Disclaimer: I know Windows 10 is a preview edition and I wasn't expecting a fully operational OS (though it seems to be one). I just was hoping installing it might solve some problems I've been experiencing since Win 8.1.
Dear All,
I've been experiencing random hangs during browsing, watching a movie, or just trying to login to Windows after a startup since Windows 8.1 was released. By random hangs I mean the mouse cursor is active but none of the windows or icons react, though after 30-60 seconds everything's back and even the previously issued commands/clicks are performed. There were occasional crashes during gaming as well, but no BSOD, just blank screen, echoing sound, and then the PC remains powered (fans on, leds on), but there's no reboot. The gaming related crashes occur almost every time since I've installed Windows 10. Games usually run for 8-10 mins without a problem then the PC crashes. The non-gaming related hangs are related to ataport.sys or ndis.sys according to LatencyMon, but I'm not able to update these drivers, though the version for ataport.sys is dated 2006, I doubt there were no updates since then.
I appreciate any help you can give to find out if this is hardware related, which I assume it is. The reason is I've tried clean Windows 8 installations before but it didn't work. Unfortunately I'm not experienced enough to identify which hardware is at fault.
Thank you.
Dear All,
since I've posted this I've read some blog on black screen crashes with sound looping, etc. Some people said this might be caused by a failing PSU. My PSU (Corsair builder series CX430) is around 4 years old, so I thought this might be a valid problem. I've downloaded Furmark and ran a GPU stress test for 20 minutes. The GPU temperature peaked at 66 degrees Celsius, with the fan speed peaking at 61%. The games I've tried and caused crashes would have crashed by now, so I assume the graphics card and the PSU are OK.
With this additional information available could anyone please add any thoughts, ideas on how to move forward? Thank you.
A quick look at the reports shows some events associated with your graphics card.
1) Make sure that your video drivers are fully updated
2) Try the video stress tests listed here: Hardware Diagnostics
3) Try another video card - being sure to uninstall all previous video drivers and install a fresh copy once the new card is installed.
Please do this after the next crash/hang:Please do the following:
- open Event Viewer (run eventvwr.msc from the "Run" dialog)
- expand the Custom Views category (left click on the > next to the words "Custom Views")
- right click on Administrative Events
- select "Save all Events in Custom View as..."
- save the file as Admin.evtx
- zip up the file (right click on it, select "Send to", select "Compressed (zipped) folder")
- upload it with your next post (if it's too big, then upload it to a free file-hosting service and post a link here).
Thank you Usasma. I've ran Furmark for 20 minutes with the problem hardware, there were no problem. Since then I've replaced the motherboard, CPU, CPU cooler and the PSU, and everything is fine. Maybe the PSU was at fault and that's why the graphics card related events were found in the log. It could have happened that it was capable of suppyling enough powert during the Furmark stresstest, but when the CPU load increased during games it was no longer capable of doing that any longer.
I'm glad to hear that you've fixed the problem. Should the hangs/crashes reappear, feel free to post back.
Good luck!
