Hello! I am new to the community and decided to try as a last resort to post my problem specifically as I have tried an assortment of fixes from other threads that had issues similar to mine but not exactly, to no avail.
To start let me post my specs:
Windows 7 Ultimate 64bit SP1
CPU: Intel Core i7 3770K
GPU: Gigabyte Windforce GTX670 OC
RAM: Corsair Vengeance Blue C9 1600 DDR3
PSU: Silverstone 750W
MB: ASUS P8Z77-V Pro
HDD: Western Digital 1TB 7200RPM 2x500 disks.
To start with I find this problem very peculiar since from what I have read on other threads it would appear to be a hardware issue. I find this hard to believe because as of last week the computer was working better than fine. It was fantastic! I was playing all my games and getting frame rates above 60FPS on everything at 1080 resolutions. Prior to this however I had been experiencing crashes on the game Battlefield 3, which then started making my other games Crysis 2 and Shogun 2 crash as well. What I had done to remedy this particular problem was to throw in a couple new entries into regedit, update to the latest REALTEK drivers for the onboard sound, and fiddle with the sound settings in the mixer as to the specific instructions of those on the Battlefield forums. These steps combined worked like a charm and I enjoyed a blissful week breathing the biggest sigh of relief over the idea that at the very least nothing was broken in my machine, it had simply been a driver issue.
Fast forward to today. This is the 2nd day in a row where I have been experiencing crippling and very fast crashes on my system. The first place I noticed it was very obviously in Battlefield 3, probably the most system intense game I have. That game, without exception crashes within 1 minute of being launched. What will happen is the entire screen will freeze, accompanied by a REALLY loud buzzing which I am assuming is a sound loop. The only thing consistent about the crashing form BF3 is the time it takes to crash or lock up. What is random about it is the way in which this happens. Sometimes the freeze or lock up will be preceded by a sharp fall in Frames per second in the game. Then the freeze will hit with a sound loop. If I am lucky enough or fast enough to Ctrl Alt Del or Alt Tab I can sometimes regain control of the computer by terminating the game in the task manager. Other times when the lock up just happens spontaneously or instantaneously, this is impossible, as no keys or any input for that matter works. Even the reset button becomes unresponsive at times and the entire computer requires a hard boot for me to regain control.
This freezing and sound looping has also happened in other games for me, like Company of Heroes. A much older and far less demanding game than BF3. I will get frozen for one second with a sound loop, then it will resume for 2 seconds, Freeze with sound loop, resume for 2 seconds , so on and so forth. If I let this drag on long enough the computer has thrown errors my way that this is somehow driver related. Something about the drivers crashing, not being able to respond and having recovered. In the case of BF3 IF I am lucky, Ill get some error related to DirectX, saying that the crash is potentially driver related, something happened with the Kernel OR something about "GetDeviceRemoved". I am not entirely sure what to make of any of this.
Also to note, when I had remedied the first problem which was apparently audio driver related, Shogun 2 for example on high settings with DX11 on a benchmark made about 60FPS. Now when I run the same benchmark it has slipped pretty dramatically to more like 22FPS. I have no doubt that were I to run a full game or match on it that it would probably crash or freeze up sporadically like Company of Heroes I described above in the last paragraph if not crash outright like BF3.
NOTHING on my end has changed since I fixed the video driver issue last week which made my system run flawlessly. I changed no drivers, no nothing. Just for the sake of trying for a quick fix, YES I did update to the latest video card drivers as the windows errors had suggested and this proved futile. I rolled back to the same drivers I had had success with prior.
Also, the problem seems not simply isolated to games anymore, but I have recently had Flash Videos freeze up intermittently as described with Company of Heroes above.
I am at a complete and total loss. I am not the most technically savy person. Its been quite a while since I have done a build. This is my first in 4 years. Never Never had problems like this before.
I would greatly appreciate any and all help in fixing this. At this point I wouldnt even care if something was broken or what... so long as I could just fix it and be on my marry way. Its so cruel how this machine gave me a taste of what it was capable of and then without warning this starts. From what the PC says its a software problem and from what I am seeing on threads its probably a hardware problem. I have no idea where to start.
Everyone's help is greatly appreciated.
Thanks!
To start let me post my specs:
Windows 7 Ultimate 64bit SP1
CPU: Intel Core i7 3770K
GPU: Gigabyte Windforce GTX670 OC
RAM: Corsair Vengeance Blue C9 1600 DDR3
PSU: Silverstone 750W
MB: ASUS P8Z77-V Pro
HDD: Western Digital 1TB 7200RPM 2x500 disks.
To start with I find this problem very peculiar since from what I have read on other threads it would appear to be a hardware issue. I find this hard to believe because as of last week the computer was working better than fine. It was fantastic! I was playing all my games and getting frame rates above 60FPS on everything at 1080 resolutions. Prior to this however I had been experiencing crashes on the game Battlefield 3, which then started making my other games Crysis 2 and Shogun 2 crash as well. What I had done to remedy this particular problem was to throw in a couple new entries into regedit, update to the latest REALTEK drivers for the onboard sound, and fiddle with the sound settings in the mixer as to the specific instructions of those on the Battlefield forums. These steps combined worked like a charm and I enjoyed a blissful week breathing the biggest sigh of relief over the idea that at the very least nothing was broken in my machine, it had simply been a driver issue.
Fast forward to today. This is the 2nd day in a row where I have been experiencing crippling and very fast crashes on my system. The first place I noticed it was very obviously in Battlefield 3, probably the most system intense game I have. That game, without exception crashes within 1 minute of being launched. What will happen is the entire screen will freeze, accompanied by a REALLY loud buzzing which I am assuming is a sound loop. The only thing consistent about the crashing form BF3 is the time it takes to crash or lock up. What is random about it is the way in which this happens. Sometimes the freeze or lock up will be preceded by a sharp fall in Frames per second in the game. Then the freeze will hit with a sound loop. If I am lucky enough or fast enough to Ctrl Alt Del or Alt Tab I can sometimes regain control of the computer by terminating the game in the task manager. Other times when the lock up just happens spontaneously or instantaneously, this is impossible, as no keys or any input for that matter works. Even the reset button becomes unresponsive at times and the entire computer requires a hard boot for me to regain control.
This freezing and sound looping has also happened in other games for me, like Company of Heroes. A much older and far less demanding game than BF3. I will get frozen for one second with a sound loop, then it will resume for 2 seconds, Freeze with sound loop, resume for 2 seconds , so on and so forth. If I let this drag on long enough the computer has thrown errors my way that this is somehow driver related. Something about the drivers crashing, not being able to respond and having recovered. In the case of BF3 IF I am lucky, Ill get some error related to DirectX, saying that the crash is potentially driver related, something happened with the Kernel OR something about "GetDeviceRemoved". I am not entirely sure what to make of any of this.
Also to note, when I had remedied the first problem which was apparently audio driver related, Shogun 2 for example on high settings with DX11 on a benchmark made about 60FPS. Now when I run the same benchmark it has slipped pretty dramatically to more like 22FPS. I have no doubt that were I to run a full game or match on it that it would probably crash or freeze up sporadically like Company of Heroes I described above in the last paragraph if not crash outright like BF3.
NOTHING on my end has changed since I fixed the video driver issue last week which made my system run flawlessly. I changed no drivers, no nothing. Just for the sake of trying for a quick fix, YES I did update to the latest video card drivers as the windows errors had suggested and this proved futile. I rolled back to the same drivers I had had success with prior.
Also, the problem seems not simply isolated to games anymore, but I have recently had Flash Videos freeze up intermittently as described with Company of Heroes above.
I am at a complete and total loss. I am not the most technically savy person. Its been quite a while since I have done a build. This is my first in 4 years. Never Never had problems like this before.
I would greatly appreciate any and all help in fixing this. At this point I wouldnt even care if something was broken or what... so long as I could just fix it and be on my marry way. Its so cruel how this machine gave me a taste of what it was capable of and then without warning this starts. From what the PC says its a software problem and from what I am seeing on threads its probably a hardware problem. I have no idea where to start.
Everyone's help is greatly appreciated.
Thanks!
Have a good day!
