Troubleshooting plea for help

Lord tink tonk

New Member
I wont bother with a long sob story or other tales but i built a computer for my girlfriend a few years back and after roughly 6 months of using it she noticed after running games for a few minutes the games start freezing in short sessions. It can vary from 2 second freezes that resume up to a 15 second freeze and then it can disconnect her from co-op games or keep running if its a single player game. So as an IT guy i thought i could take on this problem. I started updating drivers, that did not work (bios included). I swapped out her cpu cooler from a noctua NH12 to a NZXT AIO with a single fan since i noticed in MSI afterburner the cpu temp was slightly high but nothing critical. The AIO is due to her wanting to have a mini ITX build. Heck i even upgraded her PSU from a 600 watt corsair SFX to a 750 SFX on my meager paycheck. And after a while she gave up playing games and it went unnoticed. However she recently dusted of her pc and wanted to play some valheim with me. The problem appeared again. I got desperate and started crosstesting parts. Even so far as to upgrade her parts for her. So far i have crosstested her cpu, gpu and ram but it still happens. I figured id give HWINFO64 a shot but damn, i cant understand the logs at all. Im getting desperate to get rid of this problem. Could anyone help me to decypher the logs it saved?

Speccs for her PC as linked:
Motherboard: https://www.gigabyte.com/Motherboard/Z390-I-AORUS-PRO-WIFI-rev-10#kf
Gpu: https://www.asus.com/Motherboards-Components/Graphics-Cards/Dual/DUAL-RTX3070-O8G/
Ram: https://www.amazon.com/Kingston-Technology-HyperX-DIMM1Rx8-HX432C18FW2/dp/B07BJJN7D1 2**8 GB
PSU: https://www.microcenter.com/product...-plus-platinum-sfx-fully-modular-power-supply
Boot drive: https://www.samsung.com/semiconductor/minisite/ssd/product/consumer/970evo/ 256 GB version if i remember correctly.
Backup drive for games: https://www.amazon.com/Kingston-480GB-Solid-SA400S37-480G/dp/B01N0TQPQB
AIO: https://www.newegg.com/nzxt-liquid-...zxt 120&cm_re=nzxt_120-_-35-146-064-_-Product
Case: https://www.newegg.com/p/2AM-000Z-0...itx-_-2AM-000Z-00050-_-Product&quicklink=true


Note that the links are not where they are bought from they just are the first that popped up in the search.
Could anyone please just help out with this?
 

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What does the Windows Event Log say? Any errors or warnings in there that might give some clues to hardware or driver issues? Is it possible to toggle Numlock repeatedly when the issue occurs? Is there any disk activity while the system is frozen? Which drivers did you update? Did you try to reduce the background programs running to a minimum?

One thing I noticed from your logs is that between ~09:20 and ~10:00 there are no values which causes GenericLogViewer to draw a linear line for that timeframe. I suspect that that's one of the freezes. If that's true, the whole system is hanging and waiting for something, probably a device. In the same timeframe of 40 seconds, the Kingston drive's temperature went 3 degrees up; in the minutes before that it went only one degree up within around 90 seconds. The Total Drive Activity was also 100% for the Kingston drive during that time.

One thing I can think of is something related to storage. If a drive dies or has issues, the system often freezes until the drive finished processing the request made by the OS. Maybe check the drives' SMART values/attributes within HWiNFO (or use CrystalDiskInfo (regular ZIP is enough)). I suspect the Kingston drive to be the culprit, but that's just a guess based on the logs.

Regards
Dalai
 
What does the Windows Event Log say? Any errors or warnings in there that might give some clues to hardware or driver issues? Is it possible to toggle Numlock repeatedly when the issue occurs? Is there any disk activity while the system is frozen? Which drivers did you update? Did you try to reduce the background programs running to a minimum?

One thing I noticed from your logs is that between ~09:20 and ~10:00 there are no values which causes GenericLogViewer to draw a linear line for that timeframe. I suspect that that's one of the freezes. If that's true, the whole system is hanging and waiting for something, probably a device. In the same timeframe of 40 seconds, the Kingston drive's temperature went 3 degrees up; in the minutes before that it went only one degree up within around 90 seconds. The Total Drive Activity was also 100% for the Kingston drive during that time.

One thing I can think of is something related to storage. If a drive dies or has issues, the system often freezes until the drive finished processing the request made by the OS. Maybe check the drives' SMART values/attributes within HWiNFO (or use CrystalDiskInfo (regular ZIP is enough)). I suspect the Kingston drive to be the culprit, but that's just a guess based on the logs.

Regards
Dalai
The only thing i have seen in the event logs are the following:
Faulting application name: NVDisplay.Container.exe, version 1.28.2851.9944, time stamp 0x5edfa062

After this i did a clean installation of the nvidia drivers. Removed the driver through applications, rebooted then removed it from device manager. After this booted to safe mode and ran a registry cleaner. Rebooted to safe mode and ran ccleaner. I have not tried toggle numlock during (this one actually slipped from my mind). And there are no drive leds to check for activity on the case so thats quite to check. Background processes are reduced to a minimum, same goes for startup processes. About the kingston drive acting up however, this might be something i need to check into as she stores her games there. So if the games are there and the drive is somehow malfunctioning it might explain it. I need to read up on how to use HWINFO to the degree that i can confidently check the drive though.

Thanks ill get back to you with results!
 
What does the Windows Event Log say? Any errors or warnings in there that might give some clues to hardware or driver issues? Is it possible to toggle Numlock repeatedly when the issue occurs? Is there any disk activity while the system is frozen? Which drivers did you update? Did you try to reduce the background programs running to a minimum?

One thing I noticed from your logs is that between ~09:20 and ~10:00 there are no values which causes GenericLogViewer to draw a linear line for that timeframe. I suspect that that's one of the freezes. If that's true, the whole system is hanging and waiting for something, probably a device. In the same timeframe of 40 seconds, the Kingston drive's temperature went 3 degrees up; in the minutes before that it went only one degree up within around 90 seconds. The Total Drive Activity was also 100% for the Kingston drive during that time.

One thing I can think of is something related to storage. If a drive dies or has issues, the system often freezes until the drive finished processing the request made by the OS. Maybe check the drives' SMART values/attributes within HWiNFO (or use CrystalDiskInfo (regular ZIP is enough)). I suspect the Kingston drive to be the culprit, but that's just a guess based on the logs.

Regards
Dalai
Thank you so much for the help! All the drive tests and checks actually passed but then i unplugged the kingston SSD and pick up a small tick. So i opened it up and what do you know, a chip was slightly loose, so loose that it was barely noticeable. I replaced the SSD and ever since she has had no freezing/hangs or lag. Thank you so much for hinting to that!
 
Still for explanation:
you are right with the assumption that there are "no log values form 9:20 - 10:00", because system hangs: no logs for 36 seconds !

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