PC 'hard' Freezing.

[Tim270]

Pc:
Win7 64
i5 CPU @2.8GHZ
GTX460 1GB
700GB HD's
4GB RAM.

Lately in Red Orchestra 2 and PR I have been getting a hard freeze after about 30-40 mins of play. What I mean by this is I get no bluescreen or CTD, the PC locks up completely and the only way out is the kill the power and reboot.

I thought it was the RAM, however I am sure I would be getting Bluescreens with an actual error message or just straight crashing to desktop. I have also been watching mem usage ingame and I have never seen it go past 3.4GB.

I have also tried,
Cleaning out dust/watching temps (CPU and GPU never go about 60deg)
Reinstall Audio drivers
Reinstall Video drivers (reverted through 3 old versions)
Run memtest and CPU tests and had no problems.

Short of a re-format I really cannot think of much else to try. It is very stange as BF3 etc run maxed out and I never get this, but load into PR for half a round and it will lockup my PC completely.

Any ideas?

[Beee8190]

What PSU do you have and how many HDD's you're running?
Is the GFX OC'ed ?

Does the crash happens only when playing games or when idle ~browsing net etc..?

[Tim270]

What PSU do you have and how many HDD's you're running?
Is the GFX OC'ed ?

Does the crash happens only when playing games or when idle ~browsing net etc..?

I have a coolermaster 650w which I think must be going on for 1.5/2 years now.
I have 2 Hard drives plugged in. I tried with only one in and it still happens. GFX clocks are stock.

It only happens in PR and Ro2 so far. Sometimes when browsing I did hear a tearing noise and get a momentary freeze, which gives the same noise when it locks up.

To scratch the itch I went ahead and reformatted (again) to make sure it was not a software issue and it still happens after the format. Thus, it must be hardware. I think it either must be the Powersupply or the hard-drive, almost like is not getting enough power to read something from the HDD at times. I checked in my bios and the voltages look about right, I do not have a lot of knowledge on topic however.

Any ideas where to go from here? I dont really want to buy a new PSU unless I can make sure this one is faulty.

[otom24]

I own a GTX470 and get a hard freeze if SpeedFan measures 65?C or above (GPU). Fix it with Speedfan.

[Tim270]

I have already put in a gold Nvidia 6800 and still get the error so I am ruling out GPU. Tested on my 2nd HD today and still have the issue. RAM seems fine same with CPU.

So either my mobo or PSU. It has to be.

[Beee8190]

Really sounds like HW issue. As perhaps last thing to try, have you flashed your bios to latest?

If your PSU is faulty, I recon buying one in shop with good return policy just in case its the mobo capacitors or something nasty though.

Edit- have you runned HDD check too aside of ram tests?

[Tim270]

After doing even more tests I am finally ready to conclude I have no idea wtf is going on. Here is the stage I am at.

Only games to crash are Bf2/pr and RO2. Both use Punkbuster.
I haved put 3 different GPu's with different amounts of memory in, all 3 crash in PR at different times.
I have tried putting max load on every component to try and force a crash with lots of memory test and benchmarks to make sure all components are pulling max power.
Hardware = tested.
Software = Tested. (did a full format and went through all drivers)

Bottom line - I think it is Punkbuster.

EA Forums
Punkbuster Causing Cod4 To Freeze - PunksBusted.com Sponsored by ClanWarz
nVidia/Punkbuster freezing Problem in Onlinegames - NVIDIA Forums
etc etc

Going to keep testing but this is starting to get really annoying.

[Psyrus]

Usually it [the problem described below] resulted in a bluescreen (for the four people that it happened to), but I suppose a complete lock up could be the case.

If you're using the motherboard onboard soundcard, that may well be causing the issue. I believe it is the Realtek onboard variants that cause the issue with PR + Win7... If you're not using the onboard soundcard then I really don't know, and would suggest testing with a buddy's powersuppy as they can do really funky things to a computer when they start to die. I never buy new components for troubleshooting until I've tested and confirmed the old ones to be faulty. If this means I have to lug my computer across the city to test at a friend's house, so be it

[LyRiCs]

i head the same issue for a while!
as te guy above me said, its the onboard realtek audio card. try different realtek driver, older and new ones and try to disable the second realtek high definition audio in the hardware manager of your windows, this thing can cause a 100% gpu load..

the freeze can be fixed with differend audio driver! for me it did help


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

[HARRISON1973]

I have to agree with the on-board sound card issue, especially with the noise you're hearing. I disable mine in BIOS as I build a system and always use an add-on card. Realtek is unreliable at best. SB is not much better, a lot of driver issues. Xonar are great cards.

[Tim270]

Thanks for the replies. It was indeed the onboard sound and punkbuster. I found I still have a 7-8 year old sound card lying in a box of parts on a shelf and it is now my main sound driver.

For anyone who searches and finds this I fixed this by going into my BIOS and disabling the onboard sound driver and installing a 3rd party sound card. As I understand it punkbuster tries to scan into the driver or has a conflict somewhere in scanning it.

Thread can be locked thanks.

[Psyrus]

Thanks for the replies. It was indeed the onboard sound and punkbuster. I found I still have a 7-8 year old sound card lying in a box of parts on a shelf and it is now my main sound driver.

For anyone who searches and finds this I fixed this by going into my BIOS and disabling the onboard sound driver and installing a 3rd party sound card. As I understand it punkbuster tries to scan into the driver or has a conflict somewhere in scanning it.

Thread can be locked thanks.

Hey so you're 100% sure it's a realtek PLUS punkbuster issue? I'm curious how you figured it out?

Apparently there is a driver version floating out there somewhere that removes the bluescreens, but I've almost always used USB based sound card solutions so it hasn't ever affected me.

[Tim270]

The only games it gave me the freezes in are PR and RO2. The only correlation between them I could find is that they both use PB.

I disabled my onboard sound (came with realtek drivers) and plugged in a old sound card and switched to it as the only device -no freezing-. I went back took out the card and put onbaord back on and it started freezing again.

I am sure it must be PB as I would have thought if the game had a conflict with the audio driver it would cut out early on, CTD or just play with no audio. I set PBsleep_500 so I could play for longer but at somepoint it seems it would scan in there and freeze the PC. Plus if the audio driver itself was giving out I am sure I would have got a bluescreen, which I never did.