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Random freezes with new hardware (no BSOD) : FM2A88X Extreme4+
Edit : This is a quick overview of the problem and the solution I found, so you can avoid reading all the boring precision guesswork in this thread. As for me : problem solved.
Problem : Random Freezes. Once frozen, the computer has to be hard rebooted. I did not experience it personally but people have been reporting higher chance of getting freezes when they let the computer idle and also freezes occuring when using the uefi bios of their board.
Cause : this problem is caused by the bios of the ASRock FM2A88X Extreme4+ motherboard. I am not an expert, but it apprently does not handle the Package Core 6 State (PC6 State : one of several low consumption features for CPUs) very well. This has been reported mainly on bios from the 2.60 up to the 3.20 (most recent bios at the moment). I use bios 3.20 : I can't confirm this fix will work with other bios, but it might be worth a try. See this thread and this thread on ASRock's forum for more information.
Fix 1 : Start your computer and press F2 during the POST (Power-On-Self-Test : first screen with the name of the motherboard on it) to get into the UEFI bios of the board. If F2 doesn't seem to work, press F11 and choose "configuration" instead of selecting a boot device. Go to the "Advanced" tab. Choose "CPU configuration". The first two options should be "Core C6 Mode" and "Package C6 Mode".
"Package C6 Mode" will not appear if "Core C6 Mode" is disabled (again, I am no expert, but apparently PC6 State requires C6 State to be activated to work). If your "Core C6 Mode" option is disabled, the problem might not come from your motherboard as this means "Package Core C6" will be disabled too.
If "Core C6 Mode" is enabled, check "Package C6 Mode" :
- If "Package C6 Mode" is disabled, then again, the problem might not come from your motherboard. You can still try to disable it, but you should know that it will at the very least slightly increase CPU strain and power consumption, especially when the computer is idle.
- If "Package C6 Mode" is enabled, disable it, go to the exit tab and save the changes to your bios settings before starting your computer.
ASRock FM2A88X Extreme 4+ online manual indicate that the default value for "Package C6 Mode" is "disabled". Problem is, it was not the case on mine and I had a brand new motherboard that I took myself out of the box, thus I don't know why this setting was not on it's default value. It's worth mentioning that I flashed my bios from 2.80 to 3.20, so perhaps in the meanwhile they decided that this feature would be disabled by default on newer bios, and that mine just retained the old default settings from my previous 2.80.
Fix 2 (unverified) : revert to bios 2.50 which seems to have been the last stable version. Impossible to test at the moment as their is no link to download the 2.50, even on softpedia. Warning : flashing a bios is always a dangerous operation. If your motherboard freezes or looses power while trying to flash it, it may never work again.
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Hi,
With the help of a friend, I recently bought a bunch of new parts, built a new computer and plugged my old HDD on it. I used Kaktussoft tutorial on Paragon Adaptive Restore to get my HDD to be properly recognised by my mobo (thank you Kaktussoft) and keep my old install of windows for as long as I could. I then had a PSU problem (I tried using my old PSU and it turned out it was just not up to the task so I had to buy a new one, many thanks for ICIT2LOL for trying to help in another thread).
Unfortunately I ran into some more trouble. Since the hardware upgrade, the computer sometimes freezes in an unexpected fashion. It seems random, and once frozen, the computer will not respond to any input. In fact, my optical mouse and my keyboard stop receiving power if I hit any key. The computer can freeze when running a game, while using firefox, watching a video, at startup… It doesn't appear to be tied to any particular activity. It can run a game for hours and then freeze suddenly or just freeze after fifteen minutes of using firefox. I once left my antivirus software running for a scan and it froze somewhere in the middle of it. I never tried to let it run without doing anything. Once frozen, I have to do a hard reboot to stop it. It does not generate a BSOD as far as I know (I checked the event viewer for error messages). I do not know if minidumps are enabled on my computer but if there's no BSOD, I don't think windows could generate a .dmp... am I correct ?
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My PC specs :
- CPU : AMD A8 7600 (using stock fan)
- Mobo : ASRock FM2A88X Extreme4+
- Graphics : Radeon R9-380P-2DF5 2GB by XFX
- RAM : Corsair Vengeance DDR3 1600mhz (4x4gb) [2 new sticks and 2 older ones]
- PSU : Corsair VS650
- 1 DVD RW [old hardware]
- 1 HDD WD10 EARS (1tb) [old hardware], I have two partitions (+ the hidden reserved for system partition of course) : C for windows and S for data, games and such.
- OS : Windows 7 Ultimate.
I am not doing anythin special with my hardware like overclocking or raid (well… obviously ^^' ). I bought two sticks of RAM about a year and a half ago and bought an identical kit a few weeks ago to fill up my new empty slots. Anyway they are installed in a dual channel configuration, just in case. The only thing to know is that my RAM is running at 1333 Mhz by default : despite Corsair's claim that those are 1600 MHZ RAM sticks, the real deal is that they can only be overclocked to reach 1600 (there are complaints about this all over the interne... not a big deal, and I don't like overclocking at all). It's worth mentioning that this RAM is not in the Quality Vendor List for this motherboard (but they are still corsair RAM sticks so I am not exactly worried).
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Although I am not really tech-savvy, I already tried numerous tricks to try and understand and/or fix this problem :
- Scan for viruses with Avast and for malwares with Malwarebytes Anti-Malware and SuperAntiSpyware => only minor problems were detected and corrected.
- Test HDD with Western Digital diagnostic tool => HDD passed an extended test.
- Run chkdsk at startup => it detected a couple of minor errors and corrected them, nothing unusual for a 5 years old HDD I guess.
- Run sfc /scannow => no error detected.
- Run Memtest86+ => after 3 full passes, no error detected.
- Start computer with only some of the RAM installed, in different slots, even down to a single stick => computer froze, no change.
- Start computer with all non essential peripherals disconnected (in my case : speakers and a DVD-RW) => computer still freezes.
- Checking if all components are properly seated => no problem there.
- Check temperatures with AMD Overdrive (third party software can't interpret the thermal margin of my CPU correctly and give abnormal readings, so I use this AMD software only to check the CPU temperature, as I said, I don't like overclocking) => nothing unusual for all components and my CPU still had a 10°c margin when running a very heavy program, like Star Citizen for instance.
- Run computer without any program or non-microsoft service at startup => Avast refused to be deactivated, but other than that, the computer still froze.
- Check the event monitor for errors => no error seems to be linked to the freezes, windows must be unable to generate any log, since there is no BSOD.
- Update Daemon Tools (just in case the drivers were too old, even though it was not in direct use when my PC froze) => no results on freezes, but it apparently created a second BD ROM device... I don't know if that's normal.
- Manual removal of my old VIA audio software and drivers + uninstalling and reinstalling Realtek and AMD drivers (my new mobo uses Realtek drivers and I couldn't uninstall it properly because the old device, my old motherboard, was not plugged in anymore) => computer still freezes.
- It's probably only in my imagination but it might have made freezes more frequent. Just to be clear : the problem existed before I removed anything : I manually removed a device, files, .dlls and registry entries but only after checking very carefuly that they were only related to VIA products. Anyway, I reverted to a previous restoration point, just to be on the safe side. I still uninstalled the non-present VIA audio device and drivers and removed the startup entry for the software suit afterwards, but I have left the files, .dlls and registry entries alone for now.
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I am mostly suspecting some sort of driver problem or simply that something in windows is messed up due to the change of hardware (although I read the whole Paragon Adaptive Restore tutorial thread and there was no mention of something similar). I know the obvious answer many people will immediately want to shout out, but before doing something as drastic as doing a repair install or a clean install of windows, I would like to know for sure where the problem comes from : no use erasing all those data if that doesn't fix anything, right ?
Can anyone please help me to pinpoint my problem ?
Last edited by Madmartigan; 26 May 2016 at 08:44. Reason: Solutions and causes to the freezes put at the start of the thread