Random Restarts / Browsers Hanging

[Shojin]

Hi all, I finished putting together a new PC yesterday and everything booted perfectly fine first time. Changed the DDR3 RAM to 1600 7-8-7-24 @ 1.6v (defaulted at 1333 9-9-9-24) and ran Memtest86+, passed through the test once and installed Windows. Everything was working pretty good until a few hours in when I was installing all the programs I need. I had a few weird problems like mouse acting weird, I changed the RAM to DDR 1600 8-8-8-24 @ 1.6v which seemed to fix that.

Other problems still exist, first browsers would start to hang, especially on pages with a lot of images like, google image search for instance, it would freeze up pretty consistently in both Firefox and Google Chrome. Since then I've gotten a few random restarts, doesn't give a BSOD, just cuts off and restarts randomly. I'm using the power supply, graphics card and hard drive from my previous PC which worked perfectly fine. New parts are CPU, Mobo, DDR3 RAM and case/cpu fan heatsink.

I've been trying to isolate the problem and any advice would be greatly appreciated. I've ran both Memtest86+ and Windows Memory Diagnostics and both pass the ram at its current settings, I've ran Prime95 for a few hours which didn't give me any CPU errors. I'm pretty sure it isn't the PSU. The only thing I can think of is maybe a bad OS installation, problem with the HDD, or the Mobo. But I don't want to rule anything out as a lot of this stuff is still in its warranty so I want to make sure I get to the problem.

Would a PC even POST properly with a faulty CPU or Mobo? Maybe PSU problem? How would I test these things?

System specs are:

Antec 650w PSU
ASUS M4A87TD EVO AM3 AMD 870 SATA 6Gb/s USB 3.0 ATX AMD Motherboard
AMD Phenom II X4 965 Black Edition Deneb 3.4GHz Socket AM3 125W Quad-Core
Antec Nine Hundred Two Black Steel ATX Mid Tower Computer Case
ZALMAN CNPS9900 NT 120mm 2 Ball CPU Cooler
G.SKILL Ripjaws Series 4GB (2 x 2GB) 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM DDR3 1600 (PC3 12800)
HDD is some Hitachi 500GB Sata 3.5" model that I've had for a few years.

tl;dr: Browser hanging, system restarts randomly (normally when I'm in the middle of something like a game or browsing web), halp me diagnose plz.

Oh also, I don't think it's a heat issue. Everything is running very cool in this case, GPU is 30c idle and ~55c under load, and according to PC probe my CPU runs idle at 32c, and with Prime95 stress test maxes out at around 45-50c. Mobo is a constant 34c according to PC probe.

Will be reformatting and re-installing the OS to see if it fixes the problem soon after I post this, will check this thread once everything is reinstalled. Any replies appreciated, just need to get to the root of the problem. Thanks in advance.

[sruon]

Kind of hard to tell, I'd start trying by lowering RAM clock speed and benchmarking everything, RAM with Memtest (errors may pop past the first pass... leave it overnight?), OCCT for PSU/CPU, Afterburner for GFX.

[chiyio]

I had a system with a similar sounding problem one time, and after replacing just about everything else, it ended up being the Harddrive.

I'd test it with some of the tools here http://www.technobuzz.net/5-best-har...testing-tools/

Kind of a long shot, but can't hurt to check.

I'd also try setting your memory to something super conservative, like 10-10-10-24. You know which exact G.SKILL Ripjaws Series 4GB set you got? Some of them are cas 9 and 1.5 volt.

[Shojin]

Reinstalled OS and still having the same problem.

CAS latency for the RAM is 7, but some can't get it that low (mine booted fine) but I set it to 8-8-8-24 for safety. I've also tried 1600 9-9-9-24 and system default (1333 at 9-9-9-24). Problem still persists. I have a spare 3.5" hdd in one of my old PC's I could install the OS on and see if that fixes it I guess, and eliminate that option if it's that.

Windows Error check scheduled for next boot up too. I'll also have Memtest86+ running overnight and see if any problems show up.
If possible though I'd like to eliminate the CPU as as far as I know it only has a 30 day warranty. Is there any chance that this could be a CPU error? Would Prime95 detect something like this?
Also, I tried out OCCT, did the GPU Memtest and passed for 10 passes, tried the CPU ones for 20-30mins each, hottest CPU got under stressing it was 50c so I can eliminate heat as being the issue.

[Cheerios]

Is the time between restarts pretty long, or have you gotten a string of short ones?

I'm leaning towards the motherboard itself being an issue. I wouldn't worry about the BIOS yet, but it could be an error with chipset drivers, or something on the board itself. The PC can still POST if there's a motherboard issue that's not severe.

It could be an issue with onboard LAN (or NIC if you're using one). If your PC restarts relatively soon after booting, you can try using the PC offline with the onboard LAN disabled through BIOS and seeing if the PC restarts then. If you have a NIC to use, try using that instead of the onboard (or onboard instead of NIC if your setup is the other way around).

Without any definite error messages, it's mostly just trial and error.

[Shojin]

I was reading up and saw that it might be an issue with my LAN driver because one of the BSOD's referenced a rt64win7.sys and people said to get the latest driver version, which I did, but I'm still getting blue screens.
Also, it isn't just browsers that hang apparently, it can be other windows too but not always, sometimes explorer hangs too.

Here's my progress so far.

I've been tinkering with a few BIOS settings and I found that flash video (youtube etc.) constantly gave me a BSOD/Complete unrecoverable freeze. Turned off hardware acceleration and it still persisted, and I found that with the RAM running at 1333 seems to stop blue screens from this, but I still get system/browser hangs that can last 10-20 secs (pressing CTRL+SHIFT+ESC to bring up Task Manager seems to actually speed it up a bit.)
I got a few other bluescreens here when I switched it back to 1600 trying to isolate what is causing this. Most blue screens referenced KMODE_EXCEPTION_NOT_HANDLED STOP: 0x0000001e or MEMORY_MANAGEMENT. I still have the mini dumps if anyone knows how to read them.

I've tried testing in 1600 with one stick of ram, switched them, tried different ram slots etc. still can't seem to stop the hanging. Oh, and ran Memtest86+ for about 5 hours last night and it did 4-5 passes and reported no errors.

[sruon]

Hm, that sucks... next step I guess is trying on another HDD but I'm starting to think motherboard as well.

Realistically it's going to be hard to find out exactly without spare parts to realize some tests.

Edit: Tried with a single DDR3 stick?

[Shojin]

Yeah, tried single stick and everything.

Okay well. Don't want to jinx this, but seems to be running smoothly. G.skill got in touch with me and gave me some specific settings for my CPU/Mobo. Seems to be running stable at 1600 8-8-8-24 @ 1.6v. Haven't had any stalls, hang-ups or BSOD's while playing flash videos or browsing web.

Seems the problem was that I had to change the offset voltage on the CPU/North Bridge. Adjusted it +0.1v and everything seems to be fine... for now. Funny how a tiny little thing like that can wreak such havoc. Will post back if I encounter any problems.