Solved Games freeze and stop responding

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You have been busy and good trouble shooting on your behalf (y)

Have you tried running in Safe Mode at all, if not, can you do so for us.

Swapping in a known good adequately powered PSU or having yours properly tested are the next steps I`m afraid, would you be able to borrow one for testing.

Regarding the high CPU usage;

Download Process Explorer which you can obtain from here

Save it to your desktop then run it (Vista or Win7 - right click and Run as Administrator).

View, Select Column, check Verified Signer, OK

Options, Verify Image Signatures


Click twice on the CPU column header to arrange things by CPU usage, this will put the services with the highest CPU usage at the top of the log.


Wait a minimum of a minute then grab a screenshot and attach it to your next reply for us
 
phillpower2 said:
Have you tried running in Safe Mode at all, if not, can you do so for us.

Swapping in a known good adequately powered PSU or having yours properly tested are the next steps I`m afraid, would you be able to borrow one for testing.
Click to expand...
Cannot swap PSU, although current PSU is under warranty (purchased it 2 months ago)
Anyway here is the screen grab from Process Explorer (but will go into Safe Mode after this comment and test that out)
Capture.JPG
 
High CPU usage with nothing in particular identified so being that Windows Shell Experience Host is suspended it could be involved, heading back to work shortly so will leave you with the following to do after trying Safe Mode, PSU on hold for now please;

To see if this is a Windows issue download then run the Windows All in One Repair (free) from here, disregard the malware guidance but follow the other steps to the letter and in particular ensuring that you first create a new restore point and perform a proper Windows clean boot before running the repair, details for the clean boot here.
 
Safe Mode hasn't brought up the same issue (although near impossible to play a game with 10FPS, I still managed to test it for a solid 1.5 hours and nothing came up)
Heading onto Windows Repair now
EDIT: While you head off to work, I'm about to head off too sleep - so I'll catch ya later
EDIT 2: After using the Windows Repair, didn't seem to make much difference at all. As it worked in Safe Mode, could it be concluded it is a sort of software error instead of hardware?
EDIT 3: Went to msconfig>services and just disabled all things that were not Microsoft, removed a lot of startup programs. Also went and used Malwarebytes AdwCleaner, Junk Removal and Anti-Rootkit and went through those. As of now am at the longest time without a game crash, looking ok so far.
EDIT 4: Going all good so far, can't tell you exactly what I have done to fix it, but i'll slowly go through re-enabling some startup things and seeing if it helps (also disabled Themes, no clue if that has helped. Rocketdock might be something i'll look into seeing if the issue comes back when i re-enable rocketdock, but as of now - everything seems ok :) )
 
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Good work (y)

How are things at the moment.

The idea behind trying Safe Mode is because no third party drivers are loaded only Microsoft drivers are, if you still get problems it narrows it down to hardware or a possible Windows issue if you do not get problems it suggests a third party driver or program is the culprit, good call using msconfig and for the benefit of others that may read this thread the steps are below;

Click on Start then Run, type msconfig and press Enter.
Click on the Startup tab (for Windows 8, the Startup tab has a link to open Task Manager/Startup tab. Use that.) make a note of what is currently starting then click the Disable All button.
Reboot and see if it runs better.
If yes then use msconfig to enable several items at a time till you find the culprit.

If no, start msconfig and click on the Services tab.
Check the Hide All Microsoft Services box, record what is currently starting then click the Disable All button.
Again, do a regular boot, see if it runs normal.
If yes then use msconfig to enable services until you find the culprit.

Once you've found the culprit, uninstall it or find out how to eliminate it from your system. Simply disabling it in msconfig is a temporary fix at best.
Enable everything else you disabled.

Windows 10;
In the Windows 10 type msconfig in the Search field.

Click on System Configuration.

Click on Start up then Open Task Manager.

Click on Start-up.

Make a note of what is running, post back with the list for us.
 
Yeah i previously did all that, so these are the things I have had disabled for the past 24 hours:
disserv.JPG
disabled.JPG


Still have not had a crash yet in the past 24 hours, and have played / left games running for most of this morning (for about 6 hours) and have not had a single issue / crash. Played a bit with Rocketdock enabled so I think I have ruled that out (but not 100% certain yet). As the issue is 'game' related and looking through the disabled services, I am thinking it might be the 'Logitech GAMING registry service', might look into what that does when I get back home after work. Building up from the Logitech gaming service, not sure about system accounts and 'Log on as", but that service is the only service that Logs on as "NT-AUTHORITY\SYSTEM". (As another performance affecting service / program is Wallpaper Engine, which basically just allows for animated wallpapers - I can rule that out as I have been having these issues even before I installed Wallpaper Engine)
Anyway, thanks again for your help (think I have learnt a lot more than going into this about troubleshooting and issues, cheers)
 
phillpower2 said:
Thanks for the update MitchG (y)

Are things still running ok.
Click to expand...
Yes, still have not isolated which service that was the culprit, but am happy, as didn't disable anything that i used or affected any programs (have not enabled themes again, however have not really noticed any difference with themes enabled or disabled, so just chilling with all those things still disabled as have not had time to just go through and enable, play for 2 hours, and repeat until I find which one it is)
 
MitchG said:
so just chilling with all those things still disabled as have not had time to just go through and enable, play for 2 hours, and repeat until I find which one it is)
Click to expand...
No problem (y)

Can I just ask that you do two things for us, make sure that you create a new system restore point before enabling any of the services and let us know if and when you consider the issue resolved so that we can mark your thread accordingly, this may help others searching for suggestions dealing with the same or similar computer problems.
 
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