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Question

My PC randomly restarts while playing games

Mar 20, 2017 1:11PM PDT

Hi i have had this problem for a while now and it originally started on total war attila the game and it use to restart my PC sort of like a power cut and switch back on instantly. It only use to do this when i zoomed in on the people walking and this use to cause my pc to lag and then crash, but recently it happened on Mass Effect Andromeda and also GTA 5 and that has never happened on GTA 5 before. I have monitored my cpu temp and graphics card temp when trying to crash my game on total war and it stayed the same temp around 70 on cpu and steady around 60 graphics card. i looked up numerous discussions with people saying if it was cpu or motherboard over heating it would shut pc down not restart and now i believe it can only be the Power Supply i have had it for a while now like 4 years but i just wanted someone else to have there input on the situation thanks.

Discussion is locked

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Answer
While those temps are a little high
Mar 20, 2017 1:26PM PDT
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Reply
Mar 20, 2017 3:18PM PDT
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No age? I'll read the Speccy for clues.
Mar 20, 2017 3:23PM PDT

The PSU is single rail so you have that going for you. While I read the Speccy, tell me how long since you deep cleaned, replaced all heatsink compound on all heatsinks and checked all fans.

BRB.

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Reply
Mar 20, 2017 4:24PM PDT

I have always cleaned my pc in the past but never a deep clean but did a quick clean with duster cloth and air duster about 3 weeks ago, the last time i replaced the heatsink compund was 24th march 2016 so pretty much a year ago that is when i got the I5. With the fans i have cleaned in the past but only briefly and never deep clean. Also the windows is a college key from the IT department in my college they hand it out to students who do IT i dont personally do IT but my friend does and gave it to me.

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That may explain why it's not updating.
Mar 20, 2017 4:28PM PDT

As to the CPU heatsink, done but what about all the others?

There's a lot of things to work on the Speccy reading. The OS is not getting updates which some were for stability. Maybe the school invalidated this license? IOW, get prepared for a license failure and shop for 10.

Anyhow, there's a lot to work here.

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Answer
Speccy reading.
Mar 20, 2017 3:42PM PDT

1. NOT A REBOOT SOURCE!!!
I see a single stick of RAM. Left some performance on the table by going with a single. About 10% or more depending on use.

2. Dual displays.
Reduce to one until the problem is found.

3. USB drives. Unplug till the machine is working right.

4. Avast. Uninstall, clean off with Avast's uninstaller and rely on Defender until the machine is working right.

5. JAVA. unless you need it, uninstall.

6. MBAM. Mixing protection can be trouble. Not here to debate. Uninstall for now, reinstall when stable.

7. Windows Updates seem to have stopped mid-2016. Any idea why?
I see a KMS activation server. Is there a story about school, work or such?

8. Lightshot. Optional. Eject till stable.

9. BIOS is out of date. Is 1.8, 1.9 notes a microcode (CPU) update and there's a 2.0. For stability work, I move to latest to remove all doubt. Check your motherboard version first. I was using http://www.asrock.com/mb/Intel/H81M/?cat=Download&os=BIOS

10. Unplug the webcam till it's stable.

11. PERFORMANCE FREEBIE. Change the DNS to other than 192.x.x.x. Try 8.8.8.8 and 4.2.2.1

12. It looks old enough to need a deep clean and fresh heatsink compound all around plus fan checks.

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Reply
Mar 22, 2017 5:00PM PDT

Hi i have done everything on this list except the BIOS update because when i went to do it i had a loading error when it asked me to restart pc. So i had to contact the motherboard company and they helped me out to get back on my pc again and i told them of the situation and he said the only reason they updated it was because intel was blocking them from overclocking or something like that so if you still think it is wise to update just in case then i will, but i thought i would message you to tell you it crashed again when playing GTA 5, thought you might want to know cause im starting to think it is a hardware problem.

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One More Thing
Mar 22, 2017 5:02PM PDT

Sorry i forgot to add i had my second monitor on i know you told me not to but it completely slipped my mind sorry.

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I'm trying to avoid the hardware answer.
Mar 22, 2017 5:20PM PDT

That's why the list. Get the BIOS updated anyway because of the note about Microcode. I've lost count of that one.

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BIOS wont update
Mar 25, 2017 7:40AM PDT

Hi sorry i have been taking so long to reply but i have college work i have to do as well, any way twice now i have tried to update BIOS. Pretty much the first time i tried i did the windows update process and that froze my pc on restart boot up screen so i had to ring ASRock so they could help and he told me to switch these two pins around to clear CMOS and he said just do that again if it happens. He sent me an email step by step on how to update BIOS by instant flash so i did this but now that freezes when it asks me to update UEFI. I will ring him them again on Monday as when i rang up they said they are not working weekends.

But i have done everything on that list except that. Just so you know the time playing games does vary in playtime before crash sometimes i can go a solid 4 hours and then come off the game and no crash happens or i can go 30 mins then crash.

Thanks for doing this by the way.

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Other ideas.
Mar 25, 2017 8:06AM PDT

While I want the BIOS to be current, there are a few other ideas to try.

1. Leave the case cover off and point a fan at it. The 30 minutes to hours is typical of heat buildup. And it can confuse folk that read temps. That is, not every chip and board has temp monitors so we always try the cover off and fan tests.

2. Google that game that crashed and use this sort of search:
"Farout 4 crashes with GT 007 GPU"

Sometimes I get lucky and find crashes when anti-aliasing is set to 16 and folk find pulling it back down fixes it. But this is something I have to almost be there to check into.

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Mar 27, 2017 4:59PM PDT

Hi thanks for the extra help, just wanted to ask about something quickly. When i thought this problem was just that one game the support guy asked me to get any event logs at that time of the crash so i did but he didn't really do much after that he just said something about wiping the settings. But when looking again at the files i sent him one of them was a AODDriver4.2 failed to start, and i have just crashed again and went to check the time and match it up and AODDriver4.2 was there again. Now i googled it first and some people said about a freezing problem and random reboots. I dont know if this is helpful as i am not certain to what this is.

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That on google does have priors.
Mar 27, 2017 5:06PM PDT
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Mar 28, 2017 4:06AM PDT

Hi just rang up ASRock and he sounded confused as to why when i do a BIOS update it freezes he said you will have to buy a bios chip and see if that works so yeah that is that from them.

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Sorry to read that. However
Mar 28, 2017 9:32AM PDT

There is that AMD video driver in there when you have Nvidia.

Did you complete the removal with DDU on the AMD ATI drivers? (Keep, don't touch the Nvidia drivers.)?