PC locks up, tried almost everything, need suggestions, desperate!

[sterlingr]

Came back last night and PC was frozen seemingly attempting to update. Had to restart it. After restart, computer kept locking up completely after a few seconds after boot.

 

Have tried:

-Repairing windows

-removing GPU

-reinstalling windows

-trying a different hard drive

-taking out some RAM/ trying different sticks

- reseating CPU

 

To no avail. Computer will either freeze during the install or freeze right after booting. Any suggestions would be great... I'm completely at a loss and really need this machine.

 

Gigabyte z97x-SLI motherboard

4690k

4x4Gb Gskill ripjaws X @1866

500Gb SATA Samsung 850 EVO

EVGA 750 B2 power supply

EVGA 1070SC

 

 

[JayRad]

Can you post up your PC specs for the community to see?

 

If I could do my own workflow in this instance, I would...

 

 

- Remove all removable devices with exception to your I/O keyboard and mouse

- Remove all peripheral internal devices such as optical drives, and other PCI/E devices

- Reset CMOS

- Update BIOS

- Run Memtest on memory

- Run SMART short/long HDD test

- Reinstall OS with one stick of RAM

- Once installed, insert one additional stick of RAM and reboot & login. If successful, shutdown, add another stick and reboot & login. Rinse and repeat until you find the culprit module.

- If no luck by this point, I would try to reinstall on another HDD.

- If it still persists after that, you could look into trying another power supply if you've got a spare around. I have seen PSU's do some weird gray-area crap in some rare circumstances.

[Radium_Angel]

17 minutes ago, sterlingr said:

Came back last night and PC was frozen seemingly attempting to update. Had to restart it. After restart, computer kept locking up completely after a few seconds after boot.

 

Have tried:

-Repairing windows

-removing GPU

-reinstalling windows

-trying a different hard drive

-taking out some RAM/ trying different sticks

- reseating CPU

 

To no avail. Computer will either freeze during the install or freeze right after booting. Any suggestions would be great... I'm completely at a loss and really need this machine.

You don't need to post a new thread, your old one would be fine.

 

Having said that, do this:

 

(0) Stop Overclocking if it is, return things to normal.

(1) Do you have the latest BIOS for the system, or is it an older one? Updating it might be useful.

(2) Have you run MemtestX86 yet? If not, do so for a *minimum* of 24 hours. This will tell you if your RAM is at fault.

(3) Find the maker of your drive, and download (and run!) their drive toolset. Most have bootable ISOs you can use

(4) Run a liveCD of Linux. If it crashes or otherwise misbehaves, then we can be fairly certain it's a hardware issue.

(5) if the liveCD runs, then back up all your data to a USB stick or something. Just to be on the safe side

[sterlingr]

9 minutes ago, Radium_Angel said:

You don't need to post a new thread, your old one would be fine.

 

Having said that, do this:

 

(0) Stop Overclocking if it is, return things to normal.

(1) Do you have the latest BIOS for the system, or is it an older one? Updating it might be useful.

(2) Have you run MemtestX86 yet? If not, do so for a *minimum* of 24 hours. This will tell you if your RAM is at fault.

(3) Find the maker of your drive, and download (and run!) their drive toolset. Most have bootable ISOs you can use

(4) Run a liveCD of Linux. If it crashes or otherwise misbehaves, then we can be fairly certain it's a hardware issue.

(5) if the liveCD runs, then back up all your data to a USB stick or something. Just to be on the safe side

0. CMOS has already been reset, everything back to normal

1. I have the newest BIOS available

2. I have not run memtest, but have tested it with RAM from a known-working system, same problem occurs.

3. I will look into this, however the problem occsrs even when I use other drives.

4. Where can I locate information on how to do this? My only experience with 'Linux' so far has been steamOS.

[sterlingr]

12 minutes ago, JayRad said:

Can you post up your PC specs for the community to see?

 

If I could do my own workflow in this instance, I would...

 

 

- Remove all removable devices with exception to your I/O keyboard and mouse

- Remove all peripheral internal devices such as optical drives, and other PCI/E devices

- Reset CMOS

- Update BIOS

- Run Memtest on memory

- Run SMART short/long HDD test

- Reinstall OS with one stick of RAM

- Once installed, insert one additional stick of RAM and reboot & login. If successful, shutdown, add another stick and reboot & login. Rinse and repeat until you find the culprit module.

- If no luck by this point, I would try to reinstall on another HDD.

- If it still persists after that, you could look into trying another power supply if you've got a spare around. I have seen PSU's do some weird gray-area crap in some rare circumstances.

Specs added to post, thanks.

 

I've gone through all of those steps (or equivalents) except for using another PSU. I will try that and report back.

[sterlingr]

12 minutes ago, sterlingr said:

Specs added to post, thanks.

 

I've gone through all of those steps (or equivalents) except for using another PSU. I will try that and report back.

Trying different PSU did not change anything. This seems to narrow down the problem to either the CPU or the motherboard, no?

[JayRad]

6 minutes ago, sterlingr said:

Trying different PSU did not change anything. This seems to narrow down the problem to either the CPU or the motherboard, no?

 

At what boot stage does the computer freeze exactly? Post screen?, Windows 10 logo splash screen?, immediately after your login is entered?

[sterlingr]

3 minutes ago, JayRad said:

 

At what boot stage does the computer freeze exactly? Post screen?, Windows 10 logo splash screen?, immediately after your login is entered?

That's the frustrating part, there's no one place. Usually it freezes right after the lock screen, but sometimes will freeze on the windows splash screen (mobo brand overlay with the windows loading circles under it) then sometimes will just start boot looping instead of freezing (get to windows splash screen, crash, then restart itself. 

 

Occasionally the advanced recovery tools freeze as well.

 

Interestingly, I can install windows completely (usually). Then it'll freeze a minute or two after getting to the fresh desktop.

[Radium_Angel]

24 minutes ago, sterlingr said:

That's the frustrating part, there's no one place. Usually it freezes right after the lock screen, but sometimes will freeze on the windows splash screen (mobo brand overlay with the windows loading circles under it) then sometimes will just start boot looping instead of freezing (get to windows splash screen, crash, then restart itself. 

 

Occasionally the advanced recovery tools freeze as well.

 

Interestingly, I can install windows completely (usually). Then it'll freeze a minute or two after getting to the fresh desktop.

Definitely sounds like bad hardware.

A live CD of Ubuntu (or Mint, take your pick, Mint is *very* Windows like) can be had here:

https://distrowatch.com/table.php?distribution=mint

or

https://distrowatch.com/table.php?distribution=ubuntu

 

Burn the ISO to USB/DVD and boot to that. If it goes stupid, then you have bad hardware, if it behaves, then the problem is in Windows. 

[sterlingr]

23 minutes ago, Radium_Angel said:

Definitely sounds like bad hardware.

A live CD of Ubuntu (or Mint, take your pick, Mint is *very* Windows like) can be had here:

https://distrowatch.com/table.php?distribution=mint

or

https://distrowatch.com/table.php?distribution=ubuntu

 

Burn the ISO to USB/DVD and boot to that. If it goes stupid, then you have bad hardware, if it behaves, then the problem is in Windows. 

Just replaced the CPU with a pentium I had in another system. Unfortunately, everything seems to be working now. 

[Radium_Angel]

1 hour ago, sterlingr said:

Just replaced the CPU with a pentium I had in another system. Unfortunately, everything seems to be working now. 

Ok...so bad CPU....

[sterlingr]

4 hours ago, Radium_Angel said:

Ok...so bad CPU....

Seems to be a bad CPU. Sad. Thanks everyone for your help!