Major random freezing problems with new Core i3 build

By Fourjays
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Grand Master

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Hi,

I purchased and built a new Corei3 system yesterday and so far have had nothing but major freezing issues. :( This is going to be a rather long post as I've tried many things and got nowhere really. So I could really use your help guys.

Firstly the specs:

- Intel Core i3 540 3.06GHz

- Asus P7H55-M M-ATX motherboard

- 2x 2GB Corsair 1333MHz RAM (CMV4GX3M2A1333C9)

- Sapphire Radeon HD5670 512MB GDDR5

- 500GB Western Digital Caviar Blue (WD5000AAKS)

- 160GB Samsung HDD (been in a few machines so forgot the specs)

- Sony SATA DVD-RW

- Corsair 430W CX PSU

So I built the machine and plugged it in to boot. No obvious issues. Checked the BIOS settings to make sure the boot devices were in order, etc then went to install Windows 7 Home Premium 64-bit. At first this went ok too, and it extracted the files, ran the installation and got to the "Completing Installation" step, It then asked for a reboot. This is where everything started to go wrong.

When it reboot for the first time it froze on the "Setting up registry". At first I thought it was just taking a while, but then I asked my sister who'd just installed Windows 7 on an older Pentium E5200 and she said that screen was only up for a few minutes on hers. So I left it a little longer but eventually had to give up and reboot. Hitting the reset button did nothing and I ended up having to force it off by holding the power button. I started it up again and let it resume its installation and this time it froze on "Setting up Windows". Thinking something must have gone wrong in the installation I decided to run the installer again.

This time it didn't even install, instead freezing at the "Completing Installation" stage, with the "..." not cycling at all. So I tried another 3 or 4 times and it did the exact same thing. At this point it felt like the data wasn't getting correctly copied as I tried booting to safe mode (it gave the option despite not finishing installation) and noticed it kept getting stuck at CLASSPNP.sys. Further adding to my suspicion was each time it froze the HDD light was solid on (not even flickering). The reset button also did not work each time - I had to hold the power button (it is wired correctly as I tested the button pre-freeze).

So to start testing I unplugged my second (old Samsung) hard drive. Now it froze on the first "Copying Windows Files" stage. Tried it a few more times with no change. As this drive was one with my documents on it I plugged it into my sister's machine and copied everything off it so I could do a reverse test by unplugging the new one. So I now unplugged the new Western Digital HDD and tried to install to my old Samsung. This time it got to 86% extracting files before it froze. Tried again and it couldn't even get past 0%.

Running out of ideas I tried an old IDE DVD drive which was faulty anyway (making a funny noise and the installer wouldn't start at all). I then tried the old IDE DVDRW out of my sisters computer, which had earlier installed Windows 7 on her computer no problem. That had exactly the same issue - freezing at 0% of extracting files. I also tried swapping the two SATA hard drive cables (both came with the mobo) for another pair.

Out of pure desperation I now put all the HDD cables back in, switched back to my Sony DVD drive and unplugged a few unnecessary devices (network cable, speakers and microphone). It installed without a hitch! To be sure I now rebooted the computer about 10-15 times, to check it was loading Windows each time and it did. So I put the computer off and went to bed ready to install all the drivers/software/etc this morning.

Except the problem still isn't solved. I installed the motherboard drivers and then did the ATi drivers (both from the disc). The installations both went fine, but when I rebooted (as requested by the ATi drivers) it froze about 5 seconds after booting up. Rebooted and it froze again, then repeated once more. It was then fine. So I ran a router installation (separate issue - my router has been broken for a while) and that got to the end successfully. Reboot after that and it froze again, just after booting into Windows. Rebooted and it did the same. Then rebooted again and it froze while starting WIndows.

SInce then it seems to has mostly been ok. I've run memtest for an hour and that reported no issues. I ran the Windows memory tester which also found nothing. I then ran chkdsk an hour ago which froze at 10% (on the Western Digital). I rebooted and it went to start WIndows before BSODing (didn't catch the error). It did this twice more before running the startup recovery and rebooting itself to run chkdsk again, which is now up to 93% without issue.

So I am now rather stumped. It doesn't seem to be HDD/DVD related as whichever one I tried to install on/from it got no further (often proceeded less). The memory tests say there is nothing wrong (although that probably means nothing). I thought maybe the memory isn't completely compatible as Asus' memory QVL list doesn't list my exact memory model (lists about 15 1333MHz makes). However, Corsair's site recommends this memory for this motherboard.

Any ideas? Other things to test? Or is it mostly likely the memory?

Any help would be really appreciated as this is causing major issues with a project that is due for completion.

Thanks

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cybertimber2008

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Could be motherboard, could be processor.

You did plug in that extra power cable right? There's the 20/24 pin one and then sometimes there is an additional 4 (square) or 8 (rectangle) plug.

It could be the power supply too if it's not putting out what it's supposed to.

Grand Master

Fourjays Veteran

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The motherboard has an 8-pin ATX12V socket on it (and my PSU has the 8-pin plugs), but one half of the socket on the board is blocked by a black plastic blanking plug, which I presumed was to prevent it being used (as no other sockets had blankers in them)? The manual doesn't explain this, but does show it as having both halves open.

I plugged the half that was open in though (so just the 4-pin ATX12V like an older board). Do I need to remove the blanker and connect the other half?

Grand Master

Fourjays Veteran

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Well I did some research into the little black plug and found some other user's questioning it. The general recommendation was that it is needed, plus the manual does say 4pin/8pin ATX12V. So I decided to plug it in and I thought it had solved the problem until this morning.

Last night I ran prime95 for an hour (heard it was a good way to trigger such problems) which worked fine (all 4 threads at 100%, CPU temp no higher than 55'C on stock cooling), then reinstalled Windows 7 three times without any freezing whatsoever. Installed some drivers, did some web browsing, etc and turned it off last night without it having had an issue since I put that extra 12V plug in.

This morning I turn it on and it freezes as soon as Windows has booted (when the network icon in the system tray has finished the connection). The only consistent thing so far seem to be that most troubles seem to occur when it has been off for a while and it is booted up. So I'm now leaving it off for a while to try again. Would that indicate anything specific?

Anything else I can try and test?

Rising Star

sweetham

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  On 30/04/2011 at 10:33, Fourjays said:

Well I did some research into the little black plug and found some other user's questioning it. The general recommendation was that it is needed, plus the manual does say 4pin/8pin ATX12V. So I decided to plug it in and I thought it had solved the problem until this morning.

Last night I ran prime95 for an hour (heard it was a good way to trigger such problems) which worked fine (all 4 threads at 100%, CPU temp no higher than 55'C on stock cooling), then reinstalled Windows 7 three times without any freezing whatsoever. Installed some drivers, did some web browsing, etc and turned it off last night without it having had an issue since I put that extra 12V plug in.

This morning I turn it on and it freezes as soon as Windows has booted (when the network icon in the system tray has finished the connection). The only consistent thing so far seem to be that most troubles seem to occur when it has been off for a while and it is booted up. So I'm now leaving it off for a while to try again. Would that indicate anything specific?

Anything else I can try and test?

Have you tried using only one memory stick at a time and maybe see if the RAM might be bad. Or try a recommended brand off of ASUS's QVL.

Grand Master

articuno1au

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For the sake of interest, try plugging your drives into the Marvell 88SE6111 Sata controller and see if that makes a difference.

Prime 95 (once loaded) never accesses your HDD, and each time you have described a "freeze" it appears to be during moderate load on the HDDs.

Would just be interesting to see :)

Grand Master

Fourjays Veteran

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  On 30/04/2011 at 10:54, xendrome said:

Try swapping video cards if you can, could be a power draw issue on that.... and also could be power supply.

If you can get it stable enough, burn a memtest86+ disc and run that for a couple passes....

Only other PCI-E card I've got is a Radeon HD4650. Not sure it would use much less power, but it may be worth a try.

  On 30/04/2011 at 11:01, sweetham said:

Have you tried using only one memory stick at a time and maybe see if the RAM might be bad. Or try a recommended brand off of ASUS's QVL.

I will run memtest next (did it once yesterday) and allow it to do a couple of passes. Would you recommend doing it with one stick in at a time or doing it on both? If that turns up nothing I'll try running on one stick, then the other for general usage.

  On 30/04/2011 at 11:07, articuno1au said:

For the sake of interest, try plugging your drives into the Marvell 88SE6111 Sata controller and see if that makes a difference.

Prime 95 (once loaded) never accesses your HDD, and each time you have described a "freeze" it appears to be during moderate load on the HDDs.

Would just be interesting to see :)

MY first thought was the HDD too (or something connected with transferring files), hence all the swapping around. How do I connect to the Marvell 88SE6111 Sata controller?

No idea if it is any good as a way to test or not but I've just run PassMark's BurnInTest on the CPU, memory, HDD, optical and video card without any issue. :s Will do memtest next.

EDIT: Just remembered that the Core i3's box says it has Intel HD graphics on it, and I know the motherboard has VGA/HDMI connections on the back. Would that be a way of testing the video card/power draw?

Grand Master

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Memtest is currently running with both sticks in. Done 2 passes, no errors.

One odd thing I've noticed though is that it reports:

  Quote
Settings: RAM: 668MHz (DDR3-1337) / CAS: 9-9-9-24 / Dual Channel

Is this something to worry about? Could it be causing my problems?

Is it worth running Western Digital's drive tools to test the HDD? Was going to give it a shot but I have to run it from an IDE drive apparently, so just wondering if it would actually be worth doing so.

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Starbuck84

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  On 30/04/2011 at 13:38, Fourjays said:

One odd thing I've noticed though is that it reports:

Settings: RAM: 668MHz (DDR3-1337) / CAS: 9-9-9-24 / Dual Channel

Is this something to worry about? Could it be causing my problems?

Is it worth running Western Digital's drive tools to test the HDD? Was going to give it a shot but I have to run it from an IDE drive apparently, so just wondering if it would actually be worth doing so.

It's always worth to give it a try, if only for elimination purposes.

And you're memory is running just fine, the 668MHz is nothing to worry about. Some memory will run at 665MHz, while others run at 668~9Mhz.

It's always best to test one stick at a time. Learned that the hard way. My laptop would random BSOD on me, ran Memtest which said everything was OK even after several passes. Took one stick out and turned out one was faulty. Memtest immediately reported errors, while using both stick it reported nothing. Just my experience. :)

Grand Master

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  On 30/04/2011 at 13:54, tomasarson said:

it may be your PSU. it only puts out 28amps on the 12v rail.

i can't seem to find out how many that sapphire card needs though so i could be entirely wrong.

Possible, looking at the details. My previous build which my sister now has had a HD4650 running on a Coolermaster 460W which has 2x 12V @ 18A from what I can find.

If the memtest's find nothing I'll probably try taking the video card out and running on the Core i3's graphics to test that aspect of it.

Grand Master

articuno1au

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You should have 2 different coloured Sata connectors.

One for the Intel Sata interface, and one for the Marvel interface.

I'd suggest reading the book (sorry that sounds like a douche bag answer) for which is which :)

Grand Master

Fourjays Veteran

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  On 30/04/2011 at 14:39, articuno1au said:

You should have 2 different coloured Sata connectors.

One for the Intel Sata interface, and one for the Marvel interface.

I'd suggest reading the book (sorry that sounds like a douche bag answer) for which is which :)

It only has 6 SATA connectors, all blue. Manual just says there are 6x SATA connections. No mention of a Marvell interface. Only mention of Marvell is in the BIOS where I can choose to enable/disable the regular IDE controller.

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Starbuck84

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This might sound stupid, but from your OP I couldn't certify (or I must have read over it), but did you try updating / downloading all the drivers? Not using the included CD, but download the latest drivers from the manufacturer itself? (Example: download the Intel chipset driver from Intel rather from Asus).

And this is a complete gamble from my part, but how are your the temps?

Grand Master

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  On 30/04/2011 at 15:25, Starbuck84 said:

This might sound stupid, but from your OP I couldn't certify (or I must have read over it), but did you try updating / downloading all the drivers? Not using the included CD, but download the latest drivers from the manufacturer itself? (Example: download the Intel chipset driver from Intel rather from Asus).

And this is a complete gamble from my part, but how are your the temps?

No I didn't try the latest drivers from the website, although it seems unlikely they'd make a difference given that the issue was during an install of Windows. Worth a shot I guess in case there is a coincidence of two unrelated issues.

BIOS is the latest though. Checked it as I read that earlier BIOS' for this board didn't support the Clarkdale CPUs.

Temperatures are around 37'C-42'C idle. When I was running prime95, it went no higher than 55'C (all 4 "threads" at 100%).

Grand Master

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  On 30/04/2011 at 15:35, articuno1au said:

True.

My apologies. Half of the different motherboards with that model number have Marvel ports, the USB3 and Pro don't..

My apologies for wasting your time :(

No worries, was just sitting around waiting for memtest to complete so reading the manual from cover to cover was a good distraction. :laugh: It is confusing with so many similarly named boards though.

Trying a driver update now. Problem is I have no idea whether it is fixed or not as it is running ok at the moment, just like it did yesterday after plugging in the extra 12V. Would probably feel happier if it was something I could easily re-produce, so I could then troubleshoot it.

Grand Master

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  On 30/04/2011 at 16:05, chezy666 said:

PSU seems to be under powered, if you can, try with a +500W PSU.

I'm starting to think that too. Running a memtest on the second stick now and it is also coming up as error free. The HDD would be my next obvious choice, but I tried installing to my old HDD which had the same issues. Which seems to rule that out. Still no regular BSODs (just the two after the failed chkdsk, which could be related to that in itself) and no random reboots/power offs. Only other thing I can mention is that when it does freeze, it is often with the HDD LED on (has done it twice with it off though, when it has happened in Windows itself), and if I press the reset button it takes a good 20-30 seconds to respond.

Only way to try a 500W PSU would be to buy one. Is there a way to test the current one, like plugging in some USB devices that draw on the system power and seeing if it triggers a system freeze? Or doesn't it work like that?

Grand Master

DPyro

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I was going to say flash the motherboard with the latest firmware, but since you said it already has the latest I guess you can't. I had a similar issue a few years ago, and it turned out the motherboard didn't support the CPU without flashing the latest BIOS from floppy.

Grand Master

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Just froze for the 3rd time today (HDD LED is on too) - was trying to install 3DMark11 to see if that would be able to push it to the "breaking point". Apart from first thing this morning, it does seem to happen only when installing things. I had left an installation disk in the DVD drive overnight though, which could explain the first-thing lock-up if there is an issue there. The second one happened while installing MSE and downloading a file.

I've run many tests and benchmark tools that push the CPU, memory, video card, etc, but still installations frequently seem to cause it. Will try reproducing it again via an installer.

Grand Master

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  On 30/04/2011 at 13:54, tomasarson said:

it may be your PSU. it only puts out 28amps on the 12v rail.

i can't seem to find out how many that sapphire card needs though so i could be entirely wrong.

Just stumbled across what you were probably looking for: http://forum-en.msi.com/index.php?topic=104805.0;wap2

Indicates that the HD5670 requires 26A. I'll admit I'm not too good when it comes to understanding the finer points of PSUs in computers so I have no idea how this would effect the computer. Wouldn't I get random reboots with insufficient power?

Still very unsure with which direction this is pointing. Managed to install The Sims 3 on it fine (available game which I know the performance of) which installed and ran without a hitch (was achieving 130+ FPS according to the built-in display). 3DMark11 caused it to freeze when installing. Once it was installed, it ran horribly slow (only 10FPS which is apparently about right for this card) but didn't induce any freezing. Need to figure out what bit to return and/or test. :/

Currently running the WD diagnostics.

EDIT: Diagnostics say everything a-ok.

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