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Unpredictable Computer Lockup, (Fixed, I think. Hit the magic 5184 hours)
Iruka
Registered User, Moderator Mod Emeritus
Registered User, Moderator Mod Emeritus
Alright, so I've got a PC, windows 7, I built it myself a while ago, thanks to some advice from you lovely folk. Last night it started locking up, Here's the rundown:
Chrome will have maybe 10 thousand tabs open, because that's how I consume media, one will freeze. I will assume the website is down and start refreshing some other website. Slowly, the whole program locks up. Photoshop will seem okay, so I try and open the task manager and close chrome, cue black screen. Black screen with just my mouse visible will hang out indefinitely until I just hard reset it.
So today, I did a few things
1) Ran my virus scanner, just because, nothing major there
2) Got my win7 CD to check out the recovery functions, and only found the memory test. Ran a full memory test and....? I don't know? It says it is going to give me results upon restart, but it seems to just go back to windows.
3) Used JUST chrome this morning and left my task manager open so I could get to it when It locked up. After a while of using chrome, everything starts going sluggish and I look at my task manager to see giant repeating CPU spikes.
So, now that my new weekend activity is backing up my data, I am coming to you with a few questions:
1) I don't feel like I've isolated the issue, but without my old dell/hp diagnostic tools at my disposal, I'm not sure how to better get my computer to spit out some reasonable data. If this is a hardware issue, I would love to know. Right now there's no errors being tossed at me, everything is just keeling over. I think someone linked me to some freeware diagnostics before, but I can't seem to find it in my old threads.
2) XP used to have a recovery function where it would install windows and not delete all your shit, it seems like Windows 7 doesn't do that?
3) I have two hard drives, so it seems like the only real wipe I will have to do is on my solid state boot drive, is that correct?
Thanks ahead of time for the help.
Edit: Through my own searching, it seems HWMonitor is what I was remembering, software wise. Currently I am backing up my art to my external in safemode, after doing that, I will run HWMonitor and see if I can get some better information. If there is another program I should look into, let me know.
Chrome will have maybe 10 thousand tabs open, because that's how I consume media, one will freeze. I will assume the website is down and start refreshing some other website. Slowly, the whole program locks up. Photoshop will seem okay, so I try and open the task manager and close chrome, cue black screen. Black screen with just my mouse visible will hang out indefinitely until I just hard reset it.
So today, I did a few things
1) Ran my virus scanner, just because, nothing major there
2) Got my win7 CD to check out the recovery functions, and only found the memory test. Ran a full memory test and....? I don't know? It says it is going to give me results upon restart, but it seems to just go back to windows.
3) Used JUST chrome this morning and left my task manager open so I could get to it when It locked up. After a while of using chrome, everything starts going sluggish and I look at my task manager to see giant repeating CPU spikes.
So, now that my new weekend activity is backing up my data, I am coming to you with a few questions:
1) I don't feel like I've isolated the issue, but without my old dell/hp diagnostic tools at my disposal, I'm not sure how to better get my computer to spit out some reasonable data. If this is a hardware issue, I would love to know. Right now there's no errors being tossed at me, everything is just keeling over. I think someone linked me to some freeware diagnostics before, but I can't seem to find it in my old threads.
2) XP used to have a recovery function where it would install windows and not delete all your shit, it seems like Windows 7 doesn't do that?
3) I have two hard drives, so it seems like the only real wipe I will have to do is on my solid state boot drive, is that correct?
Thanks ahead of time for the help.
Edit: Through my own searching, it seems HWMonitor is what I was remembering, software wise. Currently I am backing up my art to my external in safemode, after doing that, I will run HWMonitor and see if I can get some better information. If there is another program I should look into, let me know.
Iruka on
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Is the mouse able to be moved around?
If the answer to the mouse question is yes, I'm assuming it's not a hardware fault at all, but more likely a software issue. While windows 7 doesn't really have that "reformat/recover" option like XP (I can't recall if it does or doesn't) the best option to make sure nothing hangs about is to perform a clean install.
Backup what you need to save, perform the reinstall. If the issue repeats, then it's probably hardware.
Ugh, I hate re-installing my programs, man. But Alright. I did all this last time, I can get it done again!
So, will I have to also wipe my secondary internal drive? I've never done a clean install on a computer with two internal drives before.
After you do the wipe and reinstall, depending on how savvy you are and if you have a free hard drive sitting around (or external one) you might consider making an image of it.
I would like to buy an external terabyte and retire my current external HD, So I will, in general, consider some new backup solutions.
Clonezilla is amazeballs for doing this kind of thing.
I use it here at work. A working Win7 PC up within 10 minutes after building it, with all our software installed on it.
From what you've posted, in my experience this is likely not a software issue (although it could be!). I'd start with hardware.
From easiest to hardest:
1) CHKDSK your system drive letter. If no errors...
2) Remove one stick of RAM. If the problem is still happening, replace it and remove a different one until you've tried running without each one for a while.
3) Set your BIOS to "load safe defaults" (this can be named a number of different things, but is usually in the root menu).
4) (rare but something you can check) Underclock your CPU and see if it helps. One of the ways you can check for CPU problems is to unzip a large zip file and see if the unzipped files are corrupted.
Once that's out of the way there are a number of things you can check in Windows. Of course, you can reinstall Windows right away; assuming that you format the hard drive during setup this can ensure that the problem isn't software.
Dusted out my case, and my CPU is running a good 10 degrees cooler. Riding it out for an hour and seeing if it locks up again. If it does, I just backed everything up, so I'll try the OS.
Alright, So I guess time to check the RAM. My media drive is still disconnected, so it might be the solid state. Hopefully its the ram, as thats the cheaper problem to fix.
Just for shits and giggles, disable any power saver settings you have. Make everything always on.
If it's running out of space for the swap file, the slowdown can occur. However, if it's spinning down your drive and then not properly waking from suspend, strange things can happen. Especially with an SSD.
Your problem doesn't really fit in with what you'd see with failing ram or an overheating video card. No artifacts mentioned and with ram going down the tubes, you'd get memory exceptions at least once in a while.
I cant seem to trigger the problem on my own, either. I cant, for instance, Open up a million tabs and google hangout and stream some youtube videos and use photoshop and get the computer to lock up on cue. It seems like the last time my video card was failing I could set my watch to the crashes.
Look at the filename that is causing the issue. atikmpag.sys or chrmtaop.dll would be more helpful. I would suspect that if Chrome is running whenever this happens, that is the problem. They may have pushed out a buggy version and you are hitting the issues because you have a large number of tabs open. Switch browsers for a while, see if you can spot anything in particular.
I know that for me, Flash videos can conflict with my graphics driver. Nothing I can do about it, HP aren't going to update this driver and Adobe won't fix their crap any time soon. I just need to watch for the signs and close them down before they crash.
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I'm sorry to say that you might want to install Windows to another drive and see if the SSD is the source.
@Pedroasani there is no file name on the bsod. I think chrome is just what iI happen to be using when the system fails. this is what I'm getting http://helpdeskgeek.com/wp-content/pictures/HowtofixStop0x000000F4errorinWindows_10FB3/Stop0x000000F4_thumb.png?d620e9em
I'll work on trying to confirm the harddrive when I get home today, and start shopping around for SSD deals. I think the little guy is out of warranty now, too bad.
Edit: from the advice of a friend, I left the computer on last night after starting it up, not opening any programs or anything. I woke up this morning to bios looking for a boot drive. I think that exonerates chrome as being the issue.
This is the hard drive I have: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820148441
Due to current budget restraints (I literally JUST fixed my car) I would have to replace it with something cheaper. Actually, this drive was 100 when I bought it, Im not sure why its nearly 200 now. This is both bigger and has great reviews: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820147247
The whole system is about to go on 2 years old. It looks like from reviews of my current drive, a lot of people got some drive failure at around 14 months. I feel like I could safely replace the SSD and be sure that its the issue, buuut I was also fairly sure about the OS and it proved me wrong within 5 minutes. Thoughts?
I feel like if it were the RAM or the CPU I could trigger the error manually.
Edit:
So in looking for diagnostics to my specific drive, I turned up this on google:
"Sounds like you need a firmware update. Old firmwares cause your computer to crash after an hour once the drives usage has exceeded 5184 hours.
There is no diagnostic program, no."
I Guess theres like a hard stopping point and I hit it. I also guess reviews on new egg never figured that out.
So, I think this is fixed and I'm going to start loading my software again. Thanks for all the help!