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Hardware failure?

T

Tuf

Limp Gawd
Joined
May 18, 2008
Messages
491
I'm getting random shutdowns w/ no BSOD. I do not think it is software related but am not sure. The shutdowns can happen when playing a game, surfing the web or when loading windows after a reboot. My screens just go blank, audio will stutter if there is sound running but the PC will either restart or just stay blank with the mb and fans still lit up. If I disable auto restart the system will just hang while the screens are blank and I have to do a hard reboot. It does not seem to crash when idle, only when I'm doing anything from gaming to working on spreadsheets.

I'll start with memtest and testing the system w/ one stick of ram at a time but sometimes the system will go a day or two with no crash, other times it will crash on reboot. It started recently about a week ago but I have not installed any new hardware or software (aside from updates).

I figured in the meantime I would make the inquiry and see if anyone had a suggestion that would help prioritize my effort to find the culprit. My intention was to test the ram first, then PSU (by replacing with a spare) then GPU. I should probably run the system in safe mode to help determine if it is software or hardware.

Event log reports the following: Graphics subsystem resources are over-utilized/a sharp degradation in desktop window manager resposiveness observed

the desktop window manager responsiveness has degraded

cpu resources are over-utilized/a sharp degradation in desktop window manager responsiveness was observed

MSI afterburner reports the gpu temp at ~46 degrees
CPUz reporting the CPUs between 40 and 50 degrees (currently at stock speeds)



Thanks for any advice.
 
Tuf said:
I'm getting random shutdowns w/ no BSOD. I do not think it is software related but am not sure. The shutdowns can happen when playing a game, surfing the web or when loading windows after a reboot.
Click to expand...
Most probably it is the bad sectors in your HD.
 
I ran the WD diagnostic on my HDD and it showed no problems.

The CPU survived about a dozen Intel Burn tests on "High"

Ran Furmark on the GPU for a while and it did not crash but I noticed the crashes were accompanied by some coil whine on the 580. I don't know if that means anything necessarily but I sure hope it' not dying, it's been crashing when I try to play games. I don't know if this necessarily means anything either but when both monitors are plugged into the 580, they go blank on the crash, if one is plugged into a 430 GT I plugged in to play around with PhysX and framerates, the 580 goes blank and I can see the extended desktop on the one plugged into the 430 (though it's frozen). The crashes were happening before the 430 was installed.

I am pretty sure the whine is coming from the card and not the psu; when the system was hung up I unplugged the card and the sound stopped. The whine sounds like it's coming from the card if I lean in and try to locate the source.
 
That does sound like a GPU. A while back I had a similar problem. All the same symptoms (No whine though), and it was my 3870 overheating.
 
This might sound like a silly suggestion but I was experiencing a similar problem a few months ago. I thought it was my power supply but I read online that it could be my graphics card. Give this a shot: Power down your computer and unplug your power supply from the wall outlet for five minutes and then plug it back in, boot up and see if the problem clears persists. If this doesn't help disregard my suggestion and follow the folks that have much more experience than I do.
 
I'm open to most suggestions, Sondogg, no worries there, thanks for yours - I actually did unplug the CPU for about 10 minutes (why not?).

While it was unplugged I changed slots on the 580 thinking it my have been damaged while moving the PC (though I'm usually pretty careful) and have not had any crashes in two days while working or gaming. I supposed it could have merely been loose and I'll try reseating it in the first slot to be sure and I planned on putting another 580 for SLI at some point.

I usually hear a bit of whine when the system starts up so maybe the times when I hear it during crashes is due to low/intermittent power ?
 
Thank you for reporting back Tuf, I'm glad to hear things are working. I hope that by swapping the card to a different port solved your problem, but on the off chance the problem comes back in a couple weeks try unplugging your PS again for about 10 minutes then plugging it back in and starting up. If that fixes it you know it isn't the port.

I'm having trouble finding the original thread where this was discussed but apparently there's some sort of defect with five series (and maybe four but I haven't heard anything about the six series) Nvidia cards that causes some buffer to overflow with errors and eventually the card starts throwing OS errors and the display driver crashes, and will continue to do so until you literally unplug your power supply from the wall and let it reset that way. In my experience this problem is driver independent, and really only happens if you leave your machine running 24/7. Normally it's about 10-14 days after unplugging my system that the problem comes back after 24/7 operation.

Since this started I turn off my computer every night and I haven't had it happen again. From what I can tell there is also a direct connection between this problem and Firefox so I've also made the switch to Chrome and I haven't had the problem happen since. I'm not sure if this is the issue you're facing but hopefully it will give you some other options to try if the issue comes back. Good luck!
 
I have everything plugged into the original slots and it's been solid for a few days now. Either you were right about the PSU, the card was just loose, or it is an intermittent problem waiting to rear it's annoying head again.

Thanks again to you guys for offering advice.
 
Ugh ... crash, crash, crash, crash ... and crash last night

No idea

Who knows if it's even hardware. Maybe I'll do a fresh install. I so hate crap like this but it does happen from time to time.

Update: Well I have to say I might just be a dummy. Something I should have started with but did not. I removed, unplugged, cleaned out and reseated everything in the case and everything's been solid for a week. I finally got a decent voltage tester and the PSU was A-OK so for now I'm assuming that something was likely loose and causing a fault on the mainboard.
 
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