New pc keeps on hard freezing, dont know why

T

tongue_of_colicab

Veteran
Gents,

My lovely new rig that I looked forward to for 6 months seems to be a little sick and it's proud owner is not able to figure out what is wrong.

I have the system for about 3 weeks now, the first week it seemed fine but since second week (when I got my monitor, before I used my tv as monitor and only played games) it's crashing on average about once a day.

What happens?
Windows freezes, nothing responds anymore (numlock etc) and I have to use the power button to turn off the system. Sometimes the mouse start lagging and jumping around the screen eventually resulting in a hard freeze.

When does it happen?
Mostly when browsing. I had one crash during gaming (in about 40 hours) and one crash while exiting vlc. All other crashes are during browsing and maybe one or two while on the desktop.

What did I check?
I used the windows hdd tool to check my hdd's, all fine.
I used memtest86 to check my memory. After almost 7 hours and 6 passes no errors.
I stressed the cpu and gpu at the same time while running prime95 and furmark. Only 15 minutes but no problems. Also gaming is fine with the exception of that single crash so the hardware doesn't seem to have a problem at first sight.
Mainboard, no idea how to test this but as apart from one crash all crashes happened while idling I suppose it's working OK.
Reinstalled windows.

I checked the windows event viewer as well but it doesn't hold many clues. It says windows was shut down incorrectly because of a sudden loss of power (of course) but not much more than that.

The only clue is that the nvidia display driver sometimes leaves a not responding error in the log just before crashing, but not every time. I'm thinking maybe the display driver is causing the crashes as previous experience (different pc, same video card) with the display driver crashing also left me unable to move the mouse but the driver always managed to recover, not cause a windows crash.

But I'm not sure if this is the true cause. A long shot might be that it's because I got dvi (monitor) and hdmi (tv) connected at the same time as I didn't have any crashes when I only used my tv. Though I only played games which aren't really causing crashes at that time.

Any thoughts?

Edit: I also changed power settings to high performance in case something like pcie power going off was causing problems.

Specs:
i7 4770
asus z87 gryphon (only chipset drivers installed, no usb or igpu drivers or anything)
16gb ram corsair vengeance (2x8gb)
Asus 560ti CUII (fancy cooler model thingy) (latest driver)
Windows 7 (all updates)
 
It could be flash, it's used for a lot of advertisements.

Try disabling hardware acceleration in it. There are ways to kill flash as well. Or you could try updating it.

Have you updated all your other software? What's running in the background? What's your desktop, a static color or a slideshow or ...?

"High performance" isn't like "Ultra" in a video game. You can go into it and tweak that further.
 
I'm using adblock (firefox) and I did had a couple of crashes outside of the browser so not sure if flash really has anything to do with it.

All software I'm running is the latest version as I did a clean install. I'm running with almost no software in the background, only AVG, sound driver control panel, steam, nvidia driver panel and the driver for my pocket wifi.

I know about the power options, I just read that on some occasions pcie power management might cause problems so I turned it off just to see if it would make any difference.
 
Do you have a SSD? I had similar problems with BSoD and after testing a million things and googling and whatever (damn you PC gaming!) the SSD was defect.

Fast forward 6 month after changing my SSD and everything went fine...again, problem and game crashes. After spending extreme amount of time...my GTX480 was defect.

So my first bet is you system disc.

My second bet is your graphics card.
 
Seems I had on bsod. Looks like the nvidia driver is crashing the system.

Code: 
Unable to load image \SystemRoot\system32\ntoskrnl.exe, Win32 error 0n2
*** WARNING: Unable to verify timestamp for ntoskrnl.exe
*** ERROR: Module load completed but symbols could not be loaded for ntoskrnl.exe
Windows 7 Kernel Version 7601 (Service Pack 1) MP (8 procs) Free x64
Product: WinNt, suite: TerminalServer SingleUserTS
Built by: 7601.18113.amd64fre.win7sp1_gdr.130318-1533
Machine Name:
Kernel base = 0xfffff800`0304c000 PsLoadedModuleList = 0xfffff800`0328f670
Debug session time: Tue Jul 23 01:19:19.154 2013 (UTC + 9:00)
System Uptime: 0 days 1:09:58.902
*********************************************************************
* Symbols can not be loaded because symbol path is not initialized. *
*                                                                   *
* The Symbol Path can be set by:                                    *
*   using the _NT_SYMBOL_PATH environment variable.                 *
*   using the -y <symbol_path> argument when starting the debugger. *
*   using .sympath and .sympath+                                    *
*********************************************************************
Unable to load image \SystemRoot\system32\ntoskrnl.exe, Win32 error 0n2
*** WARNING: Unable to verify timestamp for ntoskrnl.exe
*** ERROR: Module load completed but symbols could not be loaded for ntoskrnl.exe
Loading Kernel Symbols
...............................................................
................................................................
........................
Loading User Symbols
Loading unloaded module list
........
*** WARNING: Unable to verify timestamp for dxgkrnl.sys
*** ERROR: Module load completed but symbols could not be loaded for dxgkrnl.sys
*******************************************************************************
*                                                                             *
*                        Bugcheck Analysis                                    *
*                                                                             *
*******************************************************************************

Use !analyze -v to get detailed debugging information.

BugCheck 116, {fffffa8011b7e1d0, fffff880049f7e30, ffffffffc00000b5, a}

*** WARNING: Unable to verify timestamp for nvlddmkm.sys
*** ERROR: Module load completed but symbols could not be loaded for nvlddmkm.sys
***** Kernel symbols are WRONG. Please fix symbols to do analysis.



ADDITIONAL_DEBUG_TEXT:  
You can run '.symfix; .reload' to try to fix the symbol path and load symbols.

FAULTING_MODULE: fffff8000304c000 nt

DEBUG_FLR_IMAGE_TIMESTAMP:  51c41788

FAULTING_IP: 
nvlddmkm+13be30
fffff880`049f7e30 4055            push    rbp

DEFAULT_BUCKET_ID:  GRAPHICS_DRIVER_TDR_FAULT

CUSTOMER_CRASH_COUNT:  1

BUGCHECK_STR:  0x116

CURRENT_IRQL:  0

STACK_TEXT:  
fffff880`05ed2928 fffff880`02d53054 : 00000000`00000116 fffffa80`11b7e1d0 fffff880`049f7e30 ffffffff`c00000b5 : nt+0x75c00
fffff880`05ed2930 00000000`00000116 : fffffa80`11b7e1d0 fffff880`049f7e30 ffffffff`c00000b5 00000000`0000000a : dxgkrnl+0x5d054
fffff880`05ed2938 fffffa80`11b7e1d0 : fffff880`049f7e30 ffffffff`c00000b5 00000000`0000000a fffffa80`0d79d010 : 0x116
fffff880`05ed2940 fffff880`049f7e30 : ffffffff`c00000b5 00000000`0000000a fffffa80`0d79d010 00000000`00000000 : 0xfffffa80`11b7e1d0
fffff880`05ed2948 ffffffff`c00000b5 : 00000000`0000000a fffffa80`0d79d010 00000000`00000000 fffff880`02d52e2f : nvlddmkm+0x13be30
fffff880`05ed2950 00000000`0000000a : fffffa80`0d79d010 00000000`00000000 fffff880`02d52e2f fffff880`049f7e30 : 0xffffffff`c00000b5
fffff880`05ed2958 fffffa80`0d79d010 : 00000000`00000000 fffff880`02d52e2f fffff880`049f7e30 fffffa80`11b7e1d0 : 0xa
fffff880`05ed2960 00000000`00000000 : fffff880`02d52e2f fffff880`049f7e30 fffffa80`11b7e1d0 00000000`00000000 : 0xfffffa80`0d79d010


STACK_COMMAND:  kb

FOLLOWUP_IP: 
nvlddmkm+13be30
fffff880`049f7e30 4055            push    rbp

SYMBOL_STACK_INDEX:  4

SYMBOL_NAME:  nvlddmkm+13be30

FOLLOWUP_NAME:  MachineOwner

MODULE_NAME: nvlddmkm

IMAGE_NAME:  nvlddmkm.sys

BUCKET_ID:  WRONG_SYMBOLS

Followup: MachineOwner

Now the question is if this is because the driver itself or the hardware. I used this card in my previous system as well and never had any problems. All it did in between now and my previous system was sit on the airplane and spend 6 months in its original box in the closet. As I only had one crash while gaming I'm not sure about the hardware being broken.
 
I had similar issues when I first built my current system, i5-3570k + 7870. I did considerable troubleshooting on the issue and found Firefox + hardware acceleration + drivers were the cause of my woes, namely when Flash was being used somewhere. I was transitioning to Chrome throughout my work and home anyway, I no longer even have Firefox installed at home. I've not had a single problem since.
 
Hardware acceleration in the browser is always something I disable because I think it's unneeded and the drivers issues are more likely/unresolvable in linux. I do use Firefox, though I'm running Opera 12.16 since yesterday and it's pretty decent after configuring some weird stuff away.
So if you want to flee I'd recommend Opera, rather than Chrome (I hate it and it's incredibly resource hungry, but that's just a personal opinion)

Still, crashing the driver like that is not really a normal thing, if it was just a Firefox or Flash bug you'd hope it just crashes the browser.
Here it's maybe the graphics hardware going bonkers intermittently, and rarely even but seems like the browser is apt at triggering it.
 
Davros wouldn't that set the core to max permanently? Whilst that might fix the problem it's hardly a good solution. Nowadays we care more about very low power idle and no core speeds for basic accelerations rather than 1Ghz+ for everything.
 
Davros said:

create a md5 of your ntoskrnl.exe (i used unicode version)
http://www.elgorithms.com/downloads/chaosmd5.php
AC3232ED772403D38D64C18CD5A66FBD

ps: found this :
in the Nvidia Control Panel, I changed the power management mode setting into Prefer maximum perfomance rather than adaptive.
Click to expand...

Mine is 2DFAB8C3C394E95D262E1325BDA5DFE4. According to google that is the correct hash for intel platforms.

I just almost had another crash. Again the nvidia driver error in the event log though the system didn't crash. Not completely anyway. Had to reboot to get it back to normal though.

I now turned off hardware acceleration in firefox and will uninstall flash. Unfortunately text looks crappy in firefox without hardware acceleration.
 
tongue_of_colicab said:
Mine is 2DFAB8C3C394E95D262E1325BDA5DFE4. According to google that is the correct hash for intel platforms.

I just almost had another crash. Again the nvidia driver error in the event log though the system didn't crash. Not completely anyway. Had to reboot to get it back to normal though.

I now turned off hardware acceleration in firefox and will uninstall flash. Unfortunately text looks crappy in firefox without hardware acceleration.
Click to expand...

I think I remember having some problem with HA off and the way text looked but that was several versions of firefox ago. I'm on 22.0 and everything looks good, imo.

Edit: Actually, the problem was the opposite for me using a much older version. I posted about it at slackercentral and I even noted that someone here had the problem. http://forum.beyond3d.com/showpost.php?p=1537792&postcount=1
 
Last edited by a moderator:
I wonder if the crappy text is because of something going on with Cleartype or something. Text is fine with unaccelerated Firefox on linux at least, all versions. But it's not the same backends (on Windows it goes through Aero, DXGI, WDDM, whatever)
 
Hmm that is strange. I have 16gb of ram and all of it is recognized so I can't believe that I'm running 32bit windows. Could it be that only that file is 32bit for some reason?

I used the same .iso to install windows to my laptop so when I get home I'll check the md5 and see if it's the same.
 
tongue_of_colicab said:
Hmm that is strange. I have 16gb of ram and all of it is recognized so I can't believe that I'm running 32bit windows. Could it be that only that file is 32bit for some reason?

I used the same .iso to install windows to my laptop so when I get home I'll check the md5 and see if it's the same.
Click to expand...

Windows 8 supports PAE (Physical Address Extension) which gives access to more than 4 GB of memory for a 32 bit OS (also requires your CPU to support PAE), but I believe applications are still limited by to 2 GB VA. It may allow programs flagged as large address aware to work correctly, however.

Regards,
SB
 
The log shows

Code: 
Windows 7 Kernel Version 7601 (Service Pack 1) MP (8 procs) Free x64

And software is installed in program files and program files (x86) so I'm not running a 32bit windows I think. Would installing a 64bit driver on a 32bit even work btw?
 
Just right-click your computer icon on the desktop, select properties... It says right in that info window what bitness your OS is. :) Also, if you have 64-bit drivers installed you must be running 64-bit. So that pretty much clinches it.

How are you doing without hardware acceleration/flash?
 
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