Help me diagnose intermittent freezing

[M76]

I've been experiencing freezing on my workstation, and can't figure out what is causing it.

It occurs when running specific programs, that rely on heavy IO and octree building. It's not a blue screen, it is a completely instantaneous freeze of everything in place.

So far I was unable to reproduce the freezing with any synthetic test. I ran prime95, quickmemorytest, various SSD benchmarking tools.

Why the SSD forum? Because the freezing only occurs when the process is ran on one specific SSD, a 2TB Samsung 960 PRO NVME drive.
If I run the programs with a different (SATA) drive, the freezing does not happen. But even on the 960 PRO it is intermittent.

The 960 PRO's health is fine, no issues reported, just installed the latest firmware, that didn't change anything.

So what more can I do to diagnose this?

I'm not sure if the SSD is even causing the issue, it is entirely possible that the faster SSD allows the program to run quicker exacerbating some other issue.

 

[pendragon1]

make sure chipset drivers are up to date. maybe try a new cable or a a different port

 

[Vengance_01]

Is this your OS drive as well?

 

[M76]

make sure chipset drivers are up to date. maybe try a new cable or a a different port

Different cable for NVME? There are no chipset drivers available for this board from ASUS, and since intel no longer offers generic chipset driver downloads, there is not much I can do.

Is this your OS drive as well?

No.

 

[pendragon1]

Different cable for NVME? There are no chipset drivers available for this board from ASUS, and since intel no longer offers generic chipset driver downloads, there is not much I can do.

No.

i saw SSD, missed the nvme part... another slot?

 

[M76]

i saw SSD, missed the nvme part... another slot?

The only other slot is occupied by the system drive. The best I could do is swap them. IDK if that'd affect windows's ability to boot.

 

[pendragon1]

The only other slot is occupied by the system drive. The best I could do is swap them. IDK if that'd affect windows's ability to boot.

idk, it should work. if not, flip them back.
what board/chipset? you should still be able to find a driver pack somewhere...

 

[M76]

idk, it should work. if not, flip them back.
what board/chipset? you should still be able to find a driver pack somewhere...

X299

I just updated the NVME driver and it didn't freeze on the file it freezed on yesterday, but it might just be a fluke. Guess I have to continue using it as is, and if it happens again try something else.

 

[pendragon1]

X299

I just updated the NVME driver and it didn't freeze on the file it freezed on yesterday, but it might just be a fluke. Guess I have to continue using it as is, and if it happens again try something else.

hopefully thats that then.
also, after some googling, it seems like the x299 drivers come in through windows update's optional updates. so id double check those are al installed and that youre as good as you can get.

 

[M76]

The freezing is back, it happened 3 times yesterday and once today already. Now even when using a different drive for work, so it is most likely not drive related.Although copying files seems to be a contributing factor, as every freeze occured while a copy was ongoing.

 

[Vengance_01]

The freezing is back, it happened 3 times yesterday and once today already. Now even when using a different drive for work, so it is most likely not drive related.Although copying files seems to be a contributing factor, as every freeze occured while a copy was ongoing.

Board then or drive itself

 

[Luke M]

With random strange problems, I always suspect bad RAM. Unless you have ECC of course.

Don't trust memory tests, they only find severe problems.

 

[learners permit]

HW info check nvme temp under load?

 

[M76]

With random strange problems, I always suspect bad RAM. Unless you have ECC of course.

Don't trust memory tests, they only find severe problems.

I suspect the ram too, but I need to somehow confirm it. It might be the board, or even the CPU after all.

I might try removing half the RAM and resocket the rest, for start. I don't need all for what it's doing now anyway.

 

[M76]

HW info check nvme temp under load?

It also produced the crash when only using SATA drives now. And also using different software too. Maybe it is getting worse, which is a good thing, makes it easier to reproduce.

 

[M76]

Updated the bios to the latest, didn't freeze since then but it might just be a fluke.

 

[learners permit]

Well what's the status dammit?

 

[M76]

The good news is that, it didn't freeze since then, the bad news is that the new bios is bugged and the computer now starts with "GPT Corruption detected" on every boot.
It seems to be a widespread issue on ASUS MBs when updating bios. But letting it auto repair worked so far.

 

[Furious_Styles]

The good news is that, it didn't freeze since then, the bad news is that the new bios is bugged and the computer now starts with "GPT Corruption detected" on every boot.
It seems to be a widespread issue on ASUS MBs when updating bios. But letting it auto repair worked so far.

Is that mainly the X299 boards? I've updated the bios on just about every Asus board from the past 10+ years (rarely X299) and have never seen that error.

 

[M76]

Is that mainly the X299 boards? I've updated the bios on just about every Asus board from the past 10+ years (rarely X299) and have never seen that error.

I've seen numerous complaints about this on ASUS and ROG forums going back years some even predating X299. I've had many ASUS boards also, and this is the first time I'm seeing this.

 

[Furious_Styles]

I've seen numerous complaints about this on ASUS and ROG forums going back years some even predating X299. I've had many ASUS boards also, and this is the first time I'm seeing this.

It also could be that most of the boards I repair, when I test/update bios I usually don't connect the SATA/nvme drive until after doing the bios update.