Intermittent freezing

[nickwoodward]

Hi all,

Bought a new pc about 8 months ago and have been having rare and quite strange lock ups every week or so.

It seems to be related to video content - I'll be watching a youtube video, or content on vlc, and I'll notice that webpages won't load. I'll be able to type in the address bar of the browser, or control vlc, but the page won't load and after around 10 seconds or so I won't be able to maximise any other programs. I'll be able to pull up the start menu perhaps once before Windows becomes unresponsive - other than the program I'm currently using (so I can finish a tv episode while the rest of the pc is locked up.)

 

I thought it was perhaps my ssd - but crystaldisk seems to think it's ok. I ran HCI memtest for 13/14 hours with no faults found, rog realbench seemed to think everything was ok, and from my limited knowledge the numbers HWinfo is showing look ok. so I'm at a bit of a loss as to where to go from here. I guess another thing to mention is that I'm having large lags in transfer speeds (0 bytes/s) on a new external drive (not from the OS drive). I'm also fairly sure that I saw 100% cpu load when the lock happened one time (it's difficult to catch in time), and every so often my screen very very quickly flashes - again it seems related to video content imho.

 

Anyway, I'm completely stuck! Any suggestions on how to approach this would be appreciated!

specs:

win10 64

i5 6600k - no overclock yet

16 gig corsair - 2 sticks

gigabyte z170x utra

sandisk ssd 240 OS drive

WD red 3tb

WD passport ultra 3tb

Thanks!

Nick

 

[RileyTheFox]

8 minutes ago, nickwoodward said:

Hi all,

Bought a new pc about 8 months ago and have been having rare and quite strange lock ups every week or so.

It seems to be related to video content - I'll be watching a youtube video, or content on vlc, and I'll notice that webpages won't load. I'll be able to type in the address bar of the browser, or control vlc, but the page won't load and after around 10 seconds or so I won't be able to maximise any other programs. I'll be able to pull up the start menu perhaps once before Windows becomes unresponsive - other than the program I'm currently using (so I can finish a tv episode while the rest of the pc is locked up.)

 

I thought it was perhaps my ssd - but crystaldisk seems to think it's ok. I ran HCI memtest for 13/14 hours with no faults found, rog realbench seemed to think everything was ok, and from my limited knowledge the numbers HWinfo is showing look ok. so I'm at a bit of a loss as to where to go from here. I guess another thing to mention is that I'm having large lags in transfer speeds (0 bytes/s) on a new external drive (not from the OS drive). I'm also fairly sure that I saw 100% cpu load when the lock happened one time (it's difficult to catch in time), and every so often my screen very very quickly flashes - again it seems related to video content imho.

 

Anyway, I'm completely stuck! Any suggestions on how to approach this would be appreciated!

specs:

win10 64

i5 6600k - no overclock yet

16 gig corsair - 2 sticks

gigabyte z170x utra

sandisk ssd 240 OS drive

WD red 3tb

WD passport ultra 3tb

Thanks!

Nick

 

 

Have you tried a different installation of Windows? Windows might be corrupted and need reinstalling.

[nickwoodward]

yeah, i was going to wait until i had a new ssd, but i guess i should just get on with it. didn't know windows could be the problem. thanks.

wiping the drive completely won't make a difference will it? i can just do a clean OS install?

 

also i'm going to try using Kodi again before i do though, just to see if i can at least replicate the problem on demand. should help testing if that doesn't work

[RileyTheFox]

1 minute ago, nickwoodward said:

yeah, i was going to wait until i had a new ssd, but i guess i should just get on with it. didn't know windows could be the problem. thanks.

wiping the drive completely won't make a difference will it? i can just do a clean OS install?

 

also i'm going to try using Kodi again before i do though, just to see if i can at least replicate the problem on demand. should help testing if that doesn't work

 

You don't need to wipe the drive entirely. Just make sure Windows installs itself on a partition completely separate from its old self and your other files. Then you can try and see if the problem persists without any clashing.

[nickwoodward]

ok nice one, ill give it a go once this backup is done and report back

thanks