Freezing During Boot-up

[Grant Dahl]

So I’ve had A LOT of troubles with my PC freezing lately. I’ve already posted multiple forums posts that have all helped the issues I’ve been having but none have fixed the main freezing I am getting.

 

Basically, whenever Windows is booting up  the pc freezes / hard hangs (unresponsive to any form of input). This has been the one error I have not yet fixed after trying multiple things.

 

This is what I’ve gathered / done to try to fix the problem:

 

1. This all started after overclocking my GPU/RAM (I’m not against overclocking so I tried to overclocking my GPU and RAM. I accidentally did a bad overclock so I deleted the Afterburner profile and uninstalled the application. Since then, I’ve had the issue)
2. Its not the GPU (I have tried two different graphics cards. One AMD, one Nvidia. Both of them have cause the same problems)
3. Im pretty sure the hard drive is working properly (I’ve ran Chkdsk /r and system file scan and both have come up fine. I’ve also used Crystal Disk to check the status of my hard drives and it said it was fine. I haven’t yet checked for bad sectors on either of the hard drives I've tested)
4. Integrated graphics work fine most of the time (when I uninstall the GPU drivers and run off of integrated graphics everything is stable. Barely any freezing)
5. The graphics drivers are the newest version (After installing the latest drives when testing both GPUs, I still get extremely common freezing)
6. Event Viewer shows nothing after freezes (when I open event viewer after the freezes It shows nothing that seems to relate to the crashing of the system. Pics of errors that were found but were not at the time of freezing are shown below)
7. Ive reset the CMOS (In the other forum I posted here : https://bit.ly/2SPy0Ae, I fixed the blue screens that I was getting by resetting CMOS.)
8. This is the only problem that my system is having (If I can’t get into windows without freezing, which is not often, I can run games, chrome, discord, and other applications for about an hour before I get a freeze and have to start all over again)

 

So this is what I’ve determined from an entire WEEK of troubleshooting. From what I know, this is not going to be a simple fix, but any tips, suggestions, or ideas are appreciated. All I want to know is if it’s a software error or if it’s a hardware problem. And if it is a hardware problem I need to know that exactly I need to replace. 

 

Thanks in advance for anyone willing to spend the time to solve this mystery.

 

PC Specs:

CPU: AMD Phenom x4 9850

GPU: AMD Radeon HD 6750 / Nvidia GTX 770 (the problems occur on both)

MoBo: EVGA n-Force 730a

PSU: 550W Rosewill Performance RP550-2

HDD: Seagate Barracuda 320gb / Toshiba 100gb (Same problems are occurring on both)

[Guest]

What about a fresh reinstall of Windows?

[Grant Dahl]

9 minutes ago, ChintzyPC said:

What about a fresh reinstall of Windows?

I’ve done that three times this week and no luck. I’m going to try again anyway. Do you think I should use a usb or can I just reset from inside windows?

[Guest]

Typically freezing is indicative of CPU or RAM failure. (You'll just have artifacts/no screen if it's GPU) You said you were just overclocking your GPU and RAM. What about your CPU? It sounds like some sort of hardware failure. So either your CPU, RAM, or mobo are to blame. If your temperatures are perfectly fine on all components, sadly the only real test you might be able to do is swapping those components out and using the process of elimination further. Oh and of course I assume you have the latest bios versions/driver updates.

[Grant Dahl]

1 minute ago, ChintzyPC said:

Typically freezing is indicative of CPU or RAM failure. (You'll just have artifacts/no screen if it's GPU) You said you were just overclocking your GPU and RAM. What about your CPU? It sounds like some sort of hardware failure. So either your CPU, RAM, or mobo are to blame. If your temperatures are perfectly fine on all components, sadly the only real test you might be able to do is swapping those components out and using the process of elimination further.

Yeah I also overclocked the CPU but I went back to defaults for all three. I do have some other RAM sticks I could try so I’ll start with that.

[Grant Dahl]

3 minutes ago, ChintzyPC said:

Typically freezing is indicative of CPU or RAM failure. (You'll just have artifacts/no screen if it's GPU) You said you were just overclocking your GPU and RAM. What about your CPU? It sounds like some sort of hardware failure. So either your CPU, RAM, or mobo are to blame. If your temperatures are perfectly fine on all components, sadly the only real test you might be able to do is swapping those components out and using the process of elimination further.

Also, do you think bent CPU pins could cause the problem? I haven’t yet check for that but could that be a possibility?

[Guest]

Just now, Grant Dahl said:

Also, do you think bent CPU pins could cause the problem? I haven’t yet check for that but could that be a possibility?

Oofda. Yeah, that could be problematic, especially if it's not making contact correctly. Gotta make sure they are all nice and straight. Too much bending could weaken the pins to a point of thinner leads too.

[Grant Dahl]

Just now, ChintzyPC said:

Oofda. Yeah, that could be problematic, especially if it's not making contact correctly. Gotta make sure they are all nice and straight. Too much bending could weaken the pins to a point of thinner leads too.

Okay. I’ll check RAM, bent CPU pins, and I’m also going to try just re-building the entire PC. I’ll get back to you afterwords.

[seagate_surfer]

Check your HDD lifespan status, download and install Seatools for Windows and also check to see if there are any firmware upgrades for your HDD: 

1. SeaTool for Windows https://www.seagate.com/support/downloads/seatools/
2. FW upgrade: https://apps1.seagate.com/downloads/request.html 

[Guest]

 

 

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 Advanced issues found

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1 hour ago, seagate_surfer said:

 

 

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29 minutes ago, seagate_surfer said:

Check your HDD lifespan status

OP said the problem is existing on both the seagate and toshiba. Not a bad idea to try that stuff too I guess.

[seagate_surfer]

Oh, I see! Another idea that can help you is to opt for discarding the devices, for example, if you have two RAM modules then try only one at a time or if possible test your devices on another machine. Also, another thing that can be done is to disconnect the boot drive and connect only the monitor, CPU, RAM and power source to the MOBO, enter the BIOS and make a reset of the BIOS settings hoping that returning to the original settings the machine behaves better. 

[Grant Dahl]

UPDATE

 

So in the past few hours I’ve tried all of you solutions. Unfortunately, none had any luck. So I tried using another board and processor that I have and everything works perfectly smooth. So can I determine if it was my processor or motherboard? Both are good quality and if one or the other is working I would like to find out.

 

Thank you all for your suggestions.

[seagate_surfer]

Opt for discarding, in that case, you would have to pass everything to the other motherboard to know if the motherboard is the root problem or change only the CPU and thus determine if you have a defective CPU.

[Grant Dahl]

43 minutes ago, seagate_surfer said:

Opt for discarding, in that case, you would have to pass everything to the other motherboard to know if the motherboard is the root problem or change only the CPU and thus determine if you have a defective CPU.

My guess is the motherboard because I’ve check the CPU and all looks good with it. Also, the freezing and all of the problems only occur when something is plugged into the PCIe slot. When nothing is in the slot everything is COMPLETELY stable. 

[seagate_surfer]

Oh, I see! Yes, it sounds like that's the problem... Here you could try to make FW BIOS updates or do a BIOS reset by plugging to the MOBO only the CPU, RAM, Power supply, monitor and then access BIOS to do the reset. As one long shot, I would try another power supply also just in case.