Windows 10: Random system freezes for weeks

I'm getting tired in troubleshooting this problem, as many others who are troubleshooting for weeks/months, I received another system freeze today...

Currently I have removed 1 of the sticks.

 

Please take the motherboard to the nearest Gigabyte service center, mate. Let them see the issue.

They are very prompt. They will identify the issue and resolve it very quickly. If they cannot resolve it, you will get a replacement. All it will take 3 to 7 days at the maximum.

 

I created a ticket for the motherboard this morning, I do not know where a center from them may be and calling them is very expensive for me.

As I'm currently testing my memory with a single stick I double checked the compatibility list, except for the last letter the model is in the list.
BLS8G4D240FSA is in the list where I have BLS8G4D240FSB.


Looking closer to the memory compatibility list I noticed the density being at 8GB, I ran the system on 16GB, but I'm not sure what density means. Translating to my native language it means something else than what they mean because the translation to my native language does not come close to something related to hardware.

 

It looks like the memory model is a mix of 2 models

• CRUCIAL, 8GB, 2Rx8, BLS8G4D240FSA, DS, Micron, 16-16-16-40, 1.2v, v & v
• CRUCIAL, 16GB, 2Rx8, BLS16G4D240FSB.16FAD, DS, Micron, 16-16-16-39, 1.2v, v & v

 

Micron is the parent company of Crucial Technology.

Source: Micron Technology - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

 

As I forgot to mention what I already have done Gigabyte suggest that I test each part of my system, currently waiting for another response after I mentioned what I have done until now.

An update, 4 days ago I removed a stick and I have yet to meet another system freeze *Smile It currently looks like I may have a faulty memory stick. I'll switch the sticks in 2-3 days, a week of testing is enough to determine if a stick is fine or not.

 

An update, I'm still having system freezes despite of what I said a week ago, the logs don't say anything for at least a few hours before a system freeze occurs.

I ran aida64 on request from Gigabyte for a day with no issues, temps came to 50C tops, sometimes a small lagging of the screen due to the GPU being stressed as the iGPU isn't the best. This makes Gigabyte believe that the problem isn't hardware related, but it doesn't say anything to me.

I'm currently running driver verifier again, this time for a longer period, to see if it can catch anything.

 

Yesterday another freeze occured, so I decided today to go check the CPU physically.
While checking the CPU I noticed the thermal paste didn't look like what it should look like so I reapplied it.

This is how the thermal paste looked like
Attachment 94699
Attachment 94700

 

After weeks of troubleshooting I finally may have a lead of what possibly could be the cause. IMO it isn't a proper lead, because the freeze won't go away 100%, but it at least takes about a week to get a freeze instead of one every few hours.

FYI, ATM no further info because of my local time (01:33 AM)

 

Alright, time for an update.
My lead was the RAM, after some time of trying it looked like the RAM may be the cause. Can't remember exactly why/how I came to it unfortunately.

After some time the frequency of freezes seemed to increase again to a frequency of 1 per day, this situation looked for me like a perfect opportunity to use driver verifier again with a different setup as it won't take much longer than 2-3 days of testing with driver verifier.

So with that in mind I enabled all standard options + power framework delay fuzzing & DDI compliance checking in driver verifier choosing all drivers of the list that are above the Microsoft drivers. Doing so makes it easier to document everything properly making it more clear what I've done, what the result is and what a possible next step could be.

After a few days with this configuration no single freeze had occured, enough proof for me to go to the next step which is using the same settings on all drivers in the list that are beneath the Microsoft drivers. I'm currently in that setup of driver verifier running my system.

A next step with driver verifier will be to enable the other additional options, only 2-3 at a time to not rush it, checking all drivers above the Microsoft onces.


I'm running driver verifier 72h to 96h (3-4 days) each time for those who'd like to know.

These are the possibilities I have in mind with driver verifier:
- If it is a hardware issue then driver verifier should be able to crash my system without pointing to any driver or pointing at too many drivers.
- If it is a driver issue then driver verifier should be able to crash my system for a maximum of a few times if I have some bad luck with getting back in Windows.
- If driver verifier is unable to crash my system then the next step is to see if any program may be causing issues by uninstalling one-by-one per few days, with my amount of programs it should only take a few more months to complete this troubleshooting process but with a 100% certainty. That is assuming that Microsoft doesn't workout a patch for issues that unexpectly fixes my issue too.

 

I know you probably have no other choice than do this, but... You are definitely a verrrrry patient man, to go to this extant in troubleshooting*Smile

 

With my current home situation, that has been going for a few years now, I've learned to wait for the right moment *Smile

I actually have a lot more options, before I started with driver verifier I thought the CPU was causing issues and as such I was starting to prepare for RMA'ing the CPU.
After some conversations I thought, why not give driver verifier another go and see what it turns out.

 

Update:
Yesterday I installed the anniversary update with some hope that the update would resolve the problem, unfortunately it didn't.
I had about 5-10 freezes yesterday with a little odd pattern. Every 3-4 hours a freeze would occur, then after a reboot a freeze occured within a few minutes, and back to 3-4h.

I've kept driver verifier running with all settings enabled on all available drivers, unfortunately it turned out that no single driver caused a BSOD, but freezes kept occuring in an increasing frequency.

Currently driver verifier is disabled and I have removed a lot of programs.
My system has been stable for 8-9h today, until I installed my music program. After a short period of my music program being installed a system freeze occured, so it is currently removed again.

It'll take me some time to reinstall everything and find any other programs causing freezes as it'll be around 100-150 programs.

 

I took the risk of installing everything except for my music program and it looks like it's fine since there hasn't been a system freeze in a time where several freezes would've occured a few days earlier.

 

Update:

Unfortunately my system had last thursday a huge amount of system freezes, so I prepared to perform a clean install of Windows 10 1607, backed up everything that wasn't a program and removed my HDD from the system before doing the clean install.
I left the system running for a day, when I got home from my internship I saw the system froze a minute after I left in the morning. A system freeze with only my SSD connected doesn't sound logic to me for some reason, so I bit another bullet and performed a clean install of Windows 10 1511. After 3 days and a few reboots resulting in a stable system I reconnected my HDD whereafter about 20 minutes a system freeze occured, as this installation is almost a vanille installation (drivers from Gigabyte are installed) where the only change is a HDD there are 3 options for the cause of this freeze:
1. Faulty motherboard connection, if I remember correctly I've been using this connection for a long time.
2. Bad cables
3. HDD itself

Currently I've switched the HDD connection, I hope this is the root cause because else I may need to buy some extra cables or RMA the HDD.