Need help with freezing PC

Alright so when I got home from work today I turned my comp on from sleep and instantly it froze. I restarted it, it booted to windows, windows loaded some programs and then froze. It did this every time I booted the comp after. So, I attempted to reformat hoping that this would solve the problem. It didn't. This time it would still load but when I try to install some drivers it will also freeze without any bsod.

I tried swapping my 7870 with a 6950 and the problem remains. That rules out the video cards. I tried swapping the ram with a gskill set and it wouldn't boot. I put the samsung ram back in and I was back to the same old problem. But the thing is, I tested the ram just the other week and memtest86 didn't find any errors.

So I thought it might be the SSD that was causing the problems. So I took the SSD out and plugged in a 1.5tb green drive to try installing windows to see if I could troubleshoot, after accidentally formatting my 4tb file storage drive, I got windows installed but it kept giving me an error saying it was missing a file or the file was corrupt.

Fast forward to now, my comp is open on my table and turned off. Something is definitely wrong with either the ram, CPU or the motherboard. But I'm relatively certain that it is probably the motherboard. I can put the ram and CPU into another X79 motherboard to test it out, but that will have to wait until tomorrow night at least due to work. So windows wouldn't boot at all with that drive. Put the SSD back in and windows would boot again but I was still stuck with the freezing issue.

The computer was working fine until last night, I am scratching my head to think what possibly could have caused it to do this now. It's strange though how the computer will crash at the exact same percentage when installing the lan driver and while installing 14.12 drivers, but 14.4 drivers install fine.

I'm relatively certain that the problem is either with the motherboard or the ram, with a remote possibility of it being the CPU but since it was never really overclocked I don't think it's likely.

It seems I've just been having lots of problems with computers lately... any input would be appreciated. I'm leaving the comp alone for tonight.

EDIT: So tried the ram in another PC and it ran fine, so that rules that out.

From the title, I definitely thought you were going to put your PC in the freezer

You properly tested the RAM and GPU by swapping them out and checking for the issue. I don't see where you did that with the SSD/HDDs. Did you successfully install Windows on one of them and confirm that the issue still exists? You need to do that to rule out the SSD.

If you can rule out the SSD, I'd say it's most likely the power supply or mobo. I'd borrow from a friend if you can to keep on deducing.

Ya I rambled on a bit in my OP, I was going out of my mind all last night after work trying to figure this out.

I tried to install windows on another HDD but it would give me errors and would not boot into windows. During the process I accidentally formatted my 4tb drive that was full of stuff, but I think most of the really important stuff is backed up on Skydrive... I will have to give the reinstal another try though.

Swapping the power supply was my next thought yes, I can take one out of another comp to test it.

I had an SSD giving me this same issue. Be sure to thoroughly test the SSD and HDD to rule it completely out of the equation. Once that doesn't fix the issue swap over to another z79 board if you can to rule out the board. Then test the PSU.

Edit: Just seen your last post if you do have a PSU easily accessible test it before the mobo.

So I fixed the problem and it wasn't the SSD. I suspect it was an incompatibility between the RAM and the CPU.

I have two X79 rigs, one with my original 3820 and one with my 4930k. I had Samsung low voltage memory that I believe was acting up with the 4930k, the motherboard wasn't setting them properly at stock giving them 1.59v instead of 1.35v. Long story short the Samsung ram works with the 3820 and the G-Skill ram works with the 4930k.

I'm surprisingly calm though considering I accidentally formatted essentially 4tb worth of files during this process...

Glad you got it working. Sorry about the storage drive. I would be fairly devastated if I erased mine. I used a program called media undelete a few years back which worked alright to recover some deleted files.

Just need some of this




Jking,

that is what popped into my head when reading the title

Glad you got it working, blows about the drive though

back in my day when our pc froze up we would just kick the side of the tower and vrrooom away she went boy.

ninjacore said:

Glad you got it working. Sorry about the storage drive. I would be fairly devastated if I erased mine. I used a program called media undelete a few years back which worked alright to recover some deleted files.

Click to expand...

I've already formatted it and started reinstalling steam games. Still might be worth it running a undelete program to see what I can recover.

Most of my work essential or otherwise important files were saved by Onedrive backups, most of the files on the drive I can think of were just hoards of ebooks and old music, with a few exceptions that I probably won't remember until I need them.

kmo_9000 said:

I've already formatted it and started reinstalling steam games. Still might be worth it running a undelete program to see what I can recover.

Most of my work essential or otherwise important files were saved by Onedrive backups, most of the files on the drive I can think of were just hoards of ebooks and old music, with a few exceptions that I probably won't remember until I need them.

Click to expand...

I think it should still work. When you reformat, it isn't writing zeros to the drive, it's just "forgetting" the pointers to the addresses of where your data was written and acting as if nothing is there. Media undelete (and other such apps), just reads the raw 1s and 0s from the drive and gives you what it finds (even if there's no pointer to it). So, as long as you haven't written over a certain block where your old piece of data was saved, it should still be recoverable. It's not the easiest process, if I recall correctly, but might be worth it, just to see if it turns up anything you can't do without

ninjacore said:

I think it should still work. When you reformat, it isn't writing zeros to the drive, it's just "forgetting" the pointers to the addresses of where your data was written and acting as if nothing is there. Media undelete (and other such apps), just reads the raw 1s and 0s from the drive and gives you what it finds (even if there's no pointer to it). So, as long as you haven't written over a certain block where your old piece of data was saved, it should still be recoverable. It's not the easiest process, if I recall correctly, but might be worth it, just to see if it turns up anything you can't do without

Click to expand...

Yes but I installed a few steam games. So when I get home from work I will stop that and run media undelete and see what it turns up.

Witchdoctor said:

Just need some of this

View attachment 158589


Jking,

that is what popped into my head when reading the title

Glad you got it working, blows about the drive though

Click to expand...

I was thinking the same thing, and I haven't even done LN2 cooling.

Weird about the memory, that's a strange one. I thought this would be a bad SATA cable (I had a similar issue once). Or a motherboard issue.

Ya it took three days but I ran a program that scanned and recovered most of my files. It took all night to scan the 4tb drive and two days almost to transfer 2tb of data to a 3tb drive via a usb3 HDD dock.

I got my replacement 290x in though and my PC is up and running fine now.

Witchdoctor said:

Just need some of this

View attachment 158589


Jking,

that is what popped into my head when reading the title

Glad you got it working, blows about the drive though

Click to expand...

Nope! it is freezing already! Moar overclock to heat it up!