Hey guys, I built my PC in June. I played StarCraft II and Oblivion fine.

Well, I got Skyrim, and usually 20 minutes or so after boot the PC would make an odd buzzing noise and I'd have to manually shut down and reboot. Usually just happened once a day. I thought it was just an issue with Skyrim.

Well, I got both Witcher games for Christmas, and I installed and started to play the first one. During the opening cutscene, the game froze just like in Skyrim. Oddly, a similar thing happened when I installed Skyrim, as it froze in the character creator.

I was just wondering if anyone had any idea what could be causing that. It only happens in games, and it even happens more often than those infamous Skyrim CTDs, which never happen to me.

I can post specs or a dxdiag if needed.

Thanks.

Anybody?

All help is appreciated.

Could be a HDD-related issue. Try running a diagnostic on your hard disks

Update your graphics drivers?

Look in event viewer for any information at those time of the crash?

The problem with that theory is that the games are on different disks.


Skyrim is on a 64GB Corsair SSD and The Witcher is on a 1TB 7,200RPM Western Digital HDD.

Edit: I've got the newest drivers from Nvidia.


Also, I found some Skyrim reports, but not the one for The Witcher. It does say that an application's Software Protection has stopped, and I did have to manually install a driver (Tages) for The Witcher that Windows said was incompatible and directed me to the Tages website to download, but I don't see how that could cause an issue.

For Skyrim, it just says that TESV.exe stopped interacting with Windows.

Did you do a clean install of them?

In custom view, there should be an administrative events, which'll pool all the errors, critical alerts, and warnings in one place. You'll want to look for something around the same time as the critical improper shutdown alert (since you were forced to manually shut down) which reads:

The system has rebooted without cleanly shutting down first. This error could be caused if the system stopped responding, crashed, or lost power unexpectedly.

Alright, I see a bunch of messages going back to July telling me my HDD has a bad block, but I'm not seeing any issues? Luckily I do have it backed up to a secondary 1TB drive, but this is worrying.

As for The Witcher freeze, the only relevant message is that the system shut down unexpectedly at 10:46 AM on December 25 that you were talking about. Closest messages are about the bad block and something about Peer Name Resolution Protocol. I don't even see anything in there about Skyrim.

The "odd buzzing" isn't one of the fans, is it? Could be overheating, which is often the culprit behind this sort of thing, especially when running something taxing like a game...

I suppose I was a bit misleading. The sound is coming from my speakers, which is why I thought it was a software (Skyrim) issue.

Oh, I see. Might still be worth running some temperature monitoring to rule that out as a possibility, but I guess the chances are it could be some other sort of malfunction...

Which temps? The only ones I consitently monitor are CPU temps, but I just installed a new fan so that couldn't be the problem.

When I get home I'll try a fresh install of the 285.62 Nvidia drivers.


Should I maybe try the 290.53 beta? Is it possible to revert to 285.62?

I once had an issue with unpredictable blue screens and hard resets when a RAM module became faulty. But it didn't make a buzzing sound. I've also had problems with cooling failing and once a component on my motherboard burnt out in a burst of flame... I guess you will have to run diagnostics on everything systematically.

The issue is that the components themselves aren't making the noise; it's coming out of the speakers.

And there's also the odd point that this never happened until I got Skyrim in November, and I played StarCraft II and Oblivion up to then.

If it helps, a while back I had a problem where my graphics card's fan wouldn't start on boot, so when I left my PC on for a while or tried to play games my PC's screen would go black and the audio would just loop the last fraction of a second of audio output, leading to a buzzing sound.

I don't think you have a problem with your GPU fan like I did since it only seems to happen in games, but maybe it's due to overheating?

Sorry, not too good at tech, but anything that can help...

I'll look at GPU heat. How can I check it?

The weird thing is that it only happens with Skyrim and The Witcher. It never happened back when I played Oblivion and SC2.


I'm going to try reinstalling Nvidia 285.62 drivers and then giving The Witcher a go.

http://www.almico.com/speedfan.php as well as other tools

That program is showing my GPU @ 30-35 degrees Celsius just web browsing. High?

Lol the driver installer has Skyrim screens.

Yep, it happened again. This time even earlier in the cutscene (I'm talking about the one that's before even the main menu).

If behavior continues the same way, I should be able to play fine now (until a reboot). But it's still annoying knowing I'm going to get a freeze each time I reboot my PC.



Edit: About to give it one more go. Hopefully I can make it to the main menu...

Just as I expected, I was able to play fine for over an hour.

But the next time I boot up it'll happen again. Very consistent bahavior.

That sounds more like a program or driver problem than a hardware problem, especially if that instant freezing after reboot happens even after a prolonged wait before booting up again. Hardware problems aren't usually so consistent in timing unless it's a heat-related issue (what are your temperatures while playing a game? Your general browsing temperatures are fine)

Real Temp said my i7 2600K never got above 45-50 Celsius while playing Skyrim. Prime95 hit 90, but that was before I installed a new cooler and was still using stock.

Which programs or drivers do you think could cause it? As I said, I initially chalked it up to poor Skyrim code, but then it happened in The Witcher.

What about the GPU's temperature in-game?

Have you tried doing a clean boot of your system before playing the games and see if it still happens? As far as Drivers, the graphics driver would still be my brimary guess. Maybe your card just doesn't like the latest drivers. Try going back a major release or two (current stable being 285, 280 and 275 being the previous IIRC)

Can I use SpeedFan to check them in-game? I'm not with the PC, but I'll try to do it tomorrow.



I'll give the 280 a shot, and yes, it does happen even if the game is the first thing I do after a boot.


Edit: Should I try the 280 and 275 or the 290 beta first?