Windows stops working correctly if PC is left idle, eventually hangs

Hi,

I'm not sure if this is in the right section but I'm trying to determine if this is a hardware, software, or malware problem.

If my PC is left idle for more than 20-30 minutes, Windows starts becoming unresponsive.

I can try to open applications and I will get the 'waiting' mouse icon, but nothing happens. Sometimes the task manager will respond, sometimes it won't. When it does, there doesn't appear to be any unusual processes running or resource usage. But I can't open any programs. I also can't shut down properly, and end up having to do a hard shut down.

The longer my PC sits idle, the worse it gets, to the point where all my icons and task bar will disappear, and it won't respond to any commands at all. But as long as I continue to use it, everything works fine.

I don't know if it's related, but this began when my internet cut out unexpectedly yesterday. I noticed the internet was gone on my phone, and went to check on my computer and found it frozen, with no icons or task bar, just my wallpaper.

Since then, if I leave it idle, windows eventually stops working correctly.

McAfee and Malwarebytes find nothing wrong, and Windows finds no memory errors. Also a system restore did nothing to fix the issue, which is why I'm wondering if I have hardware problem.

Here's my specs:
Asus P8Z68 Deluxe/Gen3 Motherboard
Intel Core i7-2600k
Crucial M4 128gb SSD
16 GB Corsair Vengeance DDR3 memory (@1600)
MSI Geforce GTX 780 3GB
Corsair TX850W PSU
Creative Sound Blaster X-Fi Titanium sound card
Windows 7 64-Bit Home Ed.

I've looked all over the internet, but this problem seems rare, and I haven't found anyone else that had this problem and got a solution. Am I looking at an SSD or motherboard failure?

 

I had a similiar issue with my SSD.

Turning off paging file helped

Also go into advanced power options and set the HDD to never turn off. Default usually is set to "Turn off Hard Disk after 20 minutes"

 

Thanks for your quick response! I have set the HDD to never shut off, and I'm waiting to see what effect that will have. 20 minutes does sound about right for when the failure starts. It doesn't explain why this would suddenly be an issue after almost a year of running this SSD, though.

 

Nope, that didn't do it. Window still dies after about 30 minutes.

Some additional information:

1. If the computer runs long enough, clicking on any icon will bring up the message that the item is not found, and asks if you want to remove it.

2. The start menu comes up almost blank, except for one or two random programs, like solitare.

3. When this happens, hitting CTRL+ALT+Delete gives the message "The logon process was unable to display security and logon options when CTRL+ALT+Delete was pressed." There is no access to Task Manager, and a hard reset is required.

 

Sounds more like either Malware or more likely, OS corruption caused by Malware.

Have you tried creating a New User Profile?

Safe Mode?

 

Well if it's malware, should I go through the whole malware removal process? Or am I going to have to reinstall the OS to repair the OS corruption?

And shouldn't Malwarebytes have found something?

 

I ran these three and it looks like RogueKiller found some stuff.
Nothing on the others, though. I wasn't able to get a MGtools log because my boot drive completely cut out while running, and I have to head to work soon.

I also don't have a full Malwarebytes log because of the same work-related time constraints, but it got well into my secondary drive without finding an issue.

The sticky says to not take any action if something it found in RogueKiller, so I await further advice.

 

Go to following page to start cleaning your system:

http://forums.majorgeeks.com/showthread.php?t=35407

 

Darkh4

I think I would look more in the area of security programs and maybe some conflicts there to start. Security programs tend to do their run-time scanning when the PC is idle, and I don't know, but seems to me your a-v could be sort of luring your system away from a stable idle. I wouldn't be surprised if the problem follows after the completion of an a-v scan routine.

What a-v do you use? Do you use Windows firewall or another?

Might help to see a list of programs you have running on startup. Some programs run as sort of a pseudo service and can cause some problems when the PC is left idle.

Have you tried booting into safe mode to see if the problem is present there? Good way to rule out many suspects. You could follow this pattern to see how the PC handles things. If at any point the problem subsides you will have learned alot about what's causing the trouble:

1. Boot to Safe Mode with Networking with a-v on and test for 30 minutes
2. Turn off a-v and test for 30 minutes
3. Boot to Safe Mode without Networking with a-v on and test for 30 minutes
4. Turn off a-v and test for 30 minutes

This is the first thing I think I would do, but the RogueKiller positives could be a sign of malware or malware leftovers or a sign of some damage done by malware...

SFC /Scannow would be my second action after checking things out in safe mode. Could be something corrupted the OS file/system structure...

 

I have already begun the clean up process as described in the link by rustysavage. The logs I have posted are the results so far. The Roguekiller log looks a bit suspect, but I've seen the same results posted by others and they were told that there was nothing wrong. Everything else comes up negative. Should I tell Roguekiller to delete those keys?

I have not run CCleaner because it says not to if I have missing icons, which is one of the symptoms when windows stops functioning. Should I do that?

I also do not yet have logs from MGtools or Malwarebytes, because I ran into freeze-ups and crashes while running them, because I went more than 20 minutes without interacting with the PC. I will try again in Safe Mode when I have more time.

I run McAfee AV and Firewall, and they've never given me an issue in the past. I will try running in Safe Mode and see what happens.

It's really weird though. As long as I keep providing user input every few minutes or so (wiggle the mouse, type something, etc) everything is fine. It's like Windows gets bored and goes into a coma if I stop paying attention to it.

And it's weird that it started right after that hour-long internet outage on my normally very reliable internet service.

 

The RogueKiller findings are not uncommon but if the folks in malware tell you not to delete the keys then don't delete them.

Again, I would refrain from doing that for now, based solely on the written instructions from malware forum.

While you're in Safe Mode, I think you should follow AtlBo's suggestions. I realize that it's tedious but It will help in sorting things out.

Did you recently upgrade either a-v or firewall? Specifically, automatic upgrades. I wouldn't rule those two out at this early point in the analysis.

I agree, it is weird. I'd be careful about ascribing human attributes to your computer. I think that's a sign of psychosis

I can think of no causal relationship between those two events.

 

I will follow AtlBo's suggestions as soon as I get more time. I'm currently stuck on 12-hour night shifts. I don't mind putting in the time to do things right, once the time is available.

I did not make an update to McAfee manually, but an auto-update is certainly possible. I will check for an update log as soon as I am back home. It wouldn't surprise me though, since all my antivirus and malware scans are coming up negative.

Heheh, not really ascribing human attributes to my computer, just trying to descibe the situation. It acts as though something times out and stops responding if it doesn't get regular input, or more precisely, doesn't start responding again like it's supposed to. But I can't imagine what that would be.

 

So upon getting home from work I went through the entire malware clean up procedure to the letter, including CCleaner. No effect at all, and other than those possible false positives on Roguekiller, it doesn't look like anything was found.

I've attached all the asked for logs.

As per AltBo's suggestions, I have taken a closer look at my McAfee Antivirus. I did a manual update to the latest version, but it made no difference. Nor does disabling real time virus scanning.

I did find that running in Safe Mode with Networking and AV enabled (though real time scanning is automatically disabled in Safe Mode) avoids the issue, but I'm not really sure where to go from here.

SFC /scannow found no integrity violations.

Where would I get the list of programs that start on boot up? The boot log just seems to list drivers and devices.

I'm not sure what's left. Should I try a repair install of windows from the disk? Or is it at all possible that I'm looking at a hardware problem?

 

Darkh4...

Looks like it's one of your run at startup programs causing the problem. Since the test requires 30 minutes or so to determine whether or not the behavior is present, I recommend starting with the most complex of your startup programs and turn off each one one by one. If the problem doesn't disappear when you turn one off, you can then restart the process and move on to the next one. If you test one or two a day for a several days, you should be able to work through them all, depending on how many you have set to run on boot.

As for which ones to terminate (test) first, you won't be turning off any Windows processes, so those are out. I think I would start with your Apple programs. Actually, for these, you could I guess turn them all (there are two of them?) off to see if the problem is gone. If so, you could then enable them again one by one. Otherwise, it's just a matter of working through all the processes associated with programs that have been installed on the computer and set to run on boot (other than Windows ones).

Wish I could think of an easier way, but I don't think there is one. Just make a list of all the programs that run on startup and open task manager and kill a process and test->then move on to the next one. Very time consuming I know, but it's all I can think of for you to do. Maybe rustysavage will have a better idea or someone else...

Oh...One other thing you could try first is shutting down the Firefox plugin-container.exe process. Could be one of your plugins in Firefox is acting up, but this seems less likely, since I assume Firefox is not always running when the problem occurs. It still could be a plugin or extension, however. If turning off processes does not find the problem, you can then test your FF plugins by disabling them one by one. Generally, I would say that shutting off plugin-container.exe would shut down plugin activity, but, who knows, maybe one of your plugins can run (to maintain a connection on the internet for example) with the plugin container closed or with Firefox closed...

One other thing coming to my mind is that maybe your video card driver is out of date and needs updating. Looks like you have an NVIDIA card I think. You might want to look to see if the driver is up to date and if not bring it up to date. When you run start in Safe Mode, you graphics card driver does not load, leading me to believe it could be the culprit...

 

Thank you for your reply! Wish it wasn't looking so grim.

I've made a list of all the processes that run when not in safe mode, and compared that to what runs when in safe mode, but the list is so much shorter that it's not much help.

I've attached the processes list, in case anything stands out.

It's interesting that you should mention the graphics driver, because I had just updated it a couple days before this started. I actually suspected it myself, but the system restore that I had performed had reverted my machine back to the previous driver, and the issue persisted.

I've just now updated it back to the latest driver, so I'll see what happens. I'm also wondering if perhaps the Geforce Experience app might be the culprit. It regularly checks to see if updates to itself or the graphics drivers are available. If the driver update doesn't fix anything, I might try disabling that.

 

Darkh4...

If you open the MGlogs zip and take a look at miscinfo.txt, you will see a little bit more in depth breakdown of your running programs. Some of these might not be startups, but almost all of them will be. Exception would be your browser which may have been open when you ran the MG info program or any other programs that may have been running at the time. The info in this file will help you see what program each process is associated with and maybe that will help you if you have to start shutting down processes.

Sounds like the graphics card angle might be the best one. Maybe your updated driver caused some problems that System Restore couldn't fix with the Geforce Experience program before you removed the driver update and restored the old one. Don't know about the GeForce program. If it installs separately from the driver bundle, maybe you could try reinstalling it. I am guessing though that it is the interface for adjusting settings, and that it is bundled with the driver installation (?)

The more I think about it, the more I think there is something going on with the graphics driver. Too much of a coincidence, and graphics drivers can cause these kinds of unusual behaviors.

Just for the record, do you use an imaging program to backup your system? I highly recommend you look into this methodology for backing up. You can create a backup and then set up back ups to run for each day of the week that will only backup changes to the original backup. This uses a small amount of disk space, so it's extremely nice to be able to do. Combine daily backups for a week with a bi-weekly and a monthly and you have basically a bullet proof backup system. Best part is the restore can be done outside of Windows with a boot disk if you can't boot into Windows. Being able to restore so quickly changed everything for me. I will say System Restore still has a place, since it doesn't revert or omit/delete personal files you have created, where those have to be backed up separately when imaging to avoid unwanted reversions to them...

 

Darkh4, Thank you for the list of processes. You've got the right idea and if we are to solve this problem it's likely going to involve one of these apps. Along those lines I'd like you to provide some additional information. You can do that very easily by downloading a data mining application and allowing it to collect information about your system.

First, download a program called Speccy from the following page:

http://majorgeeks.com/Speccy_d6358.html

Install the program and run it. No need to configure anything.
Allow the program to analyze your system (takes less than 30 seconds). When it finishes click FILE >>Save As Text
Save the text file to your desktop (any name you wish).
Go to your desktop and open the text file with Notepad (just double click on it).
Edit out the serial numbers by clicking on Edit >> Find, and searching for the word "serial". Remove all lines that contain serial numbers.
Save the file.
If you know how to archive files using the ZIP or RAR format then go ahead and archive the text file. If not, then don't worry about it, just leave the text file as it is.

Post another message in this thread with the aforementioned text file attached.

That will give people here something more to work with in diagnosing your problem.

 

Darkh4...

One other bit here. In the miscinfo2.txt file in the MGlogs zip, you will be able to see all the services that were running when the MG info program ran. This could also be very helpful. You can look at the ones that were running then and easily disable services there if all other angles on the problem fail.

Hopefully a solution will come along long before you need this info though...

Just noticed your post rusty...could this be close to a time for Tweaking.com?

 

Here is the text file from Speccy, as requested.

Unfortunately, updating the graphics driver did not fix the issue, but I did learn a new wrinkle of problem. Apparently constant user input does not prevent the the freeze.

After about 45 minutes, whatever I have open closes out, and I get the message that the item cannot be found. Everything also disappears from the start menu except solitaire (which I've never used on this rig), and windows shutdown does not work correctly. If I try it, the graphics card shuts down and my screen goes dark, but the status number indicator on my motherboard still says "AA", which indicates that the computer is fully booted and the OS is running. I have to do a hard shut down at the power switch.

It actually reminds me of the time I saw the HDD die on a friend's laptop. Except everything comes back when I reboot.

I will try uninstalling Geforce Experience when I get back from work in the morning.

To answer your question, Geforce Experience is a sort of graphics card manager that Nvidia started using. It's mainly a convenience thing. It watches for and notifies you of driver updates, as well as handling driver installs. It also supposedly creates optimized setting profiles for various games, but that function is a bit hit or miss. It isn't necessary in order to run the graphics card, and it is separate from the Nvidia Control Panel.

 

Darkh4...

I used to have an NVIDIA graphics card and the control panel I recall had some desktop features. I could create multiple desktops and some other tweaks I could do. Does your control panel have all of those features? I can't remember what the desktop features are called...some "cool" name.

Anyway, the miscinfo2.txt has some NVIDIA services listed there that you could disable from the services window. Of course, I guess one of them will likely turn off the graphics card, and you may have to go with onboard while you test, but if turning off the NVIDIA services fixes the problem, then at least you know it's associated with the driver.

If so, seems likely to me that what happened was that the new driver you installed installed some elements that weren't removed by the system restore. So when you reverted the driver to before the update they were possibly still on the PC. In that case, could get nasty. I think at this point I would be considering installing Iobit Advanced Uninstaller and do the following:

1. Set a system restore point and backup the system
2. Remove your current graphics driver
3. Go back and reinstall the driver you used to update before the problem started monitoring with Iobit AU.
4. Then remove that driver using Iobit AU
5. Reinstall the most recent driver from NVIDIA. This is assuming you can find the installer for your current driver.

The idea here is that it seems to me that System Restore may have left a remnant(s) of the original update driver (problem driver?) on your system. By recording the installation of the driver, hopefully Iobit can remove those bits that could have been left behind and that could be causing the problem...

 

Yes, my Nvidia control panel has a bunch of "cool-sounding" features that I don't use.

Unfortunately, I'm not entirely sure how to get the previous driver back. Since Geforce Experience began handling my driver updates, I no longer have archived .exe's of recent drivers. And Nvidia doesn't seem to archive them, either.

I might have a .exe from several months ago, would that work?

Also I did notice two processes with names that start with 'ati', which might be remnants from my last AMD graphics card. They've been there for months, but could they be causing a now?

 

Darkh4...

Yeah, I think installing the old driver is worth a try. I've gone back several months with a graphics driver before, and it worked fine. At any rate, all you have to do is re-update if there is a problem.

If you Google "What is {name of process here.exe}", you should be able to easily verify if those processes are associated with your old amd graphics card. Then, if they are associated with the old card, you can use CCleaner to remove them from the startup list (if you have CCleaner). This can be done in Windows 7 too, but I'm not sure how. In XP I just type msconfig in the run box and then select the "Startup" tab and uncheck the check box to deactivate startup for any particular process...

 

If it were my system I would go ahead and do it. Not much to lose, especially given the built-in system restore and registry backup.

 

There's no good way to rule out which process might be involved in the aberrant behavior. If If I were you I would just start shutting them down about 10 at a time. Here's a list of processes that I would shut down first.

SearchIndexer.exe
plugin-container.exe
MOBKbackup.exe
mfefire.exe
McUICnt.exe
McSvHost.exe
mcshield.exe
McPvTray.exe
McAPExe.exe
mbamservice.exe
mbamscheduler.exe
mbamgui.exe
jusched.exe
iTunesHelper.exe
iPodService.exe
FlashPlayerPlugin_11_9_900_170.exe
AppleMobileDeviceService.exe

If you shut these down and the strange behavior persists, you can be fairly certain that this batch of processes is not involved. You could then mark these as clean and reboot, then do another 10 processes. Eventually, you should be able to narrow it down to 10 or less processes as suspects.

Another option (alluded to by AtlBo) is to do a shotgun fix procedure using Tweaking.com's All-in-One fix utility. You can download that here:

http://www.majorgeeks.com/files/details/tweaking_com_windows_repair.html

Just download it, install it and run it. It will take you through the process step by step and explain each step. The whole process can take several hours, if every step is taken (which I would advise). I've used this "Oh what the heck" fix at least a half dozen times and it has usually solved my problems (why I cannot say). Whether you want to do this All-in-One repair first or manually eliminating processes first is up to you. Given your schedule it sounds like you may want to do the former as a next step.

Keep us updated.

 

I can eliminate four of those already. Mbamgui.exe, mbamscheduler.exe, and mbamgui.exe are Malwarebytes processes, which I hadn't installed until after this problem started. And mfefire.exe is active in safe mode, where the issue doesn't happen.

Plugin-container and FlashPlayerPlugin are only active if Firefox is open, and Firefox doesn't need to be open for the lock up to occur, but I will check them if all else fails.

I am currently working on ruling out atieclxx.exe and atiesrxx.exe. They are apparently leftovers from my old AMD graphics, and don't need to be running anyway.

After that I'm going to try completely uninstalling Geforce Experience and my graphics driver, which will eliminate a lot of processes, and might help me narrow things down to something with my graphics drivers. I can do that as part of AltBo's suggestion to use lobit AU.

Then if that doesn't do it I will start going through the remaining processes in groups, focusing on Apple and McAfee processes first.

 

So those two files weren't it, so now I'm on to the graphics drivers, but I need some clarification on the instructions for the iobit procedure. The driver that was installed two days before this started was also the latest driver. Do I use that one for both installs, or do I use an older driver for the first install?

I apologize if this is a dumb question, but I'm a little sleep-deprived from work. :zzz

 

OK...if the original offender was the one you have on there right now, I think you would want to go with the one you had prior to the current one (older one), whichever that was and assuming you can find the installer. Physically removing the fragments of that driver could be the answer.

There are, though, now that I think about it, two ways to think about this. Another way would be that you could install Iobit AU and then reinstall your current driver. Then remove it with Iobit and install the most recent one you can find from before the current one. If the problem is gone and all other elements of the driver are OK such as features, you could just keep that driver (I would keep the installer stored away someplace if you can find it to download) and just consider the one you have now a dud. If the problem persists, you could even then remove that one and install one even a little older to try. If none of that works, you could then reinstall the current one just to double check and see if removing older remnants could have jogged something loose. Definitely the driver seems like the likeliest source of the problems you have had, so I think it's worth looking into at least a little bit extra. Also, Iobit AU is good for this type of thing...like having an extra tool for troubleshooting, and it's easy to use, which makes this fairly easy to do...

Not sure if Iobit AU will record the installation if the installer is not present on the PC (rather than using the NVIDIA download service), so might be necessary to find the installer and actually download that file. You could always try using the NVIDIA interface if you can't find it, and maybe Iobit will record the installation anyway. I guess I would give it better than 50/50 on that, but I'm not sure.

The way to know if Iobit recorded the installation is to notice at the end if you get the option for deep removal I think it's called. If so, it's not just a typical MS Windows type uninstall with the Iobit full deep removal being program fragments and registry items.

 

So the bad news is that deleting all files related to Nvidia and ensuring that there are no Nvidia processes running did not fix the issue. So I'm thinking the graphics driver angle may be a dead end. Safe mode is still confirmed to eliminate the crash.

To make matters worse I actually had a lock up that led into a memory error and a BSOD within five minutes of booting up to write this message. Up until now it always took exactly 45 minutes from the opening of the desktop until the OS stopped responding. I had originally thought it was around 30 minutes, but after several disable-and-wait tests, it became clear it was 45. Like clockwork.

Anyway, the crash happened almost immediately after I launched Firefox, so on a hunch I completely deleted Firefox and reinstalled it from the internet. I have noticed that this has eliminated Plugin-Container and FlashPlayerPlugin from the process list, so I will consider this another process removal test and see what happens.

After that I guess I'll start picking apart Apple and McAfee.

 

Another crash, and attempting to interact with Windows caused another BSOD.

Rebooting brought back Plugin-Container and FlashPlayerPlugin.

These two entries in the Event Viewer are a bit concerning:

-Custom dynamic link libraries are being loaded for every application. The system administrator should review the list of libraries to ensure they are related to trusted applications.

-Process **\McAPExe.exe pid (1208) contains signed but untrusted code, but was allowed to perform a privileged operation with a McAfee driver.

Maybe there is some sort of malware that escaped the entire malware clean up process?

 

So McAfee wouldn't let me completely disable all it's processes, and three of it's services kept coming back in msconfig when I tried to disable them from booting with the system, so I completely uninstalled McAfee to prevent any of it's related processes from running. Still no luck.

The only processes left to test from rustysavage's list are jusched.exe and ituneshelper.exe.

After that all that's left are processes associated with Windows or my motherboard.

It's looking pretty grim. I'm starting to wonder if I'm looking at the nuclear option here. Of course, I'm still not even sure if it's not a hardware issue, so reformatting might not help in that case.

 

Dark4h...

OK...take a look at this similar error report with some comments. It's not the same problem, and I didn't turn up one with Google, but maybe this will help:

http://www.eventid.net/display-eventid-516-source-mfehidk-eventno-10865-phase-1.htm

This is the comment that got my attention most, considering I couldn't make much of the other few there:

Based on this and the info below, I think it's kind of hard to get around considering reinstalling McAfee.

When I Googled the error I found references to similar problems but not the same. The above was one of them. Here is another:

http://domainwebcenter.com/?p=761

The above recommends an almost identical approach to the problem as the quoted one at the other site and reports that it does work. If I find something more than once that I know won't hurt my PC (like this procedure) and that is reported to work, if there aren't any dissenting viewpoints to trying it, I usually perform the action. In this case, I suppose that means that I would remove and reinstall McAfee and see if that fixes the problem.

Looks like maybe McAfee is not getting along with a Windows update. Gotta say that was some good detective work finding the errors in the Event Viewer. Hope this gets you on track...

 

Thanks! Our messages must have just passed other, because I just executed the procedure you describe, including running CCleaner before reinstalling McAfee.

Wish I could say I meant to do that, but I only uninstalled McAfee to get rid of a few of it's stubborn processes. Running CCleaner before reinstalling just seemed like a good idea.

Waiting on the results now...

 

Great...yeah looks like I posted shortly after you. Good call on your part...

If it doesn't work, the list recommends using the McAfee removal tool. May still be worth another try using the MRT and rebooting before using CCleaner and reinstalling.

Hope this works for you...

 

The first uninstall/reinstall didn't work. The computer locked up at 45 minutes right on cue. I've just tried again, using the McAfee Removal Tool. After it runs it brings up a message saying that the de-installation was incomplete, but I'm wondering if that's just because I already uninstalled the program and it can't find the deleted files.

In case this doesn't work, I've attached a list of the remaining processes that I haven't yet ruled out, either by disabling them, uninstalling the related program, or seeing them in Safe Mode. I've included brief descriptions to make it more obvious what they go to.

Any recommendations on where to start?

 

Yeah, it didn't work. Died again at the 45 minute mark. It's almost like something is on a timer and when it kicks in it just shuts the SSD off. But I've already set the advanced power settings to never shut the hard drive off, and I don't know what else could possibly do that.

 

Darkh4...

Take a look at your scheduled events in Task Scheduler. I doubt you will find anything, but it's worth a look. Maybe there is some sort of clue there.

Also, you might try leaving task manager open with the processes sorted by processor usage. When the 45th minute approaches sit in front of task manager and see if you can see a process open and flash across the top of the running processes list. Just be careful not to disturb the mouse or keyboard when you sit down.

Apologies, I can't recall, but did you ever get around to removing and reinstalling the GeForce Experience program? Might be something to try a reinstall for monitored by Iobit and then use Iobit to remove it. I am assuming it shows up in the Add/Remove area as a program, because those are the only programs Iobit can fully remove.

I was surprised to see how many motherboard related drivers you have for your PC in the Speccy (think it was the Speccy). Although the problem could be hiding behind a Windows process, it's not going to be the Windows process itself. So I would focus on the remaining processes other than Windows from the list.

aaHMSvc --Motherboard com servics
AI Suite II --Motherboard interface
AlertHelper --Motherboard-related
AsRoutineController--Motherboard controller
AsSysCtrlService --Motherboard-related
atkexComsvc -- Motherboard-related
CTAudSvc --Soundcard
EPUHelp -- Motherboard, allows setting up different mobo power profiles.
VRMHelp --Motherboard-related

I think I would start with the Soundcard driver and then move to the motherboard drivers.

One other question. Do you recall when you installed the December Windows updates for your OS?

 

Hmm, nothing unusual in Task Scheduler. Just 4 items, and nothing that is instructed to run every 45 minutes.

I've actually tried watching the Task Manager when the time approaches, but nothing happens.

I did completely uninstall everything related to Nvidia, including Geforce Experience. The lock up even occurred with no graphics driver installed.

Yeah, my motherboard came with a bunch of silly services that I barely use. They're suppose to make tweaking more user-friendly, but never really used them. I just set things how I want in the BIOS.

I would imagine that the December Windows update installed in December? I always let Windows check for updates, and apply them when they show up, so I would assume that I installed them not long after they came out. I tend to ignore the "optional" updates, though.

I might have a lead, though. It turns out that my SSD, a Crucial M4 128gb, has a known issue with cutting out at regular intervals once it hits a certain number of operational hours. I have applied the firmware upgrade that is supposed to fix the issue, and I'm testing now.

 

So it looks like the faulty SSD firmware was the culprit. Since updating that, my rig has been perfectly stable for over 2 hours. I was never able to get more than 45 minutes before.

I'll continue to watch it but think I've got it.

Thank you very much to AltBo and Rustysavage for all the help!

 

AtlBo strikes again.
I'm glad you found the cause and fixed it because the only thing left to do would have been to start replacing hardware. Hope it sticks. You were a real trooper throughout this process and I don't even want to know how much time you invested into it. I still can't figure out what was happening like clockwork at exactly 45 minutes of idling.

 

You are welcome, but I think you deserve the credit yourself. You clutched the SSD fix for sure. Rusty is right...there weren't very many options left before looking at new hardware.

That is one interesting tactic used by your SSD manufacturer. Seems like some type of simple warning included with the driver for the drive would have made resolution of this much simpler.

Thanks for the update, and I guess we can keep our fingers crossed the problem is solved. We can keep our eyes open for this now...

:major

 

Too be fair, I don't think Crucial knew it was an issue when I bought the SSD. The problem doesn't kick in until it hits about 5200 hours of operational time, which represents about 7 months of continuous use.

I've had the drive for over a year, and there have been several firmware revisions since then. I just didn't know about the problem because I don't regularly check for firmware updates. I usually don't update firmware unless there's a problem, due to the slight risk of bricking the hardware.

Thanks again for you time!

 

Darkh4...

I see. Well, I'm glad you were able to track down the problem.

There's not much in the way of diagnostics on PCs out of the box. I would sure like to see that changed someday. Better diagnostics could really help with problems like this one where it's hard to differentiate between a hardware and a software issue.

Anyway, good job on your part to hunt down that issue. Very impressive! :major