Random Lockups

Lately, my partner's machine has been randomly locking up. She will just be working on something and the system will freeze completely. The only way out of it is to power off. I checked the event viewer and the problem isn't listed there, just an unscheduled shutdown. So it seems that the computer is still running, it's just the desktop and keyboard that are frozen, or the screen.

Before I go too far into this, I should give you all some specs:

Ryzen 2700X
MSI x470 Gaming Plus Max motherboard
16 GB Gskill 3200 MHz DDR4, running at 2666
Radeon R9 280 graphics card
Crucial 1 TB Nvme drive
Corsair TX 750 power supply
Logitech 600 Keyboard, Logitech M505 mouse
Windows 11 Pro 22H2

And so far, I have tried the following:

1. Ran Memtest86+ for 15 passes - no errors
2. Downclocked the memory to 2666 from its original 2933
3. Run full virus scans with MalwareBytes and Windows Defender, as well as MSERT
4. Updated Windows completely
5. Updated all available drivers, including chipset
6. Changed the batteries in the mouse

So I'm at a bit of a loss. Nothing I have tried so far has fixed the problem, and no particular routine seems to bring these freezes on. They are just completely random. I think I have ruled out the memory at least. The processor has never been overclocked beyond AMD's turbo functions, and the motherboard is less than two years old, and has never given us any trouble. The one thing that does concern me is the graphics card. Being an AMD card, the drivers are old and that card has always been a little touchy depending on the driver version, but it never froze up. In my personal experience AMD drivers have been rather problematic in the last couple of years, which is why I went Nvidia in my own machine.

I digress... Sorry.

Is there something I have missed? I was going to take an oscilloscope and check out the MOSFETs and power supply rails to look for ripples and spikes in the voltages, but I am holding off on that because it is a lot of fiddly work, and honestly I think the problem lies elsewhere.

I am really hoping that someone here might have an idea that I have missed.

TIA

@Catnip
I didn't see any mention of temperatures.

If it's software causing the problem, you could perform clean boot state to find out which one of the startup service or program causing the problem.

In this guide, you will learn the steps to perform a clean boot on Windows 11 and Windows 10 to help you troubleshoot and determine conflicts in your setup.

Ghot said:

@Catnip
I didn't see any mention of temperatures.

Click to expand...

Aha! You are right. I forgot.

The system idles around 44C with a high temp of 59C, min temp is around 39C. Ambient temps are 21C or lower depending on the time of day. I am just using the standard AMD Wraith cooler that came with the chip. She does not play games and the system is not overclocked.

I am reluctant to run Prime95 with the existing cooler as I am afraid that it might drive the temps too high and act weird.

Catnip said:

Aha! You are right. I forgot.

The system idles around 44C with a high temp of 59C, min temp is around 39C. Ambient temps are 21C or lower depending on the time of day. I am just using the standard AMD Wraith cooler that came with the chip. She does not play games and the system is not overclocked.

I am reluctant to run Prime95 with the existing cooler as I am afraid that it might drive the temps too high and act weird.

Click to expand...

Your temps seem fine.

Don't overlook your power supply.

I had an issue where whenever I ran a particular game, it would hard lock the PC requiring a restart. I tried everything to include clean install, repasting GPU, driver swaps. Nothing worked. I then tried another game and the PC immediately locked up again.

Then one day it dawned on me that every time I completely powered off the PC, my BIOS would reset. This lead me to look at the voltages of my power supply and there I discovered both the 5volt and 3.3volt values were lower than expected. Swapping the PS for a backup one I had completely solved my issue.

For me, anytime the GPU was stressed (during gaming) requiring more power, the power supply it would falter and cause a hard lock. Another tell-tale sign is if the system clock is constantly out of sync.

That was 3 months ago. So yeah, take a look at the power supply.

Thanks @Dru2

I put the PC on my bench at work and got out the oscilloscope. I tested all of the power rails and the MOSFETs for ripple and brownouts. I specifically paid attention to the GPU power rails and the main rails to the motherboard. It all checked out just fine even when I stressed the system with PCMark 10, which I find baffling.

DISM and SFC show no errors, the BIOS seems to be right and the system time seems to stay on point, so thanks for that tip.

One thing we did notice: This has been happening since the last major update, and particularly when Edge is used and then shut down. I can remember reading somewhere that Edge was causing lockups, but I am not 100% certain. I am going to try Edge on my own machine and see what happens, although I just applied the latest Patch Tuesday updates so maybe if there was a problem with Edge or something else in Windows, it might be fixed now and this will all be moot.

I will test tonight and report back.

Catnip said:

One thing we did notice: This has been happening since the last major update, and particularly when Edge is used and then shut down.

Click to expand...

Try logging out of Edge or turn off all syncing in Edge. Sometimes, especially if there's an update - Edge spazzes out, and you will get issues like above. it seems to be tied to syncing as logging out/disabling syncing solves the issue.

Had it happen a couple of times. Once you log out, and log back in things settle down. You may need to do this to all your PCs.

Dru2 said:

Don't overlook your power supply.

I had an issue where whenever I ran a particular game, it would hard lock the PC requiring a restart. I tried everything to include clean install, repasting GPU, driver swaps. Nothing worked. I then tried another game and the PC immediately locked up again.

Then one day it dawned on me that every time I completely powered off the PC, my BIOS would reset. This lead me to look at the voltages of my power supply and there I discovered both the 5volt and 3.3volt values were lower than expected. Swapping the PS for a backup one I had completely solved my issue.

For me, anytime the GPU was stressed (during gaming) requiring more power, the power supply it would falter and cause a hard lock. Another tell-tale sign is if the system clock is constantly out of sync.

That was 3 months ago. So yeah, take a look at the power supply.

Click to expand...

Mine is still locking up (i don't run games though). . I've replaced the GPU, CPU, and PSU. . I'm down to testing RAM (unable to do that, because I can't get Memtest86 to work. I ran Mentest86+ and let it go through twice, and both passed . If the RAM is fine, then, I need to see if it could possibly be an internal HDD that I"m using as storage (it's over 10 years old).

JAM83 said:

Mine is still locking up (i don't run games though). . I've replaced the GPU, CPU, and PSU. . I'm down to testing RAM (unable to do that, because I can't get Memtest86 to work. I ran Mentest86+ and let it go through twice, and both passed . If the RAM is fine, then, I need to see if it could possibly be an internal HDD that I"m using as storage (it's over 10 years old).

Click to expand...

Again, "my" issue turned out to be a power supply. For others, it could be something else.

For my issue - constant hard locks when gaming, I was convinced it was the GPU and even broke it down to re-paste and re-pad. Still the issue persisted. It wasn't until I looked at and swapped out the power supply that my issue went away. That was now 5 months ago.

Anyway, I'm simply saying don't overlook anything.

Dru2 said:

Again, "my" issue turned out to be a power supply. For others, it could be something else.

For my issue - constant hard locks when gaming, I was convinced it was the GPU and even broke it down to re-paste and re-pad. Still the issue persisted. It wasn't until I looked at and swapped out the power supply that my issue went away. That was now 5 months ago.

Anyway, I'm simply saying don't overlook anything.

Click to expand...

Yeah, i don't overclock anything!

JAM83 said:

Yeah, i don't overclock anything!

Click to expand...

I'm sorry, but where in any of my posts I said I was overclocking? Or even mentioned it?

But since you brought it up.... I don't overclock either.

PSU could very well be bad, with possibly bad caps that don't look bad visually. In the above scenario, I also wouldn't be surprised if the +12V rail is sagging as well. PCs from 2006-onwards mostly draw from the +12V rail.

To be clear, I'm not trying to convince anyone it is the power supply. It truly could be anything. I'm simply saying what mine was.

@JAM83 knows his system far better than me, so if he feels it's not the PS I can't argue otherwise.

All good

Catnip said:

I put the PC on my bench at work and got out the oscilloscope. I tested all of the power rails and the MOSFETs for ripple and brownouts. I specifically paid attention to the GPU power rails and the main rails to the motherboard. It all checked out just fine even when I stressed the system with PCMark 10, which I find baffling.

Click to expand...

Did the system lockup while you were testing the power supply? It's hard to diagnose a problem when it's not happening. I don't know how many times I had cars that were acting up but ran perfect when I took them to the mechanic.

Should try Prime95 with small FFTs. If a solid lockup, then processor or motherboard bad, unless a PSU problem, usually, unless overclocking CPU core(s) too much.

Winuser said:

Did the system lockup while you were testing the power supply? It's hard to diagnose a problem when it's not happening. I don't know how many times I had cars that were acting up but ran perfect when I took them to the mechanic.

Click to expand...

Unfortunately no. It seems to happen most often when using or just having closed Edge as near as I can figure out. My partner stopped using Edge and she has reported no issues recently. I'm just waiting for another round of "This damned thing locked up again!"

Catnip said:

Unfortunately no. It seems to happen most often when using or just having closed Edge as near as I can figure out. My partner stopped using Edge and she has reported no issues recently. I'm just waiting for another round of "This damned thing locked up again!"

Click to expand...

Sounds like the infamous "blank screen with monitor backlight still lit" bug. With that bug, it looks like you regularly will lose control of the PC and have to hold down the power button and get nicked with a "Critical" level error for not shutting down properly.

With that bug, Windows 11 is only known to go down stealthly, if using Edge. Or randomly, when changing the refresh rate.
With the bug, the monitor won't give a no-signal error and still appears to indicate a normal status.

With the bug, games do not result in Windows going down. It's when using Edge, by a long shot!
It's in addition possibly a Chrome/Chromium thing.

TMK, never saw such thing with Firefox.

RJARRRPCGP said:

Sounds like the infamous "blank screen with monitor backlight still lit" bug. With that bug, it looks like you regularly will lose control of the PC and have to hold down the power button and get nicked with a "Critical" level error for not shutting down properly.

With that bug, Windows 11 is only known to go down stealthly, if using Edge. Or randomly, when changing the refresh rate.
With the bug, the monitor won't give a no-signal error and still appears to indicate a normal status.

With the bug, games do not result in Windows going down. It's when using Edge, by a long shot!
It's in addition possibly a Chrome/Chromium thing.

TMK, never saw such thing with Firefox.

Click to expand...

Mine does it with Firefox. . Now, it hasn't happened in several days, so I don't know if i fixed it and didn't know it, or IF an update fixed it

Catnip said:

Unfortunately no. It seems to happen most often when using or just having closed Edge as near as I can figure out. My partner stopped using Edge and she has reported no issues recently. I'm just waiting for another round of "This damned thing locked up again!"

Click to expand...

I wonder why it's only when using Edge. Hopefully she did find out what is causing the problem and by using another browser the problem is solved.