PC Freezing to Solid Color Screen

[BPXRockU]

Hi, I’ve been having trouble with my PC basically since I put it together. It will freeze to a solid color on my monitor (color seems to depend on what I have open) and none of my peripherals will respond. It also has NEVER happened while I was playing a game. I had done some overclocking on my CPU but since having the issue, I’ve reverted back to stock settings. At this point my best bet is that it’s a motherboard issue but I’m not sure. I’m pretty lost for ideas at this point, so I’d appreciate some help.

Specs:

Ryzen 5 1600
ASRock AB350 Pro4
GeIL 2x4 DDR4-2400
XFX Radeon RX 560 4GB
Corsair CXM 450W

If you guys have any ideas, I’d really appreciate it!

[Bruce]

it may be the motherboard, my money would be the RAM, but really, it could be anything.
to troubleshoot, I would remove the graphics card and use one of the three onboard video ports.
run the PC and see it the issue repeats.
if it does, I would then only have one of those memory sticks in, and again, run the PC and if it repeats, swap the memory for the other stick and try again.

[BPXRockU]

Thanks for the suggestions Bruce.

Removing the GPU didn’t work because my CPU isn’t an APU, so there was no graphics output. I did put in the memory sticks one at a time, trying each stick in both of the slots that I was using for dual channel. I tried each setup for ~45min-1hr and got a crash in only one of the setups. Unfortunately, I don’t know exactly how to cause a crash so it’s pretty hard to test. However, the fact that it did happen with just one setup makes it seem like it’s probably not the RAM. If you have any more ideas, please throw them my way

[Bruce]

what about looking at the event logs?

[BPXRockU]

I checked the event logs, and found a couple errors under Windows Logs > System. I get two types of errors fairly commonly: one with the source “volmgr” saying “Dump file creation failed due to error during dump creation.” and one from the source DistributedCOM saying something along the lines of “The application-specific permission settings do not grant Local Launch permission for the COM Server application with CLSID
Windows.SecurityCenter.SecurityAppBroker and APPID Unavailable to the user NT AUTHORITY\SYSTEM SID (S-1-5-18) from address LocalHost (Using LRPC) running in the application container Unavailable SID (Unavailable). This security permission can be modified using the Component Services administrative tool.” The only critical error I get is the obvious system rebooting without cleanly shutting down. I also think it’s worth noting that the power button doesn’t work, but the restart button does.

[Bruce]

“power button doesn’t work” - now that’s a juicy bit of info.
so when you put it together, has the power button ever worked?
have you traced the reset and power buttons back to the front panel header to see they are still firmly attached?

but back to the first issue - have you tried creating another user account and logging into that and seeing if the issue is user related or system related?

[BPXRockU]

Hey Bruce, my power button has always worked fine. I actually just checked and I had to hold down the button for a couple seconds for it to shut down (stupid me). I created another account and logged into it, and I had another crash. I’m also now occasionally having an issue where my screen will flicker like two times with ~1-3 minutes in between each flicker, then after another 1-3 minutes it will crash. I think this has happened 2/3 times now.

[Bruce]

holding the power button in for about 5 seconds is the standard Windows method to force shutdown any PC.
it sounds like we can rule out the issue being user account related.
so that still leaves a software/driver or hardware issue.
sounded like during your swapping of the memory sticks, the crash still happened - so memory can probably also be ruled out.
next is the graphics card, any chance you can get your hands on another one to test that theory?

and taking the ‘nuke it from space’ approach, you could bite the bullet and reload everything from scratch.

[BPXRockU]

My friend was kind enough to lend me his old GTX 970 to test swapping out the GPUs. So far I haven’t had any crashes over 1 1/2 days so fingers crossed! I’ll edit this post if I do actually get a crash or if this whole week goes by and I still haven’t crashed.

[Bruce]

that’s encouraging news.
keep us posted.

[BPXRockU]

Alright! So I took out the GTX 970 after about 5 days with it and no crashes, put in my RX 560 and got a crash in about half an hour. The odds that it’s the GPU or something related to the GPU (drivers, etc) is pretty high. I’m not sure what the best thing is to do now, I’d like to try a couple things before I go ahead and RMA it because it could be some kind of software issue for all I know.

EDIT: I uninstalled then reinstalled the graphics drivers. Unfortunately I won’t be at home this weekend so I won’t know immediately if it worked or not but for the time I was home after reinstalling I had no crashes. We’ll see

[Bruce]

good luck.

[BPXRockU]

Hey I finally got back on my PC and I got a crash with the RX 560 back inside. At this point I think I should RMA unless you have any further suggestions for me.

[Bruce]

seems like a no-brainer to me…

original part in - crashes.
replacement part in - no crashes.
original part back in - crashes.

RMA it indeed.

[veeg]

Any updates?