Windows 10: Screen freezing but sound continues

Over the past week or so I'm getting occasional screen freezes - at first it was while gaming (World of Warcraft), but I'm finding the same thing can occur when I'm only using a web browser (Firefox), without WoW running at all.

Today this happened while I was watching a Youtube video in Firefox, and I noticed that - while the screen was frozen and unresponsive (the video itself froze, cursor was there but with blue circle and nothing responded, couldn't ctrl+alt+del to get to task manager, etc.) - the sound from the video kept going. In the end, as with other freezes, I had to hard reset by holding down the PC's power button.

Does anyone have advice on what might be causing this? Maybe it's a hardware issue - graphics card perhaps, but I'm not sure how to diagnose it. I've made sure the drivers are up to date, and likewise with Windows updates. Haven't had any recent hardware changes at all.

Although I'm not getting a BSOD, I've run the diagnostic tool from that sub-forum, and zipped and uploaded the results here. Could someone possibly take a quick look and see if anything stands out, or give me some pointers on what to look for myself?

Thanks.

Sami

SAMI-PC-21_11_2016_195542_54.zip

:)

 

dpc watchdog violation

im using an asus x555L laptop and recently ive been getting multiple crashes where it suddenly freezes and continues to make a bussing sound until a blue screen shows with error code: DPC WATCHDOG VIOLATION. Are there any fixes to this problem?

 

BBC iplayer and the N95

Does anyone have streaming problems with iPlayer where picture freezes, but the sound continues?

 

Hi, Zeel - welcome aboard.. *Thumbs

- could you fill out your system specifications, please..
- it may provide clues as to the source of your problem..

- cheers!*Wink

 

Hello BugMeister,

Yes of course - that would help wouldn't it! I've filled out as much as I can at the moment, but please let me know if there's anything important missing. I could open the case up and see who manufacutred my other hard drive for example.

 

scan your pc with windows defender, after try to detect some screen problems from control panel

 

I've run a full scan with Windows Defender already - no issues there. But what do you mean by using Control Panel to detect screen problems? I'd typically just go there to change resolutions or update drivers etc.

 

Have a look at your Reliability History and if there are any red flags,then view the Tech Details and it should give you sufficient info to find an answer.Also,if possible,download WHOCRASHED,from resplendence,com,it too will give details about the problem.Freezing is nearly always a problem with the display adapter and may require driver replacement.

 

your graphics card is possibly being stressed by the game - or by the demands being made on it, generally..
- it might be time to get an upgrade..??

- doesn't need to be expensive, just a wee bit more advanced..
- something with a bit more on-board GFX RAM, maybe (say 4GB or better still, 8GB)

 

Thank you very much for the information guys. I didn't know about the View Reliability History function in Control Panel. I've been in there now and had a look around - there are quite a lot of Critical Events of the form "Windows stopped working" and "Windows was not not properly shut down", which will be me having to hard restart my PC when the screen freezes. No technical details for these though.

However, there are a couple of hardware errors, and Windows errors of the form "Shut down unexpectedly" which do have some techncial details.

For example, for the hardware errors:

For Windows shutdown errors:

I'm still not able to make much sense of these unfortunately. Does anyone know how to interpret them? I'll see what I can find out online about doing so - and will try the whocrashed utility that joeandmarg0 mentioned too, thank you.

I've had the same graphics card for the past three years, and not much has changed there or in terms of the games I'm playing - and in any event these freezes can still occur when there's no game running. So it's hopefully not an issue with the card being pushed too hard. I've also updated the drivers for it, but this didn't help.

However, it's likely this is still a graphics card issue as you guys say - I'll try everything I can with it and, if nothing else works, can always get a new one. Something at the same spec won't be costly.

 

I had this problem a couple years back, any video would freeze, sound would continue & had to reboot the PC the same way. I looked at my graphics card but could not find a problem.

The culprit for me turned out to be the new RAM I had installed 1 week back. As a test, I swapped the new out for the old sticks & the problem went away. The defective sticks were returned, the new ones arrived & once installed, no more problems with the video. It might be worth checking out your memory, it might have gone bad.

If you have some spare memory lying around that you know is good, you could try swapping it out & see if that fixes the problem.

Hopefully this helps & the problem isn't something deeper set.

 

Hey that's great - thanks very much. My RAM is on two 4GB sticks, so I could always try running with just one of them at a time for a while, see if that helps. If so, the other stick is suspect.

I did run a Windows Memory Diagnostic just there and it didn't turn anything up, but it's probably not in-depth enough.

Thanks again for the tip about RAM. That sounds promising, especially since you had what sounds like the same issue yourself.

 

I can't remember for sure, but I believe I ran a diag on the RAM & it didn't show anything (if I remember correctly). Nonetheless, while doing some investigating on the prob I found a couple articles relating to the vid freeze problem & it being linked to the RAM.

One thing I did note was when the video would freeze, whatever vid I was watching at the time, it would always be at about the same point it froze the last time. I would reboot, run the vid again & at about the same point it froze last time, it happened again.

Here's hoping this helps you out & it's something simple like that.

 

Hi, Zeel *Smile
- could you confirm your Mother-Board details, I can't trace a Z84 version - did you mean Z87 (?)

 

Ack sorry yes - Z87 Pro4.