Your computer is experiencing frequent crashes and restarts, but you're unsure of the cause.
Your computer is experiencing frequent crashes and restarts, but you're unsure of the cause.
Hi, over the past three days my computer kept freezing or restarting unexpectedly. It happened after leaving it unattended for too long or putting it into hibernation. I wasn’t sure what was causing it. Last night it froze and would reboot at random intervals, usually lasting about ten minutes before stopping. This morning it seems even more erratic, sometimes shutting down in just four minutes or longer. I looked in the Event Viewer but didn’t find any clues about freezing or rebooting. In the Reliability Viewer I saw a hardware failure, but I can’t get any details from that. I cleaned everything inside my PC, checked the motherboard for damage, and found nothing. My specs are: CPU – AMD Ryzen 9 5950X; Motherboard – ATX Gigabyte X570S; RAM – 2x G.SKILL Trident Z Neo RGB 32GB; GPU – MSI RTX 3080; SSD – Corsair MP400 1TB NVMe PCIe M.2 (divided into software and Windows partitions); HDD – ST4000VX013-2XG104; PSU – Gigabyte GP-P850GM. I can boot my BIOS and it works fine, rarely freezing or rebooting on its own. Still worried about using the Windows Recovery tool because it keeps freezing or shutting down randomly even after multiple attempts. I’m really stuck and would appreciate any advice or help. Please let me know if you need anything!
Hi buddy, A few things to try as follows: 1. Try booting with a single stick of ram. Try the other stick. Try another slot..... 2. Create a bootable USB stick with Memtest and run that. It will take a while but its not a bad shout to give your ram a thorough check. 3. Make sure you are running everything at stock settings so if you have an OC applied, revert to stock. Same with the Ram so if you have XMP/DOCP/EXPO enabled, disable it. 4. Make sure your BIOS is up-to-date. 5. Do a fresh install of Windows. Nothing better than a clean start. And don't bother with multiple partitions. One drive, one partition. When you look at the Event Viewer > Windows Logs > System, do you see a big red 'Critical' event at the time of the reboot? It should say something like 'Critical Kernel Power' I think? While this is a normal one letting you know the system has crashed, is there anything before that (all should be time stamped) that looks untoward? Just use the Windows 'Snipping' tool to take a screenshot of the Event Viewer Window and drag the resulting pic into the text box below so we can take a look. Most mobo, cpu and ram issues are harder to decipher in the Event Viewer but if its your 3080 at fault then its should be easy. NVLDDMKM event is a classic Nvidia driver crash! For me, I find doing a fresh-install of Windows a good 1st port of call. All of my files are backed up on cloud and I have a 1Gbs internet connection so re-downloading my games / apps / programs takes no time at all. While for others this might be a real pain the rear-end it really is the only way you can rule out a software / driver issue. If none of the above steps helps and the system is still crashing even after a fresh Windows install then your probably looking at a hardware issue and if you don't have a box off goodies to rummage around in then your kinda screwed. Spare Ram and PSUs are fairly typical for the box in the attic but spare compatible mobo's and CPUs are less likely to find lying around. Good luck.
Unfortunately, I'm having issues getting started from BIOS to USB. I don't want to reinstall just in case it fixes things, but I'll try updating if needed.