windows 10 New PC - strange Windows freezes (probable cause: NZXT CAM)

[freshprinceofdubtown]

I've been running my PC for about a week (see previous post) without CAM. No more freezing. For those of us that wish to uninstall this horrific software, is it sufficient to simply run the uninstall EXE in the root directory for the program (I'm on Windows 10 if it matters)? 

 

I've seen others elsewhere having this issue report that NZXT support told them to download something else and run that to fully uninstall, but at this point I'd rather check with others before doing that since I don't really think the NZXT folks know what's going on...

Edited February 22, 2021 by freshprinceofdubtown
wanted to add more info

[adamshumpisxxx]

11 hours ago, freshprinceofdubtown said:

I've been running my PC for about a week (see previous post) without CAM. No more freezing. For those of us that wish to uninstall this horrific software, is it sufficient to simply run the uninstall EXE in the root directory for the program (I'm on Windows 10 if it matters)? 

 

I've seen others elsewhere having this issue report that NZXT support told them to download something else and run that to fully uninstall, but at this point I'd rather check with others before doing that since I don't really think the NZXT folks know what's going on...

There's always Revo or CCleaner (or both).

[Cheng09]

Hi there,

 

joined just to share the same thoughts of disappointment and the same issue. This is quite ridiculous, is it that hard to program such a simple app? This thing is a complete bloatware. No application should do this to any kind of machine, it is simply unacceptable. I don't intend to spread conspiracy theories, but could this all be because they are actually "collecting our info" ? ASUS has the same shitty apps (that Crate bs) for monitoring, led and cooling and just take a look around the web for experiences.. People are disgusted by it.

 

Anyway, for last two weeks or so, I've been getting freezes all the time, at least once a day. I have H510i with that smart device which has quite a lot connected components; besides two led strips that come with the case, I have 1 AERF RGB 1 140mm, 1 AERF 120mm, 2 120mm Case fans, along with Kraken X42 V2 in push/pull (2x140mm, 1 AERF and 1 AERP). Yeah, I knew airflow wasn't that great, it isn't horrible either honestly, but what can I say, I went for the looks. 

 

I had deleted the CAM just before I went and wrote them a ticket. I will monitor the situation during the next few days. I don't see this being resolved any time soon though, so until then, this bloatware is safely Revoed the f'ck out of my machine.

 

Btw, as far as I can see, no one knows to what exact "setting" does the CAM reverts to when turned off/deleted?

 

Edit: ROFL, issues like this have been going on for years! My hunch was right. They aren't doing jack $hit about it, pardon my French.

https://www.reddit.com/r/NZXT/comments/8rj84c/cam_makes_computer_freeze/

 

Now that I think about it, I had BSOD issues the very first day I put my PC together back in August of 2020. The same amount of time CAM bloatware was there. Right off the bat I started getting BSOD errors in every game I played and after god knows how much of troubleshooting and dying inside I had managed to finally get it to work properly - now, you wouldn't believe it, but by switching places of RAM modules. Then, after that I had a problem with ASUS Armory Crate. Couldn't delete that mofo properly no matter what I tried. Decided to clean install Windows and start from the ground up. Blocked it in BIOS as well. Without ASUS Crate things were fine for a while. BSOD weren't that common, but sometimes they would still be happening. I was sure that it was somehow game's fault and I even stumbled upon threads and topics saying that indeed, that particular game sometimes causes exactly that. Damn, just my luck,I thought.. During these last two weeks when freezing started,  I was however certain my brand new Samsung 980 PRO is already dying on me, bought it last month.

 

It has only been few hours since I don't have CAM installed, but I'm fairly certain, judging from the the "same symptoms" you all have, that it's this piece of $hit that was giving me a trouble all this time. I can live with their fixed fan settings and white LEDs, but what I wouldn't forgive myself is component(s) failure, because of this horrendous, terrible, godawful, information collecting piece of garbage. Never again. Huge "F'ck you" to NZXT.

 

[Charlie_xd]

Did any of you achieve anything by issuing a support ticket? I tried doing so and now when I log into my NZXT account this pops up: "YOU'VE BEEN 500'D If you are the application owner check the logs for more information".

[passedpawn]

On 2/21/2021 at 9:37 AM, jakecar91 said:

A 50 TB RAID? Like a RAID 10? thats a lot of memory. off topic, but wow.

RAID5. 4x16TB.  I exaggerated - it's actually about 44TB (30% used as parity).  

[passedpawn]

55 minutes ago, Charlie_xd said:

Did any of you achieve anything by issuing a support ticket? I tried doing so and now when I log into my NZXT account this pops up: "YOU'VE BEEN 500'D If you are the application owner check the logs for more information".

There seems to be activity on my ticket.  I get emails that mirror this activity in their online help desk.  But it mostly amounts to "uninstall and try again".  I have so little faith is such a solution that I just didn't do it.  I believe someone early in this thread verified that this did not fix anything.  

 

BTW, their online help portal is FUBAR also.  The link to it has only worked ONE time.  Otherwise, I get a "page not found".  I keep emailing this to them.  Once, they did acknowledge it and fixed the link, but that fix apparently was just for one day.  So, there is a bug in their help system also.  

 

Anyway, here's their suggested "potential fix".  It first requires you to install more software, haha. 

 

Quote

Hello Andrew,

I am sorry to hear you are having problems with our CAM software. As a potential fix, I would recommend closing the CAM software and ending all instances of NZXT CAM and cam_helper.exe in your Task Manager, then deleting the CAM local cache directory, which can be found at the following path: C:\Users\YOUR USERNAME\AppData\Roaming\NZXT CAMAlternatively, you can access this folder by typing %appdata% into your windows search bar and press enter.

After this, if that doesn't resolve the issue, please remove CAM with this software called Revo Uninstaller, as this software allows users to delete all residual files from CAM. https://www.revouninstaller.com/products/revo-uninstaller-free/

Then you can do a fresh install of the CAM software.

 

Edited February 23, 2021 by passedpawn
grammar!

[MelissaGT]

Well, I tried the CAM beta and all was ok for a day. Then last night after I went to bed, it BSOD...and the BSOD sat frozen until I hard reset. I've never had a BSOD on this system before. So out goes CAM beta, and back in goes CAM 4.20. I'd rather deal with a freeze once every few days than BSOD. 

 

As a side story, I've started to put together a new build list. My system is still completely viable, but I'm so over dealing with incompatibilities with RYZEN and CAM. Plus, it's been running for three years, and I have the itch because of the advent of RTX (I currently have a 1080TI). The only issue is being able to find a GPU. I render and game and need the VRAM, so it's either a 3090 or waiting for a 3080TI (when they come out). So who knows when I'll be able to get one. Next time around, I'm going back to Intel and all my fans, pumps, and lighting are going to be Corsair. 

[m.a.d.m.a.x]

After all the back and forth with CAM support, I got an email today saying something like: "thank you for your files we hope you get a working program soon". 

I think that was it. I'll wait a few weeks. If they don't fix it I will probably go Corsair or whatever comes to my mind. 

 

I'm still trying to figure out what may cause the freezes. 

I got all freezes but one when hearing music or watching videos. 

Music freezes: Spotify and one time a webplayer

Video freezes: Youtube, Netflix and uni recordings located on one of my drives 

 

All of them have audio output in common. 

 

Last week I had my first freeze without music or video. I was accessing pictures, a friend took of me biking. These were on his personal server and they had like 60MB each.

Can't find a connection there.   

[jakecar91]

12 hours ago, passedpawn said:

There seems to be activity on my ticket.  I get emails that mirror this activity in their online help desk.  But it mostly amounts to "uninstall and try again".  I have so little faith is such a solution that I just didn't do it.  I believe someone early in this thread verified that this did not fix anything.  

 

BTW, their online help portal is FUBAR also.  The link to it has only worked ONE time.  Otherwise, I get a "page not found".  I keep emailing this to them.  Once, they did acknowledge it and fixed the link, but that fix apparently was just for one day.  So, there is a bug in their help system also.  

 

Anyway, here's their suggested "potential fix".  It first requires you to install more software, haha. 

 

 

I just received this email today as well, but it was my first response back in a month. I don't expect a reply back for another month, so I thought I would share with the forum.

[freshprinceofdubtown]

20 hours ago, m.a.d.m.a.x said:

Last week I had my first freeze without music or video. I was accessing pictures, a friend took of me biking. These were on his personal server and they had like 60MB each.

Can't find a connection there.   

 

Yeah, I've been wondering the same. It's a total guess, but the behavior as reported smells like some kind of memory leak to me. Whatever the cause, the program certainly consumed a lot of resources while running 

 

[Cheng09]

Two whole days without a single freeze or any other kind of suspicious behaviour. Prior to deleting CAM not a single day had gone by without freezing at least once daily. It is utterly disheartening and disappointing to acknowledge that NZXT CAM causes such critical malfunctioning. Selling my entire NZXT ecosystem at first chance.

[passedpawn]

I gotta wonder how many sad folks out there trying to figure out why their PC is locking up.  I feel very lucky I found this thread.  I discovered one of my CAM processes was using 10GB! and I went a-searching and ended up here.  At the time, I didn't think that was also the cause of the freezes. 

[m.a.d.m.a.x]

Some Youtubers should address that problem. Guess there won't be a solution as long as it is not a public topic. 

 

I don't have high memory usage, but the last freeze was immediately after turning on the PC (only cam was running). 

[Dark-vash]

 

On 2/23/2021 at 12:33 PM, Charlie_xd said:

Did any of you achieve anything by issuing a support ticket? I tried doing so and now when I log into my NZXT account this pops up: "YOU'VE BEEN 500'D If you are the application owner check the logs for more information".

 

I did, they are slow to reply, but they have been trying to help. Will described my whole experience, so there's a TL:DR @ the end

 

Let me explain what happened. I've upgrade my computer last month. So, new Ryzen 5600X, with a MSI B550 main board and a NZXT H400i ATX Case, with Smart Device V1. I had the Case working before with another setup, no issues at all. After having all new hardware mounted and windows working, I've installed NZXT CAM. 

 

1st issue i've noticed, a few seconds after initializing the Smart Device, CAM would lose the connection to the Smart Device. Pressing the "try again" button, the device was initialized again, just to lose the connection again after a few seconds. I only had 1 Fan plugged and the Led strip, CAM software was not exactly a concern. 

Then came the hanging. Windows would freeze. Mouse was still visible and working, a few visual objects were clickable, but couldn't start Task manager or anything at all. Hard reset or forced shutdown was needed. My thoughts, were that the Smart Device was causing it. Noticed something very off with HWInfo

 

 

This showed up and the values were skyrocketing, so I disconnected it and made some monitoring. So I've started searching for the issue and found this link, stating that there were some issues with USB Headers on newer motherboards, probably because of USB3.2 specs. 

 

https://support.nzxt.com/hc/en-us/articles/360045926294-Kraken-Z-USB-Compatibility-Issue

 

NZXT solution was the USB Hub. Not that I minded, so I got in touch and open a ticket with their support. 

 

Just like i mentioned above, they were slow to reply, and i kept doing troubleshooting on my own. So I've managed to plug the Smart Device on a different USB port, not another USB Header, but a back IO Port. And it worked. No more connections lost to the USB Smart Device. If NZXT provided the HUB, it would probable solve my issues, I thought and I will keep everything closed on the case. Still exchanging messages with their support (new people at each message... i really hate that...). First they told me to RMA the Case, but i denied, since it's already discontinued, so they finished by offering to ship the Smart Device V2. 

 

During this, the windows hanging happened again... and again.... and again. Was driving me crazy, started to think that my hardware might be faulty. After a few days I've found a Reddit post linking to this forum. Closing CAM after it initialize the Smart Device, stopped the hanging. 

 

Then the Smart Device V2 arrived. Connected to the Motherboard USB Header, the connection kept getting lost, so the first issue was still not solved with the V2 and a new issue was presented. The Smart Device V2 only manages to get the Fans to a lowes 40% duty ~950RPM. These are  the case Fans, they are DC fans not PWM, model RF-AF12C-RB. They worked perfectly fine with the Smart Device V1, Could set the Curve to start @ 20% ~750RPM. At 950RPM they are already very audible... 

 

Installed Liquid ctl as suggested, but even it couldn't get the fans to work lower then 40% So it's really an Hardware issue with the Smart Device V2. Already reopened the ticket with NZXT, let's see what they have to say, but right now, i'm already a little tired of this and will probably just connect the fan to the Board and be done with it. 

 

Still not sure why the devices don't get to work connected to the USB Headers. 

 

 

TL;DR - Smart Device V1, doesn't work connected to USB Header, NZXT Sent a Replacement Smart Device V2, Hardware issue still exists, introduced another issue with Fan Speeds not getting lower then 40%, and CAM crashes windows with both Smart Devices after a few days... That's all folks. 

 

UPDATED: The USB Connectivity issues were solved (temporarely) by setting PCIe to 3.0. 

 

 

 

[Charlie_xd]

Yesterday I've got an answer from NZXT. It's an exact copy and paste of the response one of you got. TL;DR; uninstall CAM using Revo and install it again. Have any of you done it? Did it help?

[Dark-vash]

37 minutes ago, Charlie_xd said:

Yesterday I've got an answer from NZXT. It's an exact copy and paste of the response one of you got. TL;DR; uninstall CAM using Revo and install it again. Have any of you done it? Did it help?

I don't think it will help. I've clean installed windows with my new Build and the issue still persists. 

[Charlie_xd]

Yup. I'm skeptical too, because I've explained in the ticket that I had one M.2 drive which after a number of those freezes died and then I had the same thing going on with the second M.2 (that I got from warranty claim). So not only I've installed fresh Windows and CAM, but literally used a clean drive (I think it's as clean as installs can get :D). I wonder if the guy even read it, or did he just see "CAM issue" and recommended clean software reinstall. Honestly I'm really disappointed. NZXT looked like a solid company, they answered my questions on twitter (before I purchased their products) and their components are really good (so far), but the software is absolute garbage and it does not look like they are doing anything to fix it. Even worse there is no simple way to use anything else.

[mangokr]

Back to the threat, I have been not running CAM for like a month now, 0 freezes. 

 

I just run CAM on start of my PC just to turn up the pump rpm then close the program and move on without it.

[MelissaGT]

Update from me...I haven't had a freeze since I last posted on Tuesday, so five days on CAM 4.20. I've done some rendering and working in Photoshop during that time without issue. 

[scum]

On 7/20/2020 at 3:51 AM, Korben said:

So after a weekend of running and testing without NZXT CAM: no freezes. Then, this morning, just to give me a more solid argument, I startet NZXT CAM again and let it run in the system tray. After some time the first freeze occured.

So I am now for 90% sure that NZXT CAM is causing this.

Which is sad, because without the software the temperatures on the displkay are not updated. I will put in a nice GIF and see what NZXT has to offer supportwise, although I fear, unless they got more complaints like this, they won't do anything since the connection between the freezes and CAM is not very obvious.

I just had this issue and it scared me, really thought my new computer was already breaking lol. It very dissapointing that I cant use CAM without my pc freezing hopefully they do find a fix for this. 

[BurntToasters]

On 7/20/2020 at 3:51 AM, Korben said:

So after a weekend of running and testing without NZXT CAM: no freezes. Then, this morning, just to give me a more solid argument, I startet NZXT CAM again and let it run in the system tray. After some time the first freeze occured.

So I am now for 90% sure that NZXT CAM is causing this.

Which is sad, because without the software the temperatures on the displkay are not updated. I will put in a nice GIF and see what NZXT has to offer supportwise, although I fear, unless they got more complaints like this, they won't do anything since the connection between the freezes and CAM is not very obvious.

Hey really late to this but I am having the same issue and yeah un-installing CAM fixed it. Another "fix" I found is to downgrade to windows 10 1909 or below. For me the problem only happens on windows 10 2004 and above. NZXT CAM works just fine on windows 10 1909 with no freezes or anything. I thought first before realizing it was cam that it was a problem with some of my hardware. I basically replaced everything in my PC expect my GPU and re-installed windows 40 times and the issue still came back. Then I decided to un-install cam and BOOM no more freezing.

[Dark-vash]

Hi.

 

I've solved my USB connectivity issues by setting the PCIe to 3.0. The issue is now assumed by AMD, not sure if they will have to work with Motherboard brands or if it will be solved just with an update...

 

[MelissaGT]

22 hours ago, Burnt_Toasters said:

Hey really late to this but I am having the same issue and yeah un-installing CAM fixed it. Another "fix" I found is to downgrade to windows 10 1909 or below. For me the problem only happens on windows 10 2004 and above. NZXT CAM works just fine on windows 10 1909 with no freezes or anything. I thought first before realizing it was cam that it was a problem with some of my hardware. I basically replaced everything in my PC expect my GPU and re-installed windows 40 times and the issue still came back. Then I decided to un-install cam and BOOM no more freezing.

How would one go back to Windows 10 1909? When I reinstalled, it hopped right back to 20H2. 

[BurntToasters]

19 hours ago, MelissaGT said:

How would one go back to Windows 10 1909? When I reinstalled, it hopped right back to 20H2. 

Essentially you would need to get an old ISO of windows 10 1909, rufus has the ability to download older ISOs and gets them straight from Microsoft. When opening rufus and having the USB drive installed there should be an option on it that says "select" and on that button an arrow facing down. Select that arrow and then press download. Once the button says download press that it will ask what OS you want just make sure it says windows 10 then itl ask for the build, select 19H2 and continue with the setup. At some point and option will come up that says "download using a browsers" I would select that and then press download. You would then create a USB install disk with the ISO, boot into it, then you would have to delete all the partitions and such from your boot drive using the repair your computer feature. I would recommend shutting your computer down and unplugging every drive but the main windows drive. When you boot into the USB drive you will see a button that says install now. Towards the bottom left there is some text that says repair your computer. You would select that and then "advanced" and then select command prompt and once it loads you would type: diskpart and wait for it to load then type list disk and it will show a list of current disks on the computer. If you only have the USB drive and the boot drive plugged in, it would show two drives with numbers assigned to them on the list. See what number corresponds to your boot drive and select it by running this command: select disk <disknumber> for example: select disk 1 once its selected, you can type: clean what that does is it formats and removes all partitions of the disk you selected. Once that's done you can turn off your computer, turn it back on and run the USB installer but this time pressing install now and then re-install windows. Its a bit complicated and IF NZXT CAM was the issue that was causing your computer to freeze, I would just uninstall it and leave it uninstalled instead. But if you want to USE NZXT CAM, then downgrading to windows 10 1909 is currently the only known fix.

[nzxt_jeff]

Hi all,

I'm Jeff, the product manager for CAM. I've been reading through this thread and there seem to be several issues that have similar symptoms. Some of these issues have been resolved, but some clearly still exist. Because CAM supports millions of software and hardware configurations, all of which call on a different combination of drivers and software components to power the behaviors we offer, it can be difficult for us to guarantee perfect operation on all systems... however, it is our goal to make CAM an industry leader both in feature set and user experience. We have a team of very talented engineers, quality assurance, and customer service that work tirelessly towards this goal, but clearly we fell short on the issues reported in this thread. As such, I have 3 action items for myself:

1. An investigation of the outstanding bugs in this thread. If you are still experiencing BSOD, lockups, or extreme memory consumption from CAM, please either respond with your ticket number here or contact me at jeff.gorndt@nzxt.com. I will reach out to you to collect information about your system and keep you updated about our progress on the issue. It is our team's top priority and we will work to resolve it as soon as we are able to reproduce it and diagnose the root cause.
2. Training for our customer service team about what to do with similar issues. Our customer service team clearly didn't have great triage steps for many of the people involved in this thread. I will train them in how to more effectively debug issues so that users' issues are better-understood and are reaching our QA and engineering teams effectively, and so that users will have visibility into when and how their issues will be addressed.
3. A public-facing bug tracker for NZXT CAM. I want our users to have complete transparency about the known issues in CAM, so that they can have confidence that we're addressing their issues and so that our team can have a direct line to users that are encountering issues we're not aware of.

 

I'm sorry to the users that are continuing to experience issues. I know that having a software component which holds back your experience on a hardware component you purchased is a horrible experience. We're working full-time to make sure as few users encounter this situation as possible. I'll be active on this thread every day or two, so please let me know if I can give you any further information.