PC locking up randomly – Reboot fixes issue for a while

Operating Systems & Open Source Windows
1

Hi everyone,

I’ve been running into this somewhat infrequent issue with my PC where it ‘soft locks’ essentially, and the only way to get the PC running fine is to hit the restart button. I hope you are able to suggest some things I can try to resolve this, so TIA. (Apologies for the long post ahead).

System specs:

CPU: AMD Ryzen 7 3700X
Mobo: Asus X570 - E Gaming
Ram: 32GB Corsair Vengence RBG Pro (4x8GB)
GPU: Strix 1070 with the latest drivers
M.2 boot drive
Several additional SSD’s for games etc
Corsair AIO
Corsair LL RBG fans
Corsair Commander Pro

The following is how I think the issue started, but open to other suggestions etc.

A few months ago, I upgraded from GPU Tweak 2 to GPU Tweak 3.

At the same time, I (foolishly) installed Armoury Crate, which is when the issues began to appear.

Seemingly, at random, my PC would appear to soft lock.

Visually, the pattern on my RGB fans would go back to the default colours that you see when it boots up (before getting into windows to load the pattern i selected).

the taskbar clock would stop, but I would still be able to close windows/close out of steam etc, but i would not be able to shut the PC down via the start menu.

The only way to get this running again (for weeks at a time too) is to click the reset button on my case.

I went through uninstalling the software via the normal method which didn’t seem to work (in terms of solving the issue).

I also used the portable version of the Revo uninstaller to properly remove it, which ‘has worked’ compared to the first method.

I’ve noticed also that the RGB on the ram works randomly, as in it either doesnt lit up or it gets stuck on partial colours.

In Corsair iCUE, it tells me sometimes that “iCUE has stopped recieving data from DRAM. Please restart or power cycle your system to fix this problem”.

I have reinstalled iCUE several times, so im not sure it’s the software that is causing the issue

I have seen and watched several videos about the armoury crate software causing the issue i have run into, but this continues to be an occassional frustration.

The only other thing i can say is that (i think) the armoury crate software installed a folder called PHISON which has a folder called Aac_PHISON HAL. i tried to delete the folder but i couldnt, but i was able to delete a file called Phison_x86.dll. A file called Phison_x64.dll is not able to be deleted.

I’m not so sure about the PHISON folder, as the dll mentioned above has a modified date of 25/06/2021. Has me deleting the x86 version caused an issue?

I’m open to all suggestions and am happy to provide additional info, should you need it.

Thank you.

2

Hi,

I’ve run the armoury crate uninstaller, which removed a bunch of leftover files.

I’ve also update chipset drivers and the bios to the latest version.

I’m really at a loss here as to what is still causing this random issue.

Any help is appreciated.

Hoping a reinstall of windows isn’t needed.

3

Run bootable memtest
Have you tried OS reinstall
Mobo RGB installers are notorious for causing instability
What’s your PSU

4

My 2 cents… Windows will often fire-up it’s Windows User Experience app, named winsat.exe in the /windows/system32 folder during periods of low or no user activity. This app will start up benchmarks which are highly disruptive to some tasks, like PostgreSQL or other database jobs. I either remove or rename this file – and make sure that SFC or Windows Update doesn’t put it back or re-enable it. Just another stupid courtesy detail from Microsoft. This is just the largest lock-up and/or disruption offenders. There are a myriad of other tasks which you have to disable in Services. Doing this – I"ve had my platform crunching on numbers non-stop for a month without issues…

1 Like
5

go into eufi and check that the high precision event timer is enabled.
if its not do so and this will likely fix the issue.

in windows check to see if its enabled in software.
if it is. disable it.

(its better to have it enabled in bios but off in windows.
its still on, just running at a lower rate which save your bios battery)

if that doesnt help i would look at repairing windows with sfc/ scannow (run again if repairs are made)
and dism, to check the integrity of the o.s. (you might have bad ram writing garbage back to the o.s. when it should be sending data, eventually windows breaks)

6

There are many things in windows that will generate random lockups.
Most of the time its from resource conflict.
Generally you can set priority stages for them but most people do not.
It was not that big an issue with dos but the advent of gui and the assorted graphics handling thats when resource conflicts started becoming a pain.
As software started getting bloated, performance became an issues , most of the time requiring memory upgrades to minimize issues.
Memory management software helped but was no signcure by any means.
This was in win 3.1 and 95!

Skip forward now to win 10 and win 11,
How much more bloated is everything?
Newer hardware requires resource dedication
Generally the resource manger software incorporated in the os does a fairly good job at managing things, But still $#!t happens!

You can view the event manager logs to see what happened.

But im a linux user so what do i know? ( a little sarcasm just for the heck of it)
Print out the event log and the system resource list, you can then set the priority level for the programs, ( but be aware there may be slight performance lags to some functions)

1 Like
7

Hi,

I ran the sfc/ SCANNOW. the first run came back with “Windows Resource Protection found corrupt files and successfully repaired them.”

I ran it a second time, and it found no issues.

Also ran the DISM command, this found no issues.

8

if you found corrupt files it could be your memory is unstable.
resulting in bad writes to the o.s. its fine for running day to day but after a while things start breaking.

check your ram timings your running 4 sticks? at what speed?.
are they the same as set in bios/uefi?.

use something like ryzen timing checker. to check to timings and list jdecs.

then use something like ryzen dram calculator.
input the make and model speed and such.
look at the ram channel ranks are both sets identical.
are they 1024mb chips? (apparently the board doesn’t support ram 512mb chips.)
dram checker will help with this ^^

if your running odd timing cas latency’s such as 15/17/19 make sure gear down mode is disabled.
if its enabled it will force your ram to run at an even latency and it always rounds up. forcing it out of spec and likely causing read write errors.

1 Like
9

Ram is 4*8GB DDR4-3200 running at 15-15-15-36 timings

I’ve got HWiNFO64 installed, which showed me that.

10

Fun thing to ask - did you do a zero format of the SSD’s?

11

You could try leaving it running Linux Mint off a USB stick. If it crashes then you know it’s your hardware settings.

12

Switch off the XMP timings as a test. If that solves it then you may need to tweak the settings after applying XMP.
4 sticks is more fussy than 2 sticks.

1 Like