OK, I'm now at my wits end, can't seem to find anything on the internet that describes my issues. Figured I'd post here and hopefully someone can give me some good ideas of things to try before crying to PCS over the phone.
Problems:
Started last weekend (I don't remember exactly what the last thing I did before it started happening, it was either installing some windows updates, or installing the new 314 drivers from nVidia or possibly both), my PC was running find until I finished downloading Aliens Colonial Marines on Steam. I tried to load it and the game crashed after the opening splash screen time after time. Not really an issue I thought, just obviously had corrupted (somehow?
) so I ran the Steam "file verifier" thing and without warning my PC crashed. No blue screen or anything, it just froze, mouse stuck on the screen (wouldn't move) and what was really odd was it wouldn't reset either (with the button - I had to hold the power button for a few seconds to get it to switch off).
I got my PC back on and it came on fine although windows took (and still takes) an aaaage to turn on. Tried to start steam, seemed to be ok but a few seconds after it booted my PC crashed again (same as before, no bluescreen etc.). VERY annoying. This repeated a few times until I got sick and thought the best thing I could do was re-install steam. Tried to copy over my files (steamapps folder) so I didn't have to re-download everything but when I copied them back after a subsequent reinstall of steam the PC crashed again!
So uninstalling steam again this time deleting all of the games! Knowing its going to take a long time to reinstall too. Very irritating. However, once I reinstalled it, it seemed to work ok! Good times (or so I thought). Once I managed to get a game downloaded and ran it (Crysis 1) I noticed intermittent (but massive) slowdowns! ie. The game would be running fine for a bit then suddenly get exceptionally laggy / freeze for a few seconds then run fine again! This led me to believe it was linked to a graphics driver issue. I rolled back the drivers to the beta drivers which I was using fine until 314 was released. The problem did not go away (it is worth noting at this point that BEFORE the problems started Crysis ran beautifully on my PC - its definitely not a 'spec' issue). It's also worth noting the only games affected are on my WD Black harddrive.
Next thing I tried was to try a windows restore as I figured reinstalling windows wouldn't do much else that a restore would do (although I may be wrong about that I'm not sure) and I didn't really expect it to fix the issue with the slow games. Unfortunately it didn't. I have spent the last week basically trying to test my rig piece by piece to see if anything fails under pressure performing benchmarks/etc. to stress out my components but nothing has gone awry at all doing this (running superpi/folding@home/3Dmark/residentevil6bench/memtest/EVGA precision X etc.). I even performed a few harddrive read/write tests and found my harddrive was performing as expected, all of this leads me to believe its a software thing and not a hardware thing (although I'm no longer sure).
Today the worst thing happened, I had another crash. I've narrowed it down to only occurring when Steam is working - my PC has been on for days doing various other things (some intensive, some not) and I've managed to play other games (Diablo 3 mainly) with no issues whatsoever (that is installed on the SSD).
I'm kinda at my wits end, its very irritating to have a powerful rig that doesn't seem to be able to cut the proverbial mustard.
Also I don't really want to do a full format of the WD Black (just got most of my steam games back, although they are kinda useless at the moment...) / reinstall windows but if it'll help I'll do it. I kinda guess that's going to be the first suggestion, but hey ho we'll see what happens.
Another question I have is (if anyone has any good ideas I mean) what on earth could be the cause of the problem.
If I can provide any more information/expand on any point/clarify etc.etc. (I'm kinda rambling because I am a bit tired ... sorry folk) please let me know.
Summary:
Problems:
Started last weekend (I don't remember exactly what the last thing I did before it started happening, it was either installing some windows updates, or installing the new 314 drivers from nVidia or possibly both), my PC was running find until I finished downloading Aliens Colonial Marines on Steam. I tried to load it and the game crashed after the opening splash screen time after time. Not really an issue I thought, just obviously had corrupted (somehow?
) so I ran the Steam "file verifier" thing and without warning my PC crashed. No blue screen or anything, it just froze, mouse stuck on the screen (wouldn't move) and what was really odd was it wouldn't reset either (with the button - I had to hold the power button for a few seconds to get it to switch off).I got my PC back on and it came on fine although windows took (and still takes) an aaaage to turn on. Tried to start steam, seemed to be ok but a few seconds after it booted my PC crashed again (same as before, no bluescreen etc.). VERY annoying. This repeated a few times until I got sick and thought the best thing I could do was re-install steam. Tried to copy over my files (steamapps folder) so I didn't have to re-download everything but when I copied them back after a subsequent reinstall of steam the PC crashed again!
So uninstalling steam again this time deleting all of the games! Knowing its going to take a long time to reinstall too. Very irritating. However, once I reinstalled it, it seemed to work ok! Good times (or so I thought). Once I managed to get a game downloaded and ran it (Crysis 1) I noticed intermittent (but massive) slowdowns! ie. The game would be running fine for a bit then suddenly get exceptionally laggy / freeze for a few seconds then run fine again! This led me to believe it was linked to a graphics driver issue. I rolled back the drivers to the beta drivers which I was using fine until 314 was released. The problem did not go away (it is worth noting at this point that BEFORE the problems started Crysis ran beautifully on my PC - its definitely not a 'spec' issue
). It's also worth noting the only games affected are on my WD Black harddrive.Next thing I tried was to try a windows restore as I figured reinstalling windows wouldn't do much else that a restore would do (although I may be wrong about that I'm not sure) and I didn't really expect it to fix the issue with the slow games. Unfortunately it didn't. I have spent the last week basically trying to test my rig piece by piece to see if anything fails under pressure performing benchmarks/etc. to stress out my components but nothing has gone awry at all doing this (running superpi/folding@home/3Dmark/residentevil6bench/memtest/EVGA precision X etc.). I even performed a few harddrive read/write tests and found my harddrive was performing as expected, all of this leads me to believe its a software thing and not a hardware thing (although I'm no longer sure).
Today the worst thing happened, I had another crash. I've narrowed it down to only occurring when Steam is working - my PC has been on for days doing various other things (some intensive, some not) and I've managed to play other games (Diablo 3 mainly) with no issues whatsoever (that is installed on the SSD).
I'm kinda at my wits end, its very irritating to have a powerful rig that doesn't seem to be able to cut the proverbial mustard.
Also I don't really want to do a full format of the WD Black (just got most of my steam games back, although they are kinda useless at the moment...) / reinstall windows but if it'll help I'll do it. I kinda guess that's going to be the first suggestion, but hey ho we'll see what happens.
Another question I have is (if anyone has any good ideas I mean) what on earth could be the cause of the problem.
If I can provide any more information/expand on any point/clarify etc.etc. (I'm kinda rambling because I am a bit tired ... sorry folk) please let me know.
Summary:
- PC Seems to be goosed, total crash (no bluescreen) when on steam (it seems)
- Games running strangely, good FPS/smooth gameplay then moments of REALLY BAD lag/almost crashing. Seems to be all games on the WD Black
- Windows taking ages to start/shutdown.
- Benchmarks all run ok (not showing massive slowdown etc.).
- All hardware seems fine (according to what tests I can do)
- PC doesn't seem to have any issues outwith Steam (ie no crashing - games on the SSD seem ok)
