Windows 10: Freeze Problem

It's a freeze that's happening, not a BSOD, so sorry if this is the wrong area. I'll gladly post it in the appropriate area if someone could tell me where it is (I looked but couldn't find one).

I've been experiencing freezes and BSODs over the last half year or so starting a couple months after swithing to Windows 10.

For a month, ending 2 weeks ago, I was getting a BSOD. Thanks to axe0, it got fixed.
Over 2 weeks had passed since I had the last BSOD/freeze, but just now I got one.

I had the following programs running:
- Mozilla with 3 tabs open (gmail, youtube, UE4 answer hub)
- MalwareBytes
- Unreal Engine 4 (launcher, and 1 light project containing not much more than a default template)

By freeze, I mean:
- the screen is stuck (no visible corruption or flickering whatsoever)
- mouse and keyboard fail to respond, and mouse cursor disappears
- cpu, gpu and case fans are running (as if everything's normal)

I waited for 5 minutes but it didn't recover, so I force shut it down by holding the power button for a few seconds.
Rebooted no problem with no errors displayed.

I've attached the dm log collector output. (I wish I knew what to look for in it. It'd take me at least a month to figure out what everything is.)

If anyone could help I'd be eternally grateful!.
In the interim I'll try to update all hardware drivers.

DESKTOP-5FLOHNN-Sat_06_25_2016_111630_22.zip

:)

 

Downgrading to windows 7 from windows 10 (wipe and install)

Hello everyone! First time using this forum! Let's get to the point.

So, I've been wanting to return to windows 7 for quite sometime, but I always fear activation, which here comes my question:

Will my license/key still work if I want to return to windows 7 (install with USB), it is a digital key if needed to know.

 

Downgrading to windows 7 from windows 10 (wipe and install)

I have another computer (laptop) who came with w7 preinstalled from dell, but the sticker was removed, but I found the license key (it is now running w10), when I try on that laptop, I get this error: We
encountered a problem with your request. Please visit Microsoft Support Contact Us page for assistance. Refer to Message
Code 715-123130 and Transaction IDbc53c758-1edf-4f02-9712-fd6d624e975a.

 

- I was able to run sfc /scannow (in normal mode, not safe) and no integrity violations were found.
- I currently have the most up to date amd driver 16.6.1 hotfix. I installed it by following the driver install instructions axe0 gave me here to the tee.

 

I just updated the firmware of my SSD on which windows 10 is installed. It was using the factory default 1.02 (from around 2012). It now has the "latest" 1.05 firmware (published in May 2015).

I also uninstalled MSI Afterburner. Not sure if it'll change anything, but just in case...

 

I initially had disabled Windows Update from trying to install AMD drivers. Perhaps I didn't do it correctly, because according to event viewer there were some errors about packages failing to download, which took place a few hours before the freeze.

Didn't see any other system errors in there, so I decided to follow this thread to reset windows update:
Windows Update - Reset in Windows 10 - Windows 10 Forums

 

Hi HansW,

FYI, a freeze crash rarely does provide a log other then restarted services and a power problem making a DM Log in many cases not very useful (I checked your event logs, not of much use)

Does this problem also occur in safe mode?

 

Hello again, axe0!

Thank you for the explanation, and for checking out those logs. Sorry to keep doing this...
* I never knew that freezes rarely produce crash logs. I will remember this.

I've yet to see a freeze in safe mode. But then again, I'm never in safe mode for extended periods of time, i.e., no longer than 30 minutes.
I've only booted into safe mode to uninstall the graphics drivers or run sfc scannow. As soon as that finishes I restart in normal mode because 90% of the time I use the PC graphics intensive programs.

So far the freezes have happened anywhere between 45 minutes to 6 hours of continuous use, and only while either running games or while using UE4 with firefox running.

Checking out the freeze thread, in addition to the above changes I also did the following yesterday (more than 24 hours from the date of this response):
- Disabled speedstep and all CStates in the bios.
- Set UAC to Always Notify

 

So, I'm still freezing, and that's even after having disabled dynamic tick.

Opened up the case and made sure everything was firmly seated. I'll update this again if it freezes.
I'm suspecting maybe my video card or PSU is bad (though, neither is a year old (8 months)).

 

This is just an update.

I'm still getting the freezes. Changes I've made are:
- Increased pagefile size to 30000MB (min.) 50000MB (max.). Initially it was roughly the same amount as physical, 16gb.
- Updated mobo and gpu drivers to latest ( Z170 pro gaming bios: 1901 ; r9 390: 16.7.2 Hotfix
- disabled dynamic tick

Tests I've run:
- chkdsk C: /f, and chkdsk D: /f at elevated cmd prompt. No errors were found.
(drive C SSD contains windows, drive D contains mostly games, and unreal 4;
the system freezes up only when playing games or using UE4. The one game (star citizen) I have installed on the C drive has never froze, but I usually don't play it for more than an hour or 2 at a time.
- ran HGST dftWindows on the D drive. No errors found.
- realbench 4 ~ 6 times while letting Unigine Valley run in windowed mode at 1080p. Temps were nominal and no problems occurred (only did both for about 10 minutes though).
- ran Aida64 once for 10 minutes with everything but local hard disks checked, and once with everything (CPU FFT, GPU, memory, local hard disks etc.) checked for about 10 minutes. No


I'm going to try to find time to do some prolonged stress tests, namely Aida64 and memtest86+.

Question: Is it bad to have stuff (games and UE4) which rely on .NET runtimes (installed on the C: drive), installed on a different drive?

It's a curious coincidence that the only time I get these freezes is when using software installed on the (non-windows) D: drive. Yet the drive is reported to have no errors.

 

It seems allowing a large pagefile (30gb-50gb max) on the same drive as the OS, has fixed my application freeze problem.

Initially I had a default 4.5gb max page file size on the same drive as the OS, and I started getting random freezes starting half a year ago. I tried many things (thanks to the cool people here).

Doom kept crashing, not freezing, and in trying to fix that I came across info about making sure the pagefile size is big enough.

My C: drive SSD (w/ the OS) doesn't have much space, so I tried to allocate 30gb min to 50gb max on an HDD (which also had the games installed).

Doom stopped crashing, but it still froze like the others. So, I tried to move the pagefile to the SSD. I haven't had a freeze since.

(I'll mark this as solved if I can get through 2 more weeks without a single freeze.)

 

Hey HansW, did you ever fix the problem? Having a very similar problem where my computer will lockup and can only do a hard reset to solve it.

 

Hey tetragic. Seeing as the freezes I was getting were random, I'm not sure if I fixed it. But, having made lots of changes I've experienced no freezes.

Recently, I haven't been able to use my PC for extended periods of time playing games, as I was before when I experienced freezes.

I'll tell you some of the things I changed, but I've no idea if it'll help you because I don't know what kind of hardware you have. Can you update your System Specs?

Things I did:
- Updated to Windows anniversary update (just do the standard windows update if you haven't already)
- On this page, I did all the Power Management Setting stuff mileskb posted. (look for his post)
- Disabled CPU SVID in the bios
- Increased the pagefile to 40000mb. Set the pagefile to be on the same SSD as my OS. All of the games that were freezing on me are installed on a different HDD. Check out this vid if you don't know how to set the pagefile.