Computer Issues

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Ossoi

Potato del Grande
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Have you tried any hardware changes? Going down to 1 stick of ram and swapping them in an out. Pulling extra hard drives, installing windows on to a different hard drive, if you're on an intel CPU using the integrated gpu instead of your video card? Hard to tell what is going on without more information about what is crashing.

Ok barely getting any system stability now and crashes constantly preventing me from doing anything. I will repeat what happened from the start for sake of clarity:

1. Was getting frequent crashes; BSOD and instant reboots - I needed my phone camera to film the BSOD in order to see the error message "Critical Process Died"

2. During the reboots sometimes Windows 10 would boot, sometimes it wouldn't because it couldn't see the windows install SSD. Had to restart until it was visible or go into bios to manually select it

3. Next Windows wouldn't load/boot - just went into "choose your keyboard layout". It was this point when I reinstalled.

4. Reinstall didn't help, would still get occasional crashes/reboots with Critical Process Died,, but after a few crashes things would be relatively stable.

.....4a) after the reinstall boot screen was not visible on my TV. I had to plug an old monitor into int gfx to see the boot screen, go into bios and tell bios to use the gfx card (not sure how it was set to int gfx = possible clue that bios options somehow reset?)

(Also, after the reinstall I never had any problems with the Windows installation not being found during boot)

5) now crashes constantly within minutes of logging into Windows. Seems to lock up and not even show the BSOD

What are my options?

Don't have work laptop with me and don't feel like messing around as it's Sunday evening here.

Don't have a spare SSD or HD to reinstall on.

I'm thinking I could unplug gfx card and test with internal gfx. And test the memory too

Here are my system specs:

  • Streacom ST-F12C Black Aluminium Chassis
  • Gigabyte GA-Z170XP-SLI LGA1151 ATX Motherboard
  • Intel 6th Gen Core i5 6600K 3.5GHz 91W HD 530 6MB Quad Core CPU
  • Corsair DDR4 Vengeance LPX 16GB (2x8GB) 2400MHz Memory Kit
  • Scythe Shuriken Rev.B Quiet Low Profile CPU Cooler
  • Palit Geforce GTX 970 Jetstream 4GB GDDR5 Graphics Card
  • be quiet Pure Power L8 Modular 730W PSU, 80+ Bronze
  • Quiet PC IEC C13 UK Mains Power Cord, 1.8m (Type G)
  • Samsung SM951 256GB M.2 PCIe NVMe SSD
  • WD WD60EFRX Red 6TB 3.5in Hard Disk Drive
  • Microsoft Windows 10 Home 64-bit
 

Lanx

<Prior Amod>
65,278
147,168
Ok barely getting any system stability now and crashes constantly preventing me from doing anything. I will repeat what happened from the start for sake of clarity:

1. Was getting frequent crashes; BSOD and instant reboots - I needed my phone camera to film the BSOD in order to see the error message "Critical Process Died"

2. During the reboots sometimes Windows 10 would boot, sometimes it wouldn't because it couldn't see the windows install SSD. Had to restart until it was visible or go into bios to manually select it

3. Next Windows wouldn't load/boot - just went into "choose your keyboard layout". It was this point when I reinstalled.

4. Reinstall didn't help, would still get occasional crashes/reboots with Critical Process Died,, but after a few crashes things would be relatively stable.

.....4a) after the reinstall boot screen was not visible on my TV. I had to plug an old monitor into int gfx to see the boot screen, go into bios and tell bios to use the gfx card (not sure how it was set to int gfx = possible clue that bios options somehow reset?)

(Also, after the reinstall I never had any problems with the Windows installation not being found during boot)

5) now crashes constantly within minutes of logging into Windows. Seems to lock up and not even show the BSOD

What are my options?

Don't have work laptop with me and don't feel like messing around as it's Sunday evening here.

Don't have a spare SSD or HD to reinstall on.

I'm thinking I could unplug gfx card and test with internal gfx. And test the memory too

Here are my system specs:

  • Streacom ST-F12C Black Aluminium Chassis
  • Gigabyte GA-Z170XP-SLI LGA1151 ATX Motherboard
  • Intel 6th Gen Core i5 6600K 3.5GHz 91W HD 530 6MB Quad Core CPU
  • Corsair DDR4 Vengeance LPX 16GB (2x8GB) 2400MHz Memory Kit
  • Scythe Shuriken Rev.B Quiet Low Profile CPU Cooler
  • Palit Geforce GTX 970 Jetstream 4GB GDDR5 Graphics Card
  • be quiet Pure Power L8 Modular 730W PSU, 80+ Bronze
  • Quiet PC IEC C13 UK Mains Power Cord, 1.8m (Type G)
  • Samsung SM951 256GB M.2 PCIe NVMe SSD
  • WD WD60EFRX Red 6TB 3.5in Hard Disk Drive
  • Microsoft Windows 10 Home 64-bit
at least double check you're not overheating, thermal sinks are in place w/ paste and seated proper, and put a big ass box fan against the computer to eliminate heat as an issue, then you'll know it's really software/bios issue.
 

Ossoi

Potato del Grande
<Rickshaw Potatoes>
17,713
8,754
at least double check you're not overheating, thermal sinks are in place w/ paste and seated proper, and put a big ass box fan against the computer to eliminate heat as an issue, then you'll know it's really software/bios issue.

Desk Fan is at work, don't really have need for one with UK weather lol


I've just gone into bios and disabled onboard gfx and sound card. Booted in ok and typing this on desktop. I also "loaded optimised defaults" in the BIOS, no idea if any were actually saved lol
 

a c i d.f l y

ಠ_ಠ
<Silver Donator>
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Sounds like your SSD is dying. Pretty familiar with that shit when the onboard controller on one of four drives was dead, one was intermittent, the other two worked... Drive disappears from BIOS, doesn't show up as a bootable device every several bootups, crashes intermittently. With a straight up dying SSD, it's very similar. Double check your connections on the mobo, unplug/plug back in.
 

Ossoi

Potato del Grande
<Rickshaw Potatoes>
17,713
8,754
So brought my work laptop home last night so I could stream some football crash-free. Took the lid off my desktop case to have a look inside at where a new PCIe NVMe SSD would go and how accessible it is. Switched it on and it took a few attempts to get it to boot, went into bios and re-disabled the onboard gfx/sfx - and it didn't crash all night despite streaming an entire soccer game.
 

Denamian

Night Janitor
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I had similar issues with a dying HDD years ago. It would take a few attempts to boot and the drive wouldn't show up in bios. After several attempts it would boot and run mostly fine. It completely died after about 2 months of this.
 

Borzak

Bronze Baron of the Realm
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Dumb question time. I put windows 10 on one computer. So far seems fine to me, but in the taskbar at the bottom a lot of times I will have multiple copies of the same program open (not browsers that can do tabs and such) and if I do it stacks the icons up one behind another. I can't find any way to spread them side by side so I can keep track of them quickly. I tried searching but all the results were about how to make icons smaller and such. I want to be able to have an Icon A for program A, small space, Icon B for for the same program but running another copy of it. I have no problem opening multiple copies as always and I can alt tab to other copies but I might have 4-6 copies and it would be nice to see them on the taskbar.
 

Denamian

Night Janitor
<Nazi Janitors>
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Dumb question time. I put windows 10 on one computer. So far seems fine to me, but in the taskbar at the bottom a lot of times I will have multiple copies of the same program open (not browsers that can do tabs and such) and if I do it stacks the icons up one behind another. I can't find any way to spread them side by side so I can keep track of them quickly. I tried searching but all the results were about how to make icons smaller and such. I want to be able to have an Icon A for program A, small space, Icon B for for the same program but running another copy of it. I have no problem opening multiple copies as always and I can alt tab to other copies but I might have 4-6 copies and it would be nice to see them on the taskbar.

Right click task bar > taskbar settings > combine taskbar buttons dropdown > choose either never or only when full.
 
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Borzak

Bronze Baron of the Realm
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Right click task bar > taskbar settings > combine taskbar buttons dropdown > choose either never or only when full.

Thanks, probably would have never got that one. Went thru the list a couple of times and like I said search was all about changing the icon size.

Think I'm good to go now after I figure dout how to disable the update before shutting down. I guess in some places it works out OK. But sitting here and I hear lightning strike hit the property I'd like to shut the computer down now lol.
 
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Ossoi

Potato del Grande
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Fingers crossed updating my bios has fixed my crashing problem, lol. PC is booting up at the first attempt, Windows seems stable so far.

Not sure why an old bios would cause issues, unless related to latest windows update?
 

a c i d.f l y

ಠ_ಠ
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Fingers crossed updating my bios has fixed my crashing problem, lol. PC is booting up at the first attempt, Windows seems stable so far.

Not sure why an old bios would cause issues, unless related to latest windows update?

Contrarily, updating my BIOS now means my RAM won't boot up at 4000 MHz when it would on the previous version just fine. Fuckin' annoying.
 

Ossoi

Potato del Grande
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PC still crashing and I refused the Amazon delivery of the new SSD lol, now I have to drive out of town to pick up a new one
 

Lanx

<Prior Amod>
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Funny you say that, only way to get it stable tonight was sliding out from under the cabinet, not that it was a tightly enclosed space to begin with
you must be overheating on some random chip, or the thermal paste on the motherboard logic chip is old and cracked, just go touch chips while it's on
 

Ossoi

Potato del Grande
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Unplugged my two SATA drives and everything seems stable, but I've said that before!
 

Ossoi

Potato del Grande
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Come to think of it, there's been noises coming from the back of the pc when it's powered off - a light grinding type noise.

Could my issues be power supply related?

Everything is still stable with the two SATA drives unplugged
 

Denamian

Night Janitor
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Could be that it's not actually shutting down and windows is instead hibernating it for it's fast boot thing.
 

Ossoi

Potato del Grande
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Could be that it's not actually shutting down and windows is instead hibernating it for it's fast boot thing.

That would be a bios setting I think?, fairly sure fast boot is disabled

Anyway, it's been stable all afternoon, first streaming soccer now streaming on twitch

I also think it boots up quicker and Windows seems quicker without the SATA drives plugged in, but could be a placebo effect