Windows 11 keeps freezing or crashing often, but it doesn't happen if you have a virtual machine running.
Windows 11 keeps freezing or crashing often, but it doesn't happen if you have a virtual machine running.
Hey everyone, I am having very strange problems. Before I try to fix the big reset problem, could someone tell me what's causing it? It seems really different from just how things look. I'm using Windows 11 on a Ryzen 9 5900X (here are all the exact details at the end). The computer is freezing more and more often. This started when the PC was sitting idle for too long: the screens would go dark because of power saving after about 15 minutes. After some time, one monitor would turn on with a black screen (so background lights were on but no signal came through). The whole PC wouldn't work, and I had to do a hard reset to fix it. Now it happens more often too, freezing even when the monitors are still on. Sometimes just the screen freezes showing a black or inverted frame. Then blue screens appear with messages like "DPC watchdog violation..." Since everything seemed connected to the graphics output and sometimes the picture looked distorted, I swapped out the graphics card for another one (a 3080). That didn't help at all. So now I have ruled out the GPU from being part of the problem. Here is a weird thing: whenever I really use the machine or run a VM in the background with VirtualBox, it never crashes. It seems like the CPU virtualization feature somehow prevents this issue. I stress tested my RAM using memtest86 for 8 straight hours and there were no errors. I also stress tested the CPU in Windows as long as it was running, but once it stopped working when idle, it crashed after a while. So I thought my Windows installation was just messed up. I booted into a live Linux from an USB stick to see what happened there too, and even then it froze after some idle time. --> so this looks like a hardware problem after all? Would I just reinstall Windows and find out how far that gets me with a fresh system, but I have such a lot of carefully configured software here, and while I do have backups, I don't really have the time to just reinstall everything to figure it out now. Linux from USB also freezing doesn't look very promising either. Any tips on how to proceed ideally? Or to find the root cause: is this all Software or Hardware? Of course, I updated all drivers and BIOS settings as well; everything looks up to date. My hardware settings are clean too, no overclocking (I took out the XMP on my RAM). I took out *all* USB devices except for the keyboard and mouse. That didn't help either. I removed all extra drives that weren't part of the OS. Same problem here. The System Event Viewer doesn't show any helpful messages before the machine dies, at least I couldn't identify any consistent bad actors. Basically, to me this leaves potential culprits as: CPU, Motherboard (and maybe power supply), or maybe Windows itself. Looking forward to any tips and hints in the right direction. Many many thanks! Hunchi Specs: Ryzen 9 5900X with Gigabyte B550 Aorus Pro V2 motherboard (latest firmware and drivers...) RAM is 64 GB DDR4-3200 running on G.Skill RipJaws V. The OS runs on an M.2 SSD using a Samsung 980 PRO hard drive. The power supply is a Fractal Design Ion+ with 860P cooling, but the GPU is an RTX 3080.
Hey there! Welcome to the discussion board! If everything seemed weird about your picture quality and even sometimes looked scrambled, I swapped my graphics card for another brand's 3080. That didn't help at all. So now we are removing that old GPU from our list of issues. Here is a trick you can try: use DDU to wipe out every single driver on your system, then manually install the newest driver directly from Nvidia's website in an elevated command line (like clicking 'Run as Administrator' when opening the installer). To make sense of this, how old is your motherboard BIOS version? Also, if you decide to reinstall Windows later, please use the official Windows Media Creation Tools to create a fresh installer and rule out any corruption. Here are some other details: Fractal Design Ion+ 860P Power Supply Box - How long have you had this power supply in your build?
Check Reliability History/Monitor for error codes, warnings, or events right before or at the time of crashes/crashes. It is much easier to use than Event Viewer and helps you see patterns in the timeline. Your Fractal Design PSU has been used a lot for gaming, video editing, or mining. Lots of errors make it a likely suspect.
Hey everyone, thanks so much for your notes. It took me a while to get around them all... Here is the info: BIOS Version is F16f (the latest), and before that it was something like 15. The same problems keep happening. Reliability History: Thanks! I didn't know how to use this tool. No data, except one driver called "MuseFX Hub" failing often. I removed it. Nothing changed. Power Supply Unit (PSU): It's max 2 years old (thought of from November 2021). Used to mine a bit back then, but stopped long ago. Swapped it for another BeQuiet PSU, and it runs fine on another PC. The problems keep coming back. Also RAM load tests and memtests are clean, so I think the power isn't the issue. DDU / Graphics Driver: Tried rebooting into safe mode, which completely messed up the system (once you get there, it freezes). If it gets started... Mostly already in a loop trying to fix the OS while freezing. So I took out all SSDs except the original OS SSD. When I finally formatted that one and tried to install Win using a USB stick I made for newbies, it wouldn't let me start (various error messages: "This PC is not fit for Win 11" (what?), then after taking the SSD out and putting it back in, it said it couldn't create the partition on the drive. Played with boot order, swapped SSDs many times, put the same one in again - eventually it worked to install on that SSD). BUT: As soon as the installer is done and I boot from the SSD, the computer crashes after 1-5 mins. Mostly already when still starting up. Took out all SSDs and put in an old reliable HDD. Same story: Installs, but crashes once you start from the HDD. The HDD works fine on other PCs. Tried to booted live Linux (UEFI) from a USB stick. Sometimes it crashes while booting, but after X comes up, it starts working again. With all these issues... I'm really lost. If I had to guess without any technical info: Some PCIe lanes fried? The North bridge fried? Is something wrong with the UEFI? What bugs me most is that the system runs normal for hours in BIOS, just monitoring health, and does memtests for hours without freezing or errors. Can't throw out much more, only thing left are CPU and board I guess? Building systems since 2000 and would consider myself tech-savy, but for this one I really struggle to find a root cause... Any other hints?
So… after getting a new motherboard: Same story. I just swapped in a CPU instead of an old one called the 1700X — and everything worked fine. It was actually that super fast Ryzen 5900x at the end. Now AMD says it's only two years old, so I'm hoping for good luck. That part was the stuff I didn't expect to break down first. How is this even possible? It never got rough treatment and came with a fancy cooling setup on top. Sure, I did make a lot of noise or put heavy load on it, which is why you should use that 9-series processor, but nothing crazy happened.
I'm happy to hear about your new CPU! Since you're using AMD's service, everything went smoothly: I received the part and it passed all our checks. Now that we've confirmed everything is working correctly, we can swap out your old processor for this brand-new one. It took us about two weeks to get from sending the parts back to getting them back here. Let me know if you need anything else!