Thank you for being a valued part of the CNET community. As of December 1, 2020, the forums are in read-only format. In early 2021, CNET Forums will no longer be available. We are grateful for the participation and advice you have provided to one another over the years.

Thanks,

CNET Support

Question

Computer freezes in a few minutes upon bootup

Aug 13, 2016 7:08PM PDT

Hello Everyone, today I was playing Witcher 3 when my screen suddenly froze, without any BSOD occurring. I cut the power to my PC and rebooted, and was greeted with a message dictating that my bios was corrupt. I used my backup bios to fix the issue and proceeded to login, simply to have my screen freeze once again. After cutting the power the computer prompted a message saying my bios was corrupt, just as before. I decided to flash the latest motherboard and clear the cmos, and now my PC no longer shows the message about the corrupt bios. Alas, the computer still freezes upon booting up. This freezing occurs in the os, in safe mode, and in the bios. Any advice will be greatly appreciated

Discussion is locked

- Collapse -
Answer
Re: freeze
Aug 14, 2016 2:22AM PDT

I'm afraid you'll have to replace the motherboard or the CPU. However, check the cooling of the CPU and try it with 1 RAM stick.

Post was last edited on August 14, 2016 2:27 AM PDT

- Collapse -
Answer
Freezing
Aug 14, 2016 5:39AM PDT

If it freezes while sitting in the bios use the bios as your tester and start making it smaller.

A piece at a time.
Unplug the disk and optical.
If you have more than one stick of ram just use one.
If you have on-board video plug the monitor into it and remove the video card.
Unplug any extra usb devices.
Replace the bios battery.
Do make sure the filters and innards are nice and clean and all the fans function.

- Collapse -
Surely a good answer.
Aug 14, 2016 7:27AM PDT

But did it work?

- Collapse -
a great answer.
Aug 14, 2016 5:09PM PDT

hello and sorry for the late response--- unfortunately the issue still persists after removing some non essential items (wifi card, headphones, usb stick). Is there anyway i can accurately diagnose if my mobo or the cpu is the issue, as its impossible to make it smaller with them?

- Collapse -
Parts
Aug 14, 2016 5:31PM PDT

List the parts that are still plugged in or connected to this machine.

We know you have a psu and a mobo and a cpu.
What else?

- Collapse -
Part List
Aug 14, 2016 5:55PM PDT

Hello and thanks for the quick response

Here is the components in my rig right now:

CPU - FX6300
GPU - 750 TI
MOBO - Gigabyte GA-970A-DS3P ATX AM3+
PSU - 500W EVGA 80+ Certified
Memory - Corsair Vengeance 1x8 GB 1600
SSD - PNY CS1311 240GB 2.5''
Monitor - Asus VP228H 21.5'' 60Hz

- Collapse -
Update
Aug 14, 2016 6:03PM PDT

I was able to record a BSOD occurring after the system froze in one of my attempts to boot up the system
BSOD

- Collapse -
DMP files are for you and Microsoft.
Aug 14, 2016 6:10PM PDT

Here we work with what that BSOD is, your PC and other clues.

To me this reads like one of the usual AMD PCs we see at the shop. We give it a good cleaning, check for bad caps, old parts and then re-do the heatsink compound, install latest BIOS and reload the OS and drivers.

If that fails, we don't waste any time. We advise to replace what parts we feel will fix it. In this case my past experience says motherboard, CPU, RAM and/or PSU.

Post was last edited on August 15, 2016 1:31 PM PDT

- Collapse -
Update
Aug 15, 2016 1:27PM PDT

Hey guys just a quick update: started up the PC and a few minutes later the PC froze, as usual. However, a few seconds later, the fans stopped spinning and the PC and the screen blacked out soon thereafter. The PC wasn't able to start back up again, so I did the paper clip test on my PSU only to find that the PSU fans were spinning. Am I safe to conclude that the most likely link to my issues in the motherboard?

- Collapse -
There's not much we can do with board and CPU tests
Aug 15, 2016 1:33PM PDT

About the best we can do is to (again) be sure the PSU is good, do the visual on the boards (google bad caps) and then strip it down to see if the least number of parts work or not.

Remember at this point there is no case. We are looking for the least number of parts to get a good boot.