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PC freeze in game with no detectable reason

M

MikeRk

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Joined
Mar 15, 2011
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Hi.
A few weeks ago my pc began locking up when playing games (specifically Heroes of Newerth and more recently RIft). In order to find the cause for this problem I have tried numerous tests:
- Adjusting game settings (such as vsync and shadows etc)
- Multiple Catalyst driver versions (including latest beta 11.4)
- Multiple Registry cleans
- 2 full windows reinstalls with formats
- 2x 6 hour Furmark GPU tests - both passed
- Assessing graphics card with GPU-z - temperatures and voltages appear fine (no temp above 70 on furmark, 60 normally in game)
- 3 hour Prime 95 test - no faults
- 3 hour Memtest86 test - no errors
- Multiple full IntelBurntest runs - no problems or freezes
- 2 hour GPU Memory benchmark test - no reported errors
- replaced hard disk drive

Despite all of this, these games continue to randomly freeze (more often when many things are happening in game but not necessarily) and I have run out of ideas. I dont have the availability (or resources to provide) an alternative graphics card for testing so that is not really an option either.

Rig: Amd Phenon II x4 @ stock 3.4ghz
Asus M487td motherboard with latest drivers
HIS Radeon HD 5870 @ 850/1200 (stock when purchased) with latest drivers
2x Corsair Dominator 2gb DDR3 memory sticks
2x Samsung 1tb hard drives
Hiper 850w power supply
Windows 7 x64

Any help would be greatly appreciated.
 
is it just online games? it could be your internet.
 
Wow, you've certainly done your homework.

A couple things:
1) What kind of lock ups are you getting? The one's where the screen freezes in a game and perhaps a weird sound glitch? BSOD? CTD? Perhaps multiple different types?
2) Three hours on Memtest86 has not been enough to detect some errors in my experience. A good run of Memtest86 is around 3 full loops (I'm guessing around 10 hours).

Probably not a fix but I'm assuming you've attempted to update DirectX and Microsoft Visual C++ Redistributable(s).
 
internet would not cause the games to lock up per se, just lag out.

MIkeRK, at a guess i would say its your psu. are there any other game and/or conditions on which your ocmputer freezes?
 
Thanks for the suggestions guys.

The freeze is just a complete lock-up. I cant even turn the caps lock light on/off.. and all sound cuts out. The only recourse is to hard reboot. The only error message in event viewer I am getting is the Kernel-power one due to the system hard reboot.

I have not been able to cause it to crash in any other applications and will try some non-internet games to see if the freeze occurs there as well.

@Streetfighter; yes I have updated both directx and c++. I will give memtest a longer go tonight.

I didnt know PSU could cause this problem. I have only had 1 previous psu issue a few years back and that caused a complete system blowout - and so was really really obvious ^^
 
I doubt its your PSU.
Also prime95 can provoke errors even after 15+ hours, I usually let it run for 24 hours. Maybe give OCCT a try.

HOWEVER those are very unlikely your problems.
Have you tried an older Catalyst driver? I found that for example Tropico 3 with the Absolute Power addon freezes the whole system with the new Catalyst drivers.
 
I can run a longer test later this week as I am going away for a couple of days (can leave it running for at least 24hrs) for prime.

With regards to drivers I have tried 11.4(beta), 11.2 11.1a 10.1 and some older driver that came on the graphics card disc. All have resulted in the same freezes.
 
freezes like that for me are usually vcore related. try doing what the other guys said and run prime95 for longer. try ibt or linx too if you wanna get an idea without waiting for 20 hours.
 
One of the best stability testers is Intel burn test 2.5 on max memory and max thread (for you CPU)
 
Borked Audio drivers can also cause lockups and freezes....try updating your audio drivers....I've seen it many times before.

Hope it helps. :)
 
Will try the audio thing.

As I said in original post i ran IBT on full a few times without fail.
 
mine was locking up and looping a tiny fraction of sound clip over and over during game play... was the PSU not being able to feed enough power to my card. ran two different cables (6 pin and 8 pin) to the card and that solved it. Ordered a bigger single-rail that will be here tomorrow.

As others have said vcore and audio drivers have caused issues very similar to what happened to mine and what's happening to yours.
 
The same thing happened to me in COD4 on my old setup. Hope u find a fix so I can try it.
 
I have the same problem. It freezes in BC2 about 12-17 minutes of online (don't know about sp). I've tried everything and am now rma'ing my PSU (rosewill 1000w that I just got). I'm thinking it's trash. even using different pci-e cables didn't work
 
Ok I just got back and it has been reported to me that the longer testing did not cause any issues. Despite this I am still receiving crashes.

@Jmcslob Will test the update now thanks
 
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