not using a page file and see what happens - I have this setup currently with no issues (OS=SDD, Data=HDD, 16GB RAM, no page file).
Alternatively, have the page file on the HDD opposed to SDD, although you should see little difference on the issue you're experiencing imo.

Ok I did set it to HDD in the mean time. So far my pc is running smooth. Also new AMD drivers came out so my pc might be smoother now. Already saw BF4 being smoother

Thanks.