New
#51
Interesting new observations and hints.
(1) My new downstairs M910t HPTC has remained stable for two days now. No freeze, although I did have to reboot after one day for some reason. Actually, I do now remember why I re-booted. I had to take the machine down to swap the two TV tuner cards, as the Ceton card was running very hot in its third "negotiable x16/14/x1" expansion slot with the Hauppauge card in the middle x1 slot and the Inno3D card in the primary x16 slot. I swapped the Ceton and Hauppauge cards, to bring the Ceton card next to the cooling fan in the Inno3d graphics card and hopefully get it to take advantage of improved airflow from the exhaust suction of the graphics card fan. It actually made a very big difference with the Ceton card now running about 15 degrees Centigrade cooler!
However before that reboot it had not frozen, and since that reboot it has not frozen. No idea why "stability" is the current situation, although I did perform the hardware change a few days ago which (a) replaced the 2-slot EVGA GTX 1050ti SC with the new 1-slot Inno3D GTX 1050ti, and (b) installed the Hauppauge HVR-2250 OTA/ATSC TV tuner card which had been awaiting the availability of an open accessible x1 slot which was now made available with the graphics card change.
Note that the M910t has been plugged back into the LAN via ethernet cable for these same two days.
(2) My upstairs ASUS Z170-Deluxe was powered back on two days ago and has now frozen at least five times, even after the upgrade of Malwarebytes to 1.0.527 components (obviously irrelevant to my situation, which I already knew since this machine has been unstable for at least 3 months now).
Now curiously, these past three freezes were followed up with some exploration as best as possible. Both machines are part of the same "workgroup" (not homegroup), and all of the disk partitions of each machine are permanently mapped as network drives to the other machine (i.e. reestablished at boot time). Each machine is also accessible from the other machine or from my laptops through RealVNC as well as through Team Viewer.
Interestingly, the presumed "frozen" machine was not actually frozen at all! Yes, I couldn't get it to respond at all by jiggling the mouse or hitting a keyboard key or powering either of the two attached monitors off and on. But in fact I DID actually have full access to the disk partitions of the machine from the other un-frozen machine (i.e. referencing the folders/files on the "frozen" machine through Windows Explorer or equivalent). So the machine wasn't really frozen... it simply wasn't responding to either my USB wireless mouse nor my USB wired keyboard. Hmmm...
Note that I use a Logitech Performance MX wireless mouse and the receiver is plugged into one of the USB ports on one of my Eizo monitors. While the machine was still frozen I tried plugging a spare wired USB mouse into an open USB port on the machine itself, but never heard the "new hardware detected" sound nor did the mouse actually function. I suspect the USB hub and/or driver was locked up, i.e. "the apparent freeze" from HID while inside the computer things were apparently still running normally in terms of network drive functions.
I also tried to connect to the "frozen" machine through both RealVNC as well as Team Viewer, and both attempts were unsuccessful. And yet, all of the mapped network drives on this machine were still available through normal LAN access via Windows Explorer.
(3) As part of my focused research into this machine's problems (not really wanting to spend the energy to replace the motherboard for a brand new one, which I have in a carton having purchased it in November for exactly this purpose) I made a few changes to my operating environment.
(a) I turned off "power save" mode after 10 minutes for the monitors, but left "screen saver" after 6 minutes on.
(b) I launched both USBDeview and USBLogView (from Nirsoft) and left them open and visible on the desktop of one machine (the Eizo with the mouse receiver plugged into one of its USB ports), while powering the other Eizo monitor off. I was just hoping that something USB-related might appear in the displayed output of one or the other of these programs when the what I will now call the "USB device freeze" symptom occurs again.
(c) I double-checked to ensure what I already knew was the case, namely that I had already un-checked the "allow computer to turn off this device to save power" on all of the USB hubs in Device Manager. This hopefully would avoid the possibility of powering down a USB hub but for some reason failing to power it back up when re-needed as the cause of the seeming USB failure.
(4) I had reason to do some work, and decided to do it on the upstairs problematic ASUS machine. So first I double-checked on the M910t through Windows Explorer that all network drives were still accessible and operational, and they were. I then went upstairs and was pleased to see that the "Mystify" screensaver was working properly, appearing only on the one Eizo monitor which I hadn't powered off and on which I knew the two USB-monitoring windows were open.
I then jiggled the mouse, to come out of screen saver mode. And the machine froze!! Screen saver stopped. Hit some keyboard keys, and no response. Mouse dead, keyboard dead. Screensaver frozen.
I then powered on the other monitor, and the other portion of the currently frozen screensaver pattern was on it, but also not moving. Frozen as well. One instant ago everything was presumably alive and well and the screen saver running around working normally, and then when I jiggled the mouse to have things come back to life on the screen everything USB-related froze (including the monitor, which has a USB hub in it which is directly involved in the mouse communication).
Went downstairs to the M910t and confirmed through Windows Explorer that in fact the ASUS machine was NOT DEAD, but was alive and well as far as serving up disk partitions. It was operating just fine internally for that mapped network drive feature, even though the two screens were frozen and the mouse/keyboard human interface was frozen. And I couldn't get to it through RealVNC and Team Viewer, both of which come through the router and ethernet cable to one of the two NIC's.
(5) I've now pulled out the USB cable going to the Eizo monitor into which the mouse USB receiver was plugged in. I've moved that receiver over to one of the two USB ports on the other Eizo monitor, just to eliminate the USB hub built into the first Eizo monitor as flaking out and responsible for the "UBS freeze" in some way. I've again powered off that second monitor (which now has the USB mouse receiver plugged into it, as the USB hub in the monitor is always powered on as long as the monitor is plugged into wall power even if the monitor screen itself is powered off.
So I'm back to having only one Eizo monitor powered on, but now with no USB mouse receiver plugged into it. The receiver is now in the other Eizo monitor.
Note that I utilize Logitech's Setpoint 6.67.83 (driver 5.90.41) on the problem ASUS machine to manage the Performance MX wireless USB mouse, although I know there is a slightly newer version available. Also, I use an old IBM PS/2 keyboard connected through an Adesso PS/2-to-USB adapter since the ASUS Z170-Deluxe board doesn't have a PS/2 connector.
I checked the Intel USB driver which is running, and it's the same 5.0.4.43 from 1/11/2017 that has been there since I built the machine in January of that year. So this isn't something which has changed in the past three months which might be causing my instability.
Bottom line: the machine itself is not really "freezing" totally. It's actually still working fine, internally, and serving the disk partitions to other machines directly connected to it on the LAN via mapped network drives.
What actually seems to be freezing is the USB interface of mouse/keyboard and apparently the monitor(s) one of which has an active USB hub and active USB connector in use for the mouse.
I've now moved the USB mouse receiver out of the Eizo monitor previously used, and also pulled the USB cable to that monitor. I've relocated the receiver to a USB port in the other Eizo monitor. I still have another option which would be to eliminate wireless USB mouse entirely, pull that second USB cable out of the second monitor, and just go with a regular wired USB mouse plugged into a USB port on the PC itself.
Another clue that this is strongly USB-related is the fact that after a freeze I really have no other recourse but to hard power-down (by holding the POWER button for 5 seconds), and then power-up. Upon restart I often have much trouble with some other USB-connected devices coming back to life properly, such as the Motorola Tuning Adapter (required for the Ceton cablecard-enabled TV tuner card), two USB-connected printers and one USB-connected scanner (through an external USB hub), etc. Very often I have to then shut down and re-start two or three times before all USB devices return to normal. In fact some times I can't shut down cleanly, because I'm sure the USB devices are "still locked up". So "shutting down" remains on the screen indefinitely, and I'm forced to once again hard power-down in order to then be able to re-start.
Eventually, things return to normal. But it's always a struggle.
That's why I though it was the whole USB hardware interface on the ASUS Z170-Deluxe (which has both Intel and Asmedia USB hubs, each supported by its own driver) which was intermittent, and which would probably be cured if I totally replaced the motherboard. And this still might actually be the true root cause.
Or, it might be related to the Logitech mouse, or the Logitech Setpoint software.
Or, it might be related to the USB hubs on the Eizo monitors.
But remember... this has all worked perfectly for 1 1/2 years, until about 3 months ago when the intermittency first began.
Anyway, I've now been back up for over an hour, and no freeze yet. I've now turned off screensaver as well, so that if I do come upstairs again and jiggle the mouse and it freezes instantly at least the last visible state of both USB-view monitors will be visible on the screen, perhaps providing some clue or information that might be helpful. Or, maybe it won't, and the mouse/keyboard will simply freeze even though (if, as before) internally Windows is still running normally and still feeding network drives to the LAN.
More in the next chapter.