My PC constantly freezes if I’m not playing a game or have a game running.
✅ If I’m playing a game, it’s fine.
✅ If I have a game running in the background while doing other stuff, it’s fine.
❌ If I leave my PC while playing a game and the lock screen pops up, it will freeze.
❌ If I do anything other than gaming, such as browsing the web or digital art, PC will freeze.
❌ If PC goes to sleep overnight, it will freeze.
The frozen PC will typically show no error code and display will show “no input” until I hard reset.
If I hard reset, it often won’t successfully turn back on unless I move the mouse while it’s resetting, otherwise it will freeze again on the windows loading screen.
Sometimes I will actually get a blue screen with the error code of DPC_Watchdog_Error or something like that.
Anyone know where I should look first to try and fix this? It’s been happening for weeks now and it’s driving me crazy. I can’t figure it out.
watchdog error, sleep and lockscreen freezing, and stable under some load tells me either the cpu isn’t getting enough voltage if it’s manually oc’d, or there’s some bios or os powersaving thing malfunctioning.
reset bios settings, especially if you’ve done any overclocking. turn off any core boost or other variable core clock powersaving amd/intel specific ‘features’; these are almost always unstable in my experience.
if that doesn’t work, double check all power cables are properly seated in both mobo/component side and psu side if it’s modular. make sure ram is seated properly. if you’re on windows make sure you’re on high performance mode. i can’t think of much else to check without more info. good luck!
This! Undervolting to oc is known to be unstable at idle or low usage both for cpu and gpu.
I’ll try resetting BIOS settings haven’t done any over locking. I tried switching out my PSU but didn’t fix anything. Definitely made sure all the power cables were connected right.
I’ll try re seating the ram.
Is there any real benefit to overclocking a CPU in the past ten or so years? It doesn’t seem to me like that’s been much of a performance bottleneck anymore compared to the GPU
i mean, it depends on the cpu and your workload. i have a 1st gen ryzen 1500 and amd rx580 gpu, so yeah, my cpu is the bottleneck in this build. i do have it slightly oc’d and it def helps a bit keep it smoother gameplay especially when travelling fast in game and new areas need to load up. the pop-in and small frame dips are a bit more noticeable on stock clock speed. did i really need to oc it? nah. but i like to squeeze every last bit of capability out of my hardware just for the fun of it, too.
I was also getting watchdog error a while back and it took me months to figure out. Ended up being the CPU, not overclocked just crapped out. I replaced everything, MB, ram, gpu, ssd, power supply and multiple OS’s before replacing the cpu. Mine was also randomly locking up, usually overnight idle but other times as well.
One other possibility would be some kind of malware (like one for mining bitcoins) which tries to be sneaky and activates when your computer is not busy, but a bug in it causes your PC to crash.
Google suggests perhaps a bad a Realtek WiFi driver associated with DPC watchdog BSOD / kernel panic.
To diagnose that, remove all wireless adapters and boot.
More generally, symptoms on this scale on modern operating systems mean that the crashes are in kernel mode code, which mostly means device drivers of some type.
So a decent diagnostic method is to remove pieces of hardware one at a time to see if there’s one that clears up the issue.
Graphics adapters can also lead to these error codes
Have you reset your bios back to defaults and made sure you’re on the latest?
Sounds like something to do with the power states or clock boost.
I used to have a very similar problem also with freezers that do not occur when a game is running even in the background. I also followed dead ends such as CPU state issues and so on.
The biggest breakthrough came after several years when I took the entire SSD out of the laptop and put it into a desktop PC with entirely different hardware and booted the same Windows there. The problem still occurred!
A complete Windows reinstall fixed it for good.
By the way, I also made a program that keeps one CPU core only busy at 100 % in a lowest priority thread. IIRC, it worked.
public class Busy { public static void main(String... args) { int i = 0; Thread.currentThread().setPriority(Thread.MIN_PRIORITY); while (true) { i = (i << 3) ^ i; } } }(With a JDK installed: javac Busy.java && java Busy)I’ll try all these suggestions first then try a windows reinstall
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Shit, I’d start with the reinstall personally
Also found this in my bookmarks, but it didn’t help back then, and OP never got it solved either: https://forums.tomshardware.com/threads/pc-freezes-when-not-playing-games.3731029/
My freeze did not have your odd reset problems. Its own oddity was that often it was a semi-zombie-freeze, in that I could sometimes even type text into an open editor and open menus, but nothing ever happened, saved or executed.
The windows Event Viewer is probably something that could help you investigate, find instructions online if you have troubles.
Edit: Searching for DPC_Watchdog_Error also shows things, I don’t know if you have checked.
Please provide your full system and OS config information:
- OS build
- CPU model / OC Status
- Mainboard model / UEFI version / Chipset driver
- Memory /( XMP/EXPO/OC etc) status
- GPU model / OC status / Driver
- PSU model / wattage
- ReBAR status
- Connected display model, res, refresh rate, connection method (DP/HDMI etc)
- Notable background apps
Since you’ve gotten a BSOD, you should have a MEMORY.DMP at
C:\Windows\. Copy this to your downloads directory, Grab Windbg from the store, load the kernel DMP file to see what actually happened. This should point you to the faulting object.We could also take a look at event viewer. I’d be interested if you have any WHEA errors listed there.
I’ll see if I can’t access it, I’m not terribly tech savvy just enough to plug PC components together and it doesn’t blow up.
My PC setup is Windows 10 Home Ryzen 9 5900x CPU Asus rog strix b550 MB Corsair vengeance RAM 8GB X4 RTX 3080 GPU updated drivers Asus rog strix 850w PSU Not sure about ReBAR? Asus 32" monitor, 1080x1920, 120hz, HDMI
I don’t suppose you could check event viewer? in particular, applications and services logs > microsoft > windows > kernel-WHEA > errors
Can help with the kernel dmp if you’re in a pinch
Boot in safe mode, see what happens. Sounds to me like software conflict. You might try uninstalling your video drivers with DDU.
If you can work in safe mode, get rid of a couple of drivers, run DISM and try once more.
If you can’t work in safe mode, boot from usb with hiren’s boot disk. If you can’t work in hiren’s, reset bios to optimised defaults. If you can’t work in hiren’s after that, it’s a hardware issue.
Out of curiosity, is it the same game that keeps it from freezing, or is it any game?
Nope, seemingly any game, but they are all through Steam so not sure if maybe it’s steam related. I also have some sort of Asus game performance booster that turns on when games are running, can’t remember what it’s called.
Try uninstalling the Asus game performance booster, restart, and then see if the problem persist. If it does, try uninstalling steam next.
Edit: I want to add that the fact the freezing only happens when software isnt running makes me believe its software related. If i had to guess, possibly a program or utility that runs alongside the game and may even run at startup. If it was the same game everytime, then I would suspect the game install first, but since any game keeps the system running fine it makes me think the issue stems from software running only during game play for all games. Getting a blue screen error makes me think the problem software is something with elevated system access and, before your response, my intial suspicion was a bad AntiCheat install. If i had to guess, your game boosting software might be trying to run when games arent creating a conflict somewhere (maybe unresponsive programs windows cant resolve).
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That’s a fun problem. Could be anything, could be even CPU cores being put into efficiency states.
General debugging steps, take the system completely apart. All the way apart. Reapply thermal paste put the CPU back on. Using only a single stick of memory. Turn the computer on with just the CPU and a cooler, maybe video card if you absolutely need it, see if you can replicate the issue. Since you mentioned booting was an issue, it probably is hardware. But to rule that software, try booting with the USB stick seeing if you can replicate the issue.
Keep adding parts back onto the system until you find where the problem starts
See if just opening the task manager and leaving it open also keeps the pc from freezing. If so - that points towards a malware.
Additionally you can set up a monitoring software to get the load readouts on your phone and see if maybe something weird is going on when the pc should be idle (like 100% cpu load or disk usage). Pitikapp + hwinfo is a free combination for such setup.
Does the keyboard numlock button change state when the pc is frozen (led turning on and off when you press it)?
What is your graphics setup? I’ve seen similar weirdness on laptops with hybrid graphics, where attempts to use the cpu/integrated graphics cause failures. If you have such a setup, can you test what happens after putting it into “performance” mode in the os power settings, and ideally forcing discrete gpu only as a bios level?
Reseat your GPU port.
Soumds like a hardware issue.
Everything here points to a hardware problem, yet I had a similar issue that also was “fixed” by keeping a game running in background, and it turned to be out 100 % software. (Not fixed by putting the SSD into an entirely different system, but fixed by complete reinstall.)
Try running Debian live then.
I’ve tried reseating it, as well as my hard drives and all power cables / PSU cables. Haven’t tried PSU yet though or ram, probably will try that next.
Have you tried Debian live?
(For testing reasons, not trying to make you switch.)
I face value from your description, I find it difficult to say if a program screwed up your system or if one program is conflicting wifh syatem swttings.
Apart from making sure all drivers and software is updated, uninstalling one program at a time to test for conflict, I would be inclined to erase drive and reinstall OS.
Due to playing game seems to make it run fine makes me think it’s not a hardware failure, or games don’t push the hardware in way to trigger what is beginning to fail.
