Hi everyone, sorry if this is in the wrong place - I'm happy to delete and post elsewhere if so. I'm having some problems with my PC and after emailing a local repair shop they pointed me in the direction of this forum. The problem with the PC is that it freezes very often (on average around once a day). I have checked to make sure my drivers are up to date (I think I checked that correctly) and can't find any issues, I also recently reinstalled Windows 10 which also didn't stop the freezes, leading me to thinking it may be a hardware problem. The issue actually started in the last 6 months, the PC would freeze at a random time once every couple of weeks or so, but is now a lot more consistent and regular - at one point it was mainly freezing on start-up but now seems to happen at random times and some days might not freeze at all. I'm not sure if it may have contributed to the problem, but I changed to having two monitors rather than just one around the time the freezing started, however having changed back to one it still occurs regularly. I have checked the Reliability Monitor but the only information I can see is that Windows was shut down unexpectedly - because it froze and I had to turn it off. The PC mostly freezes shortly after start-up, and doesn't show any error messages or any sign it has actually frozen (i.e. if not using the PC, the only indication it has froze is that the clock shows the time as whenever it froze). On the occasions I got a blue screen error rather than just a freeze, I had the following stop codes: - DRC_WATCHDOG_VIOLATION - IRQL_NOT_LESS_OR_EQUAL - DRIVER_IRQL_NOT_LESS_OR_EQUAL (along with 'What failed: amdppm.sys') I'm no expert by any stretch of the imagination so I'm a bit stumped. I was going to check if the hard drive is faulty with Crystaldisk, hopefully that can at least narrow down what the problem might be? Apologies again if this is in the wrong place, and for the long post (I've tried to give as much info as possible). I appreciate any help/suggestions anyone can give. Thank you!
It would help a lot, if you could post you system specs; cpu model, video card model, motherboard, memory config, psu , storage (HDD/SSD, windows version, and any add on accessories ( PCI, PCI-e expansion cards). Also, how old is the hardware? This information would help a lot for members who might help you.
I had freezes because of half alive HDD, but never blue screens. (maybe SATA cables, very rare) Temperatures. Is your PC getting air? Try open case.
I'm going to guess here, that its a bulldozer or piledriver based FX processor, and its being used on a motherboard that has pretty low end components.
The PC is an Acer Aspire TC-280 Processor: AMD A10-7800 Radeon R7, 12 Compute Cores 4C+8G, 3500 Mhz, 2 core(s), 4 Logical Processor(s) RAM: 8GB Windows version: 10.0.19041 Build 19041 BIOS Mode: UEFI I have roughly 2TB of storage; 930GB in Acer (C: ) and 931GB in DATA (D: ) I've no idea how to check what the PSU is, sorry. Its just coming up for 5 years old, it also froze a further 3 times today all before 12pm That's about as much as I can figure out, sorry if its not very helpful!
I have the PC sitting on top of a table, good few inches of space behind, and about a foot or so either side (wall to one side, monitors to the other)
I would straight away check different hard drives, ssd's. If no spare SSD, try some Live USB Operating System, see if it still freezes.
PC froze again and blue screened this morning, different stop code of UNEXPECTED KERNEL MODE TRAP. I was hoping to avoid opening the PC up as I know next to nothing about computers as it is and wouldn't know what I'm looking at/for, but might need to be my next step (even if just to blow some dust away). I've run the Windows Memory Diagnostic which found no errors - does this mean the issue is likely not RAM? I then installed CrystalDiskInfo which is showing no issues on the hard drive (status is Good and temperature is 40 Celsius at the time of typing). Are there any other 'tools' I can run that would be able to tell me (one way or the other) where the issue may lie? I will open up the PC if there's no other way but would rather avoid it at all costs lol. Generally I'm looking to pay for it to be repaired anyway, but would rather avoid the extra cost of someone else taking the time to find the problem.
I'll have a look around for a USB stick to see if I can try this. I completely reinstalled Windows a while back to no avail, would running from a USB still be different? (sorry, I'm way out of my depth here)
running from USB and getting no freezes means: bad hard drive. or maybe something with Win10 support. Most likely bad HDD. (but it shouldnt throw errors, just crash and freeze, really weird.)
To test memory, go here, read, and download which version you want: ( https://www.memtest86.com/ ) For hard drive: ( http://www.hdtune.com/index.html ) download the trial, select the drive you want to scan from drop down menu, run Error scan, do not click quick scan. To check CPU temps : ( https://www.cpuid.com/softwares/hwmonitor.html ). Freezes can come from many things. In the past I had issues from a card reader being bad that was connected to a USB header on motherboard, a storage HDD going bad, and a optical drive that went bad. I had friends laptops shutdown, due to being dirty on the inside due to dust blocking vents. Owning a PC, you either need a nearby shop or learn yourself on how to do simple maintenance. Learning how is pretty easy, it is not as hard as you think, there are lots of how to's on the net, and forums like this. You said you have 2Tb of storage, is that on 1 x 2Tb HDD partitioned, or 2 x 1Tb HDD?
as its a 5 year old pc I would suggest the PSU is going bad and tripping, also if you have never opened it to clean it then again it wont be helping matters, first step is to give it a clean i find a decent 1 inch paintbrush with proper bristles not nylon is best along with a vacuum, then go from there PCs are incredibly easy to work on and build dont be scared off by them
amdppm.sys is related to processor power management, so have you tried to disable C-states and P-states (Cool-N-Quiet) in BIOS?
Thank you! Have now run these (and a couple of other commands etc found online) and no errors/issues found, and temperature/health looks alright as far as I can see. I've just had a newer problem after a freeze there: after turning the computer on it seemed as though the monitor, mouse, and keyboard weren't connected. Fixed that by unplugging the machine for a few minutes, does that sound like an issue with the PSU too? I'm going to clean the inside of it when I find some time tomorrow hopefully, and will probably see if I can find someone just to have a look at it for a couple of hours. Thanks everyone for the help so far!
Could be its cooled down and reset personally I would look to upgrade rather than spend money on that machine its a dead end
its ACER pre built so god knows what components it has. Maybe its drivers for Win10, hence the errors. Try older OS.
