Forum Discussion

Sumpfman's avatar
Sumpfman
13 years ago
Solved

random freeze and complete lockup (PC)

Problem:

At a random point while playing the game online on punkbuster secured servers (mostly after 15 - 60 minutes) the screen goes black, the screen LED starts blinking and the complete machine locks up so only hitting the reset button helps (no ctrl - alt -del, no nothing).

As some people mentioned this to be Realtek onboard sound related, I already turned that off in bios after uninstalling all drivers, software, etc. I was also using driversweeper and ccleaner to ensure everything had gone properly.

Then installed an Sennheiser USB-Headset to get the great BF3 sound back. Well there's no soundloop anymore, just random black screens and lockups.

I got this frustrating problem ever since I am playing bf3 (And yes I bought that beast of a machine to play BF3 on max settings, which just makes the whole scenario much more frustrating).

Hardware:

Case: Thermaltake Chaser MK-I

Mobo: Asus P8Z77V-Pro

CPU: Intel i7 3770k

CPU-Cooler: be quiet! Dark Rock Pro 2

GPU: Sapphire 7870 OC GHZ Edition

HDD: 1 Adata S510 120 GB, 1 Adata S511 120 GB, 1 WD Green 2TB

RAM: GEIL DDR3 1600 Black Dragon quad kit 16GB

PSU: be quiet! 580W (Should be "Straight Power E9 CM")

Input: Logitech G15, Logitech G7, MS XBOX 360 Controller

Monitor: Samsung 24" (connected via HDMI)

What I've done so far:

- reinstalling BF3

- reinstalling Origin

- reinstalling punkbuster (there are some good how to threads on the battlelog forum)

- Excluding BF3 from Virus Scanner (Avast)

- cleaning and reinstalling ATI Drivers (completely including driversweeper etc.)

- disabling IGPU and cleaning drivers

- disabling onboard soundchip (Realtek) sweeping drivers and replacing it with and USB-headset.

- disabling HDMI Audio device

- checking system files (sfc /scannow)

- checking all disks (chkdsk /r /f)

- checking memory settings in bios and set them to XMP-Profile (including voltages)

- benchmarking CPU with prime95 (12hrs)

- benchmarking GPU using Furmarks burn in test (never failed)

- 3dmark benchmarks (no failures)

- having a look at voltages and temperatures all the time - no abnormalities detected

- checking windows system logs - no errors shown

- no windows minidump is written during this lockup

- checking memory (memtest & windows memory check)

- updating BIOS

- updating Intel chipset firmware

- updating SSD-Firmware

- updating each and every driver for all the things installed in my setup

- installing Microsoft hotfix for random freezes during high memory usage

- resetting gpu to core settings (no oc!)

- replacing HDMI cable (1.4)

- randomly screaming in pain / shouting at machine...

What I need:

Clearly I need help fixing this because I'm starting to run out of ideas and would much rather spend my time playing BF3 than playing with the reset button.

Thank you!

battlefield 3
  • Sumpfman's avatar
    Sumpfman
    13 years ago

    I have been playing for two weeks straight now without any lockups.

    So what has fixed all of this?

    - windows power management (disable pcie and cpu power savings - especially for Z77 boards, because they do power management on their own)

    - repairing each and every c++ & .net runtime installed on the machine

    - re-installing the game

    - installing latest AMD 12.9 beta drivers

    - manually updating nvidia physx

    along with the stuff mentioned above, here's the additional thing that finally fixed it for me:

    - uninstalling, completely removing, wiping everything that monitors voltages and settings like that from my pc.

    (speaking of: ASUS AI SUITE, MSI AFTERBURNER, SAPPHIRE TRIXX and so on...)

    In conlusion the black screen errors can be caused by almost everything that we fixed throughout this thread and it's finally gone.

    I'd like to take a minute and thank you guys, I really apprechiate your help and I owe you one!

    In addition I can now reproduce blackscreen lockups by for example enabling pcie-power saving in windows or installing ASUS AI SUITE and other power-monitoring stuff.

    And here's the reason why: From time to time there are negative readings recorded for GPU Voltages on 7xxxx GPUs and this is what seemingly causes the crashes when using those software components, that were originally intended to help you.

     

    Again: Thank you guys!!

18 Replies

Show More
  • Sumpfman's avatar
    Sumpfman
    13 years ago

    So here we go again,

    yesterday I played and only had one black screen the whole evening. This is a new record, it normally crashed 6 times on an evening. Things seem to work better since fixing the c++ stuff and the windows power management settings. I also will trie to play without any browser opened (technically you can close battlelog when you joined a server) to see if the issue is browser related and I may also check out CPU-Powermanagement options.

    @atxmattylight: I did the clean install you recommended last friday but will do it again this evening I think, just to make sure everything is ok with the installation files. And yes i made sure everything is up to date. I still go to any vendor site (intel, amd, asus, etc.) each day to check if there are any updates but for now I'm on the latest drivers for everything.

    @d4isycutter: I already checked if it was temperature related by recording temperatures whilst playing but nothing got hotter than 70°C. As for power supply it depends which calculator you ask. The one at asus states i'd need 700W but on the other hand the ones at Enermax, Thermaltake and bequiet! state I should be perfectly fine with the 580W. So the next thing I'm going to do is disabling avast while gaming and watching event manager (which I do after every lockup but there are never any messages in system and application logs - will check this again).

    So after all it's getting better. It's not completely solved, but we achieved something.

    I'd like to thank you guys - again. :-)

  • Anonymous's avatar
    Anonymous
    13 years ago

    I have the same problem... Just with my PC its already happening after 1min... I cant play at all... :☹️ can somebody help me?

  • XSV_NiTEMARE's avatar
    XSV_NiTEMARE
    Legend
    13 years ago

    Hi again!

    I see the that the problem isn't solved yet, it seems to be a error within the Armored Kill since there a bunch of other PC players having the same problem. Just for testing.. try to put down the grapics and play a round and see what happens.

    Since everything seems to works well, and your computure is a bad ass and should handle it, however if the there is a C++ error, for like AK, then it dosen't matter wich PC you have. But try this and report back if problem stil exist.

    / XSV N1T3MAR3™.

  • Sumpfman's avatar
    Sumpfman
    13 years ago

    Hi again N1T3MAR3,

    last night I noticed the lockups now only occure during load change (e.g. map changes) so I disabled windows power saving for CPU as I did for the graphics card some days ago and the next map change worked. Disabling those doesn't actually effect the down clocking of neither cpu nor gpu.

    But you are right, it might be a problem with the AK but to verify that I need to test some more, which I unfortunately can't do until monday - real life got me booked for the weekends. So I'll report back here next week with the results of some more testing.

    Thanks & have a nice weekend,

    Sumpfman

  • Sumpfman's avatar
    Sumpfman
    13 years ago

    hey guys,

    just a quick update: I'm playing for 2 hours straight now and will report back later if it locked up or not.

    Regards,

    Sumpfman

  • Sumpfman's avatar
    Sumpfman
    13 years ago

    I have been playing for two weeks straight now without any lockups.

    So what has fixed all of this?

    - windows power management (disable pcie and cpu power savings - especially for Z77 boards, because they do power management on their own)

    - repairing each and every c++ & .net runtime installed on the machine

    - re-installing the game

    - installing latest AMD 12.9 beta drivers

    - manually updating nvidia physx

    along with the stuff mentioned above, here's the additional thing that finally fixed it for me:

    - uninstalling, completely removing, wiping everything that monitors voltages and settings like that from my pc.

    (speaking of: ASUS AI SUITE, MSI AFTERBURNER, SAPPHIRE TRIXX and so on...)

    In conlusion the black screen errors can be caused by almost everything that we fixed throughout this thread and it's finally gone.

    I'd like to take a minute and thank you guys, I really apprechiate your help and I owe you one!

    In addition I can now reproduce blackscreen lockups by for example enabling pcie-power saving in windows or installing ASUS AI SUITE and other power-monitoring stuff.

    And here's the reason why: From time to time there are negative readings recorded for GPU Voltages on 7xxxx GPUs and this is what seemingly causes the crashes when using those software components, that were originally intended to help you.

     

    Again: Thank you guys!!

Recent Discussions