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My computer has been randomly freezing for about a month. There seems to be no obvious patterns, it can run days or just hours. The problem seems to only occur in my Windows OS, when booted to Linux I have not observed this problem. No USBs are plugged in (usually) when the computer crashes. The computer is <1 year old and the battery is even newer (~6 months old). I know for certain the computer has frozen when using the battery, I believe it has also occurred while plugged in to an outlet (although I cannot remember).

Symptoms

  • All lights that were on when the computer froze remain on (including CAPS and the HDD light)
  • The screen will turn off when shutting the computer, but it will NOT go to sleep
  • If any sound was playing, the sound repeats causing a horrible noice
  • The computer has froze while running on battery power, probably when plugged in too, although I cannot remember for certain

Diagnostics

  • I have run sfc /scannow and DISM.exe, the results can be seen on this post. No system files appear to be corrupt.
  • I ran the Windows Memory Diagnostic Tool using the extended option (memtester64+ is not available for UEFI systems). No problems were detected.
  • I used Prime95 to test the CPU using Small FFT's. It ran for ~25 hours when I manually stopped it without detecting any issues. Since running ~12 hours is a sign of a stable CPU, I figure the CPU is fine.
  • I ran Window's chkdsk, no problems were detected.
  • I checked the HDD's S.M.A.R.T. and no problems were reported.
  • I verified the HDD using Linux, no problems were reported.
  • I used a 3DMark to benchmark/test my GPU. The results were slightly below the average, but this was probably due to my system (power) settings. I am assuming the problem does not exist with the GPU (I believe it would have froze if the problem did exist here).
  • Device manager is not reporting any problems.
  • The problem does not appear to be overheating, the CPU rarely gets hot and there are 2 fans.

Related Specs

  • Windows 8.1 dual booted with Ubuntu Linux (no problems appear to occur in Ubuntu)
  • 12 GBs of RAM
  • Intel Core i7-4700HQ (Quad-core)
  • GeForce GTX 770M GPU
  • 2 HDDs

When Does this Occur?

  • Completely randomly. I neither play games nor videos on the computer. It has occurred regardless of whether I am streaming music or not.

I am not sure what/how to test anything else. If you need any additional information, please let me know. Any help and suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

Edit:

The Linux and Windows OSes are on separate HDDs.

Update

I ran memtest86 with 3 passes and all memory modules in the computer. The tests did not find anything.

I cannot seem to get Hiren's Boot CD to run on my system, even after disabling secure boot and setting SATA->IDE. I cannot find the legacy boot option in my BIOS, it may not be available.

Community
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c1moore
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3 Answers3

1

The fact that the freezing issue doesn't occur in Linux proves to me that this is a Software issue, not hardware. This fact is reaffirmed by your previous post and comments regarding sfc finding bad system files and not being able to repair them.

To be honest you've tried everything (I can think of) regarding WinOS tools/commands. ie: dism, sfc, chkdsk. The only thing you can do from here is running a 3rd party, bootable iso, that scans your HDD's for "soft bad sectors" that might be contributing to bad system files.

Here's a link to HDD scanning tools that I've used personally. Remember you want to try a bootable tool. https://gist.github.com/BiTinerary/d3f75f50a3517dae5fd5

However most people never actually do that and would rather argue contrary to my suggestion, if that's the case then the only option you have is a backup/Reinstall. Which may actually be quicker than running a HDD scan since it will take several hours depending on the size of your drive/s and isn't actually guaranteed to solve anything.

Quick reference to bootable HDD scanners:

~ MHDD http://hddguru.com/software/2005.10.02-MHDD/
~ Hiren's BootCD http://www.hirensbootcd.org/download/
~ Try looking for a bootable HDD scanner offered by your drives manufacturer. Most manufacturer's offer one, it can just be a little tricky finding it.

1

I still believe its a hardware/ram issue, or maybe some nasty windows driver(GPU? Intel RST?).

The Windows Memory tools does not put enough stress on RAM, at least on Windows 7, I've seen machines passing windows memory test but failed on memtest86. You can get a UEFI ready memtest86 here. and rerun the test. And since you have 12GB RAM(8GB+4GB), you can remove one stick at a time to see if the problem is gone, and if possible disable the NVidia card and use the Intel GPU exclusively.

lex
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0

As your hardware test, sfc check and stable running Linux shows, this is not a hardware or Windows problem. This is a problem is a incompatible or problematic software. Please de-install all "resident utilities" or "so-called tools" until the problem dis-appears (include also add-ons or add-ins loaded from websites into your browser). Test your system after the de-installation of tools you really like, or de-install everything, then install one by one and test extensively to ensure the system stays stable. There are many good & great tools, but there are some tools even from well recognized companies resulting in issues. In the most severe case, do a clean install and then be very careful what to install afterwards. I learned this lesson the hard way - unfortunately multiple times.

Thomas Stich
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