Solved PC freezes during gameplay, unable to do anything and have to force shutdown and restart

Nov 15, 2021
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Hi everyone,

Been running into this problem for a while now where during gameplay (AC Valhalla, Witcher 3, Age of Empires IV among others) the screen will freeze, audio drops out, keyboard and mouse become unusable and theres nothing to do but force shutdown and restart. I have tried running some diagnostic/stress tests such as Memtest86, Furmark but haven't been able to nail down what the cause may be. My PC has been able to play these games in the past without issue at 1080p 144fps on high but not highest settings and I have tried a fresh install of Windows 10, format of drives. Any ideas? Thank you in advance :)

PC Specs

CPU: Intel Core i7-9700k
GPU: RTX 2070 Super 8gb
RAM: 16gb
Motherboard: MSI MPG Z390 Gaming Edge AC
PSU: Corsair RM650 650W 80+ Gold
 
Hi and welcome.

I assume you are monitoring temperatures for GPU and CPU and they are looking ok?

Is the RAM you are using a matched kit of 2x8GB, not bought separately?

Have you tried rolling back video card drivers to an older version and testing?

What drive are the games installed on, and have you tried playing them from a different drive?

Just a few thoughts to start with, others here are much better with Windows stuff then me, but it seems you are on a clean install you much of that stuff might be dealt with already.
 
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Welcome to the forum :)

screen will freeze
audio drops out
keyboard and mouse become unusable
Those are all input or output devices, so my bet is there's something wrong in the I/O management area—about which I know zilch, sadly :(

Look in Device Manager for any yellow warning icons—expand sections to see individual components.
Check Reliability Monitor and/or Event Viewer for any warnings around the times of the problem happening.

An expert may post re how to test your hardware for I/O issues. If I recall correctly, there's an I/O Controller on the motherboard, maybe part of the mobo chipset… but time for me to shut up now [crowd sighs with relief] :D

ETA [sorry crowd]: Is there any pattern to the crashes, eg always within 5 minutes, only when wind is from east, etc?
 
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Nov 15, 2021
6
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Hi and welcome.

I assume you are monitoring temperatures for GPU and CPU and they are looking ok?

Is the RAM you are using a matched kit of 2x8GB, not bought separately?

Have you tried rolling back video card drivers to an older version and testing?

What drive are the games installed on, and have you tried playing them from a different drive?

Just a few thoughts to start with, others here are much better with Windows stuff then me, but it seems you are on a clean install you much of that stuff might be dealt with already.


Yep CPU and GPU temps sitting in a comfortable range. RAM is 4 sticks of 4gb memory. Games are installed in a 2tb HDD and the OS is installed on a 500gb m.2 SSD. Will have a go at the video card drivers and will see what happens
 
Nov 15, 2021
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Welcome to the forum :)


Those are all input or output devices, so my bet is there's something wrong in the I/O management area—about which I know zilch, sadly :(

Look in Device Manager for any yellow warning icons—expand sections to see individual components.
Check Reliability Monitor and/or Event Viewer for any warnings around the times of the problem happening.

An expert may post re how to test your hardware for I/O issues. If I recall correctly, there's an I/O Controller on the motherboard, maybe part of the mobo chipset… but time for me to shut up now [crowd sighs with relief] :D

ETA [sorry crowd]: Is there any pattern to the crashes, eg always within 5 minutes, only when wind is from east, etc?

Okay, Event Viewer is showing a whole lot of errors. It never occured to me to check this so give me some time to work through this and I'll get back to you :)
 
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Nov 15, 2021
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4x4 RAM bought in the exact same kit? Presumably running at XMP settings?

Not running XMP, however looks like 2 of them are at one frequency and the other two are at another (same manufacturer and model). But I have been running this set up for a while now and only just recently started having problems. I'll take one set out and run it at 8gb and see if that helps :)
 
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Okay, Event Viewer is showing a whole lot of errors. It never occured to me to check this so give me some time to work through this and I'll get back to you :)
Event viever is showing warnings every 10 seconds. heres what it says:

Source: DistributedCOM
Event ID:10016
Level: Warning

The application-specific permission settings do not grant Local Activation permission for the COM Server application with CLSID
{37399C92-DC3F-4B55-AE5B-811EE82398AD}
and APPID
{37399C92-DC3F-4B55-AE5B-811EE82398AD}
to the user DESKTOP-TNCQLES\jorda SID (S-1-5-21-1577697327-1348286829-1777262858-1001) from address LocalHost (Using LRPC) running in the application container Microsoft.GamingApp_2111.1001.3.0_x64__8wekyb3d8bbwe SID (S-1-15-2-1723189366-2159580849-2248400763-1481059666-1951766778-2756563051-3565589001). This security permission can be modified using the Component Services administrative tool.
 
Not running XMP, however looks like 2 of them are at one frequency and the other two are at another (same manufacturer and model). But I have been running this set up for a while now and only just recently started having problems. I'll take one set out and run it at 8gb and see if that helps :)

Yes try running 8GB, or setting RAM to JEDEC settings and see if it helps. XMP is technically overclocking and overlocking can be unstable. :) I'm pretty sure your RAM cant be running at different frequencies though, it should default to the same frequency.

Just a note that same manufacturer and model doesn't mean same RAM every time. If you bought two kits separately it can cause problems with XMP settings, the chips underneath the heat spreaders can be different even if the higher timings all match on paper. Might have found a glitch in the lower timings not matching up after a while.

If you have fast boot enabled in BIOS disable it, it may also help.

I'm pretty sure your 10016 warning is a common one and not the cause of your problems, I have dozens of them myself and theyre harmless. One other thing to try would be unplugging all USB devices/trying different ports for them.

I focus on RAM because I've been helping people on the net for a while, and weird freezes and glitches like youre experiencing have often ended up being from someone using mismatched RAM kits, in my experience.
 
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Nov 15, 2021
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I've been running it at 8gb of RAM for a day now and that seems to have solved the problem. No issues so far. Looks like something faulty with my RAM set. Found it kind of odd though that Memtest86 didn't flag the issue? oh well at least it's running well enough now.

Thanks for your help everyone :)
 
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@Kaamos_Llama is it possible that seating the 4 x RAM sticks in different slots could work? Shame if Jordan is stuck with only 8GB usable.

I wouldnt have thought so, but its worth trying almost anything.

I've been running it at 8gb of RAM for a day now and that seems to have solved the problem. No issues so far. Looks like something faulty with my RAM set. Found it kind of odd though that Memtest86 didn't flag the issue? oh well at least it's running well enough now.

Thanks for your help everyone :)

Memtest is only good at finding bad sticks of RAM, its actually bad at finding any instability. You'd need to to use something like Karhu or HCI Memtest for stability when overclocking, its easy forget that enabling XMP is overclocking.

Try aiming for a slightly lower frequency, and make sure fast boot is disabled in BIOS so that the system spends more time training the memory on start up. See if it helps. Otherwise I'd just sell the two 8GB kits and buy a matched kit of 2x8.

It's technically possible to tune any RAM sticks to work together, it does take a lot of time and effort to learn, test and try and match up the lower timings manually though. Unless the idea of hours of stress testing appeals then better off buying a new kit.
 
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