[Healthbig]

Posting here as a continuation of another post: http://www.techsupportforum.com/for...onding-followed-by-complete-hang-1098073.html

I'll post a small summary but a lot of info is there. While playing games the PC would have the display driver stop responding followed by a complete hang if I keep running. Seems to happen during saving, loading zones etc. rather that areas of heavy graphical load.

Software problems were pretty much ruled out and the problem was still there after removing graphics card and replacing RAM that failed memtest. HDDScan also showed no bad sectors on hard drive at all.

The PC itself is around 2.5 years old, self-built desktop with no component changes in that time apart from the new RAM. Here are the specs:
-Windows 10 64-bit
-Asus Z87-A Motherboard
-Intel Core i5-4670K @ 3.40GHz
-16GB Ram (2x 8GB DDR3 1600)
-Geforce 650 Ti
-2TB Hard Drive (500GB and 1.5TB partitions with OS on 500GB partition)
-Corsair CX750M Power Supply

I'd really like to know what exactly is causing the problem

 

[Masterchiefxx17]

That driver issue is typically solved by reinstalling a poor driver, but in this case, it sounds like its a bad GPU that needs to be replaced. Have you checked its warranty period?

 

[Healthbig]

I completely removed the graphics card and plugged the monitor into the onboard one, still had the same problem.

 

[_nobody_]

Reading your case... :banghead:

(Very) Interesting one, I admit. At the beginning, I suspected your PSU, but after (your) last post I abandoned this theory, since you took out GFX PCIe card, and took out at least 150W of PSU budget. :whistling:

You do have Intel Core i5-4670K @ 3.40GHz (so called HSW CPU with 4 COREs w/o HYP): Intel® Coreâ„¢ i5-4670K Processor (6M Cache, up to 3.80 GHz) Specifications

So, something definitely changed with your platform... What? :uhoh:
_______

Let us try one interesting (rather peculiar) thing?! Shall we? Could you, please, re-seat your CPU in the Asus Z87-A Motherboard socket? :grin:

_nobody_

 

[satrow]

Could be heat, power, a 'bad' combination of drivers...

Testing for heat is fairly easy, remove the side of the case and point a household fan blowing into it.

Uninstall your SteelSeries (mouse?) drivers and install it as a plain mouse, uninstall from the NVidia control Panel all but the basic graphics drivers (No 3d, Streaming, Shadowplay etc.), uninstall and disconnect the XBox USB controller. Set Steam so that it doesn't use overlay, just the minimum needed, even if it complains ^^.

Block OneDrive from starting at boot, if you have any ASUS, motherboard or gfx card utilities running/installed, stop/remove them.

 

[Healthbig]

Heat was the first thing I suspected when the problems started, opened up the case to check if all fans were running or dust was blocking heatsinks, no problems there whatsoever. Checked temperatures as well, they are ~20c at startup, ~30c idle and ~40c during load, not much of a difference between CPU and GPU there. Didn't have a house fan but I did open up the side of the case for a day. Also just double-checked and the temperatures are still in that range, nothing unusual.

Bad driver combos are another thing I suspected which is why I eventually reset my Win10 installation and installed only the bare minimum to get a game running on steam and the problem was still there, so I just ended up reinstalling everything again. I've just done it again because last time I didn't block OneDrive or uninstalled the Xbox controller but still no luck.

As for the steam overlay, that is also something I disabled but forgot to mention. I should also mention that yesterday I had the problem outside of games for the first time. I was running firefox with a lot of open tabs with random flash content on them (twitch streams, unlocked sites with ads etc.) and the PC slowed to a crawl followed by the display driver crash. I opened up task manager and killed the process before a hang occurred but it does show that the same problem happens outside of steam/games with excessive usage of firefox.

As _nobody_ asked I also just did a re-seat of the CPU into the motherboard and PC startup was nice enough to tell me I installed a new CPU so that part went smoothly. Sadly the hang would still occur as soon as I started a game so it didn't fix the problem.

 

[_nobody_]

As _nobody_ asked I also just did a re-seat of the CPU into the motherboard and PC startup was nice enough to tell me I installed a new CPU so that part went smoothly. Sadly the hang would still occur as soon as I started a game so it didn't fix the problem.

Hello Health,

Could you, please, post for us System Event info? Here is how would find it (very similar for WIN10 as well): Open Event Viewer - Windows Help

Thank you,
_nobody_

 

[Healthbig]

Attached system events, hope it helps

 

[Healthbig]

Late update but the problem has been solved. Re-traced my steps and found out that the problem only stopped when I completely removed the graphics card and uninstalled the drivers with DDU (previously only removed the graphics card from the PC). Don't know if one caused the other to fail or whatnot but I finally got a new GTX 960 and installed it and the PC works fine now.