Freezing under load

Hi All.

So my desktop has been having some problems recently and while im compling parts for a complete rebuild it would be nice if it was useable in the meantime.

The issues I have are when under any kind of load there are lots of little freezes, normally a couple of seconds but up to 5 minutes when playing games and they happen regardless of wither the computer has just switched on or if its been on for hours.

The specs are:

The following is a list of things I have done to try and resolve the problem:

Change graphics card - no change
Ran Memtest86 - 7 cycles, no errors
Checked for spyware etc
Updated all drivers - no change
Ran HD Sentinal - HDD in perfect health
Checked temperatures - none about 50 degrees centigrade
Fresh Windows installation - no change

So after many hours and many handfulls of torn out hair I am stumped. Does the hive mind have any suggestions?

 

Hi David, thanks for getting back to me.

Windows has updated everything through windows update.

I use Microsoft Security Essentials for antivirus and Windows firewall.
There is no specific backup software installed as I back up essential files to an external HDD.
There is just 1 HDD installed and I have a USB mouse and keyboard.

I'll try and pick anything up with the logs and the process viewer and I'll report back.

Thanks again :major

 

So another update.

Could this issue still be RAM related despite Memtest not picking up anything?

My reasoning is that when I started up again I had to do another update for some Nvidia networking adapters etc and when I updated them I crashed into a BSOD with the "Page_Fault_In_Nonpaged_Area" stop code.

A quick google suggested this may have to do with failing RAM and as this is a component I can switch in and out fairly easily I thought it might be worth running some tests.

On my motherboard I have 4 RAM slots, 2 green slots closest to the processor and 2 orange slots further away.
Both of my RAM sticks were connected into the 2 orange slots.

(Test 1)I removed stick A and left stick B in the far orange slot, the performance was very sluggish.

(Test 2) I unplugged stick B and plugged stick A into the green slot closest to the processor and the performance was much better.

(Test 3) So finally I tried stick B in the green slot closest to the processor and while the performance was an improvement on the first test it was not as good as in test 2.

So this would lead me to believe that stick B is on its last legs, would that be a safe assumption?

Unfortunately I dont have any spare sticks of DDR2 that I can test to back up this assumption though and DDR2 is nowhere near as cheap as DDR3 so I'd rather not fork out on a hunch.

 

Hi my friend , Merry Christmas , welcome to MG's :major

You can check your rams , you can download this

http://www.hirensbootcd.org/tag/download-hirens-bootcd/

burning it with

http://www.majorgeeks.com/ImgBurn_d4870.html

memtest86 is the best tool inspecting if your rams is allright or not , you must run this tool for 5 hours at least :wave

 

Hi Falcon, thanks for the warm welcome.

I ran Memtest with both sticks installed through 7 cycles but it showed no errors, would you recommend running this with each stick individually?

 

So me test is running with what I believe to be the working stick of RAM in tonight. Tomorrow I will run it with the stick I believe is dodgy.

The BIOS is American Megatrends v3.9, I'm not sure if this is the most recent release, BIOS updates are something I'm not very familiar with.

If both the RAM sticks show up ok I'll try resetting the BIOS.

Thanks again

 

The good news is that memtest found no issues on the first stick (the one I thought was good) so it's now running in stick 2 (the one I believe is dying), should know in a few hours, fingers crossed...

 

So now I'm stumped. After 7 cycles on memtest both sticks of RAM show no errors.
I'll try pulling the mobo battery and resetting the bios but if that doesn't work I'm properly stumped.
Any ideas?

 

Still none the wiser after resetting the bios.
So I've ruled out the RAM, the HDD, the bios.
I think my next stop is to get hold of a replacement graphics card and see if that is the cause.
Unless anyone has a better idea?

 

Hi, thanks for the reply.

I have tried every variation of RAM slots but to no effect, both green, both orange, one green one orange but the issue is still there.

The problem seems to be most prevalent when trying to run resource heavy 3D games. There is very little issues running 2D based games like FTL or football manager but if I run 3D heavy games, saints row, the secret world it fails very quickly.

My graphics card is pretty outdated nowadays so I was looking at an ATI Radeon 7750 HD as a replacement anyway and even if this isn't the problem it can go towards my new build later this year.