It began over a week ago, just freezing. Mouse-pad didn't respond,
keyboard didn't respond, no movement on the screen, but the screen
remained frozen.

It progressed and got worse, to the point where it happened three times
yesterday. I checked CPU temperatures, showing MAX -73C, so decided to
blow the cooling system through with compressed air in the garage. That
blew a cloud of dust out, but it still froze two more times after that.

I had already run a thorough diagnostic on the HDD, which confirmed it
was fine.

I then decided to pull it apart and try some reseating, but before that
take a look at the Virtual Memory settings - that was on automatic,
with 8Gb of actual memory. As a test I took manual control of that and
set it to Min 1.5x, Max 3x the 8Gb. Since when there have been no
further lockups.

Assuming that has fixed it - I thought W10 was supposed to let you know
if it was running out of Virtual Memory, not just freeze or lockup?

On 05/02/2019 10:54, Harry Bloomfield wrote:

I then decided to pull it apart and try some reseating, but before that
take a look at the Virtual Memory settings - that was on automatic, with
8Gb of actual memory. As a test I took manual control of that and set it
to Min 1.5x, Max 3x the 8Gb. Since when there have been no further lockups.

Sit down with Procmon and work out what process is grabbing that much
memory.

Assuming that has fixed it - I thought W10 was supposed to let you know
if it was running out of Virtual Memory, not just freeze or lockup?

That will be logged in Event Viewer I expect.

--
Adrian C

Adrian Caspersz expressed precisely :
On 05/02/2019 10:54, Harry Bloomfield wrote:

I then decided to pull it apart and try some reseating, but before that
take a look at the Virtual Memory settings - that was on automatic, with
8Gb of actual memory. As a test I took manual control of that and set it to
Min 1.5x, Max 3x the 8Gb. Since when there have been no further lockups.

Sit down with Procmon and work out what process is grabbing that much memory.

Assuming that has fixed it - I thought W10 was supposed to let you know if
it was running out of Virtual Memory, not just freeze or lockup?

That will be logged in Event Viewer I expect.

All it seems to have recorded, is 11x 'The system has rebooted without
cleanly shutting down first. This error could be caused if the system
stopped responding, crashed, or lost power unexpected...' in the past
24 hours..

Nothing else obvious I could see from that..

Memory in use - 46% largest taken by Firefox at 660Mb with a lot of
tabs open.

On 05/02/2019 11:41, Harry Bloomfield wrote:
Adrian Caspersz expressed precisely :
On 05/02/2019 10:54, Harry Bloomfield wrote:

I then decided to pull it apart and try some reseating, but before
that take a look at the Virtual Memory settings - that was on
automatic, with 8Gb of actual memory. As a test I took manual control
of that and set it to Min 1.5x, Max 3x the 8Gb. Since when there have
been no further lockups.

Sit down with Procmon and work out what process is grabbing that much
memory.

Assuming that has fixed it - I thought W10 was supposed to let you
know if it was running out of Virtual Memory, not just freeze or lockup?

That will be logged in Event Viewer I expect.

All it seems to have recorded, is 11x 'The system has rebooted without
cleanly shutting down first. This error could be caused if the system
stopped responding, crashed, or lost power unexpected...' in the past 24
hours..

Nothing else obvious I could see from that..

Memory in use - 46% largest taken by Firefox at 660Mb with a lot of tabs
open.

In previous versions of windows it was possible to enable a small
concise crash dump that would be saved if it died with a blue screen
event or hard system shutdown. If it dies because the disk drive has
failed then all bets are off but knowing where the program counter was
at the time of failure may shed some light. This may help:

https://www.tenforums.com/bsod-crash...n-failure.html

The other thing to try is running a version of Linux and a memory test.
If that shows the same sort of symptoms then you have a hardware fault.

How full is the hard disk? ISTR they have announced an intention to
reserve some extra space on it for Win10 so that upgrades don't crash.

--
Regards,
Martin Brown

On 05/02/2019 10:54, Harry Bloomfield wrote:
It began over a week ago, just freezing. Mouse-pad didn't respond,
keyboard didn't respond, no movement on the screen, but the screen
remained frozen.

It progressed and got worse, to the point where it happened three times
yesterday. I checked CPU temperatures, showing MAX -73C, so decided to
blow the cooling system through with compressed air in the garage. That
blew a cloud of dust out, but it still froze two more times after that.

I had already run a thorough diagnostic on the HDD, which confirmed it
was fine.

I then decided to pull it apart and try some reseating, but before that
take a look at the Virtual Memory settings - that was on automatic, with
8Gb of actual memory. As a test I took manual control of that and set it
to Min 1.5x, Max 3x the 8Gb. Since when there have been no further lockups.

Assuming that has fixed it - I thought W10 was supposed to let you know
if it was running out of Virtual Memory, not just freeze or lockup?

Could be a fan gone and CPU overheating


--
"In our post-modern world, climate science is not powerful because it is
true: it is true because it is powerful."

Lucas Bergkamp

On 05/02/2019 12:16, Jethro_uk wrote:
On Tue, 05 Feb 2019 11:59:54 +0000, Martin Brown wrote:

On 05/02/2019 11:41, Harry Bloomfield wrote:
[quoted text muted]

In previous versions of windows it was possible to enable a small
concise crash dump that would be saved if it died with a blue screen
event or hard system shutdown.

You say that, but it used to extend the shutdown by 5 minutes.

If you have a recurring untraceable OS fault that is a small price to
pay. It doesn't always work if the fatal fault is weird enough.

--
Regards,
Martin Brown

On 05/02/2019 10:54, Harry Bloomfield wrote:
It began over a week ago, just freezing. Mouse-pad didn't respond,
keyboard didn't respond, no movement on the screen, but the screen
remained frozen.

It progressed and got worse, to the point where it happened three times
yesterday. I checked CPU temperatures, showing MAX -73C, so decided to
blow the cooling system through with compressed air in the garage. That
blew a cloud of dust out, but it still froze two more times after that.

I had already run a thorough diagnostic on the HDD, which confirmed it
was fine.

I then decided to pull it apart and try some reseating, but before that
take a look at the Virtual Memory settings - that was on automatic, with
8Gb of actual memory. As a test I took manual control of that and set it
to Min 1.5x, Max 3x the 8Gb. Since when there have been no further lockups.

Assuming that has fixed it - I thought W10 was supposed to let you know
if it was running out of Virtual Memory, not just freeze or lockup?

Pretty much all versions do. I would run a memory test, personally.

https://www.memtest.org/

Martin Brown wrote :
In previous versions of windows it was possible to enable a small concise
crash dump that would be saved if it died with a blue screen event or hard
system shutdown. If it dies because the disk drive has failed then all bets
are off but knowing where the program counter was at the time of failure may
shed some light. This may help:

It has been absolutely fine since I manually managed the Virtual Memory
setting, so it has to be related to memory - odd thing was, I have
never seen a complaint about it running low on memory.

The Natural Philosopher formulated on Tuesday :
Could be a fan gone and CPU overheating

Fan was running fine and temperature never exceeded 73C, but 10C cooler
after I blew a little dust out. However, it still continued to freeze
up at 63C, so not heat related.

I find it hard to imagine a point where 8 gigs of ram is going to push the
virtual stuff past its normal default.

I wonder, could there be a dodgy stick of ram in the machine. If you have
pulled them out and put them back in different slots they may not have such
a catastrophic effect if they are dodgy. Alternatively disturbing things
might have temporary fixed the intermittent problem.
Brian

--
----- --
This newsgroup posting comes to you directly from...
The Sofa of Brian Gaff...

Blind user, so no pictures please
Note this Signature is meaningless.!
"Harry Bloomfield" wrote in message
...
It began over a week ago, just freezing. Mouse-pad didn't respond,
keyboard didn't respond, no movement on the screen, but the screen
remained frozen.

It progressed and got worse, to the point where it happened three times
yesterday. I checked CPU temperatures, showing MAX -73C, so decided to
blow the cooling system through with compressed air in the garage. That
blew a cloud of dust out, but it still froze two more times after that.

I had already run a thorough diagnostic on the HDD, which confirmed it was
fine.

I then decided to pull it apart and try some reseating, but before that
take a look at the Virtual Memory settings - that was on automatic, with
8Gb of actual memory. As a test I took manual control of that and set it
to Min 1.5x, Max 3x the 8Gb. Since when there have been no further
lockups.

Assuming that has fixed it - I thought W10 was supposed to let you know if
it was running out of Virtual Memory, not just freeze or lockup?

Brian Gaff wrote:

I find it hard to imagine a point where 8 gigs of ram is going to push the
virtual stuff past its normal default.

It's still worthwhile having a 1 or 2GB paging file, to allow the
numerous service processes that start up and then mainly sit dormant to
get paged out to disc, meaning more of that 8GB of physical RAM is
available for your foreground processes.

On 05/02/2019 15:01, Harry Bloomfield wrote:
The Natural Philosopher formulated on Tuesday :
Could be a fan gone and CPU overheating

Fan was running fine and temperature never exceeded 73C, but 10C cooler
after I blew a little dust out. However, it still continued to freeze up
at 63C, so not heat related.

Does it pass memtest?


--
There is nothing a fleet of dispatchable nuclear power plants cannot do
that cannot be done worse and more expensively and with higher carbon
emissions and more adverse environmental impact by adding intermittent
renewable energy.

Chris Bartram expressed precisely :
Pretty much all versions do. I would run a memory test, personally.

https://www.memtest.org/

I have used that before, but not this time...

I made up the USB bootable version, then found I was unable to get into
the BIOS to set it to first boot USB, due to the password. I eventually
hacked in, then it only had USB HDD, USB CD, USB HDD and none of them
worked with the USB thumb drive.

So I decided to try W10's Administrative Tools Windows Memory Test.
That froze at 21% on the extended test or at least it sat at 21% for an
extremely long time, but still responded to Esc..

I will try it again a bit later. Still no freezes in normal use.

Brian Gaff explained :
I find it hard to imagine a point where 8 gigs of ram is going to push the
virtual stuff past its normal default.

I wonder, could there be a dodgy stick of ram in the machine. If you have
pulled them out and put them back in different slots they may not have such a
catastrophic effect if they are dodgy. Alternatively disturbing things might
have temporary fixed the intermittent problem.

I have yet to delve into it, to see what it has in the way of memory
sticks.

Harry Bloomfield brought next idea :
So I decided to try W10's Administrative Tools Windows Memory Test. That
froze at 21% on the extended test or at least it sat at 21% for an extremely
long time, but still responded to Esc..

I will try it again a bit later. Still no freezes in normal use.

I think I simply must have been a bit impatient...

I ran the W10 memory test on reboot again, I tried all three test
levels and it reported all three without errors. I have CPU stress
tests and HDD tests, all report everything good, so I am inclined to
think there must have been some weird issues with its virtual memory,
resolved by taking manual control of it..

"Harry Bloomfield" wrote in message
...
Martin Brown wrote :
In previous versions of windows it was possible to enable a small concise
crash dump that would be saved if it died with a blue screen event or
hard system shutdown. If it dies because the disk drive has failed then
all bets are off but knowing where the program counter was at the time of
failure may shed some light. This may help:

It has been absolutely fine since I manually managed the Virtual Memory
setting, so it has to be related to memory - odd thing was, I have never
seen a complaint about it running low on memory.

Because there enough free space on the drive the swap file is on.

On Wed, 6 Feb 2019 11:36:31 +1100, Steven, better known as cantankerous
trolling senile geezer Rot Speed, wrote:


It has been absolutely fine since I manually managed the Virtual Memory
setting, so it has to be related to memory - odd thing was, I have never
seen a complaint about it running low on memory.

Because there enough free space on the drive the swap file is on.

NONSENSE!

--
about senile Rot Speed:
"This is like having a conversation with someone with brain damage."
MID: