this post was submitted on 19 Oct 2023

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How can I find the reason my PC crashes? (discuss.tchncs.de)

submitted 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago) by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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Lately my PC has started crashing while it plays videos. It freezes completely, screen frozen and not responding to any input (keyboard, mouse), I mean I cannot change TTY (alt + ctrl + F(1-2-...)), and it cannot even respond to alt + PrntScr + REISUB. I have to force power off by holding down the power button.

After I reboot I have tried checking all logs available and I cannot find anything logged right before the incident. Last entries are always different and not indicating anything.

I suspect it has to do with the graphics card but I'm looking for ways that I can dig deeper on that and confirm it or not.

What else should I check? How can I find more info?

OS: Lubuntu 22.04.3 LTS (latest updates) I'm using the nvidia proprietary drivers (nvidia-driver-390)

UPDATE:

First of all thank you all for your input and fresh ideas. Now I've already tried some of them and I will continue with the other ones until I get some results.

till now I have tried

memtest and it didn't show any errors.
boot from a live distro and see if problem also occurs. Well it didn't occur but on the live distro you cannot change the graphics driver. So it was using the open source nouveau driver, also it didn't happen during the 1 hour I let it play. The thing is that it never was punctual even before. It could happen during the first hour or the third or sometime later.

Next steps are to

open the case and clean it up to remove the possibility of high temp because of that,
change my drivers to be the nouveau and try again,
try with only the onboard GPU on,
remove extra disks to reduce the load of the PSU

thank you all again.

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[–] [email protected] 23 points 11 months ago (3 children)

Boot with a live CD from a different distro. This will split a hardware issue from a software issue.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 11 months ago (1 children)

This! Try this! Don't go taking your computer apart until you try this. It's great advice.

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[–] [email protected] 3 points 11 months ago

thanks! nice idea, i'll try it

[–] [email protected] 2 points 11 months ago

Not really. Distros usually build the same software slightly differently. If the bug is in a piece of software used by all distros such as the Linux kernel, it won't make a difference.

[–] [email protected] 16 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago) (6 children)

Check your storage connection! If storage disconnects, your OS will freeze and stop responding to the keyboard. Also, the os won't be able to write any logs because the storage isn't attached. Even power off won't work because the os can't read any files. This feels very similar to your problem.

For me, my motherboard had a faulty drive controller which would randomly stop working and drives would no longer appear connected.

I'm not sure whether you have the same issue as me but it has the same characteristics as mine. Hope this helps!

[–] [email protected] 12 points 11 months ago

thanks for your input but it looks different. I mean when I power it off with the button, then it is possible to boot without issues. Also it doesn't freeze randomly. It freezes only if it plays videos. Now it is 10 days on uninterrupted since I stopped playing videos.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 11 months ago

Had issue with my storage recently, and the symptom was similar to what OP described. Syslog didn't reveal anything, as the root filesystem was read only, so troubleshooting it was hard. Coincidentally I needed a newer kernel, and after the upgrade the problem disappeared.

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[–] [email protected] 10 points 11 months ago (4 children)

Test your RAM. I had a machine doing this a few years ago - turns out I had a stick of RAM with a 128k block somewhere in the middle that was dead.

That machine worked fine as long as I didn't get it doing anything too intensive, then it would crash. A new stick of RAM solved the issue.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 11 months ago

This is the most likely issue. To add - test 3-4 passes of Memtest86+. The first pass is shorter and meant for finding egregious RAM problems. It can fail on subsequent full passes. I had my RAM fail on 3rd of 4th pass which passed the 1st. It could even be caused by incompatibility of the size of RAM with the platform. For example in my case AMD supported 2x 8GB sticks of this RAM with no issues. Insert 4x 8GB and it starts producing errors even if each individual stick passes with flying colors.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago)

Seconded. I'd been having issues (random freezes, crashes) for a while but I had attributed then to a lack of RAM. So I bought some more RAM at some point and ran memtest on all RAM together and saw errors. Those bastards, they sold me dodgy RAM, right? Tested the new sticks individually, they were clean. Turns out I had a bad 64kb area on one of my old sticks.

You can tell the kernel to not use the bad area btw if it's all in one place, so don't necessarily rush out to replace the bad stick.

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[–] [email protected] 10 points 11 months ago (2 children)

I was in a similar situation not too long ago and couldn't find anything to fix it either at first. One thing that was high on my list was changing my PSU since a defect or weak one often seems to be a problem in such cases. Besides a general hardware failure of course. If it's the hardware that could be anything really. Motherboard, RAM, GPU, PSU. PSU is the easiest to switch tho, so if you go that route I would try that first.

Anyways, I never had to do this cause in my case, believe it or not, a BIO update fixed my problem. I am still not 100% sure what happened but I think the update fixed the GPU voltage distribution or something similar.

Hope that help at least a little bit.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 11 months ago (1 children)

good idea about the PSU. I hadn't thought of that. The PSU is not any high-performance/high-quality and is already 5 years old. Being unable to provide the required voltage may be a possibility if we accept that the performance degrades in time. (Was working without issues for 5 years in the same PC configuration).

I think I'll try by first removing the extra HDDs so reducing the load and check again. Thanks for your input

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[–] [email protected] 3 points 11 months ago

PSU is the last thing we check but is usually the first to fail under load if it is old or cheap. Try reducing the load on it like not using ur GPU, HDDs or any other peripheral that is unnecessary.

Next check ur RAM, that too can give random errors under load.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 11 months ago (1 children)

If you have another pc, ssh from it to the problem machine and run sudo dmesg -w. That should show kernel messages as they are generated and won’t rely on them being written to disk.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 11 months ago (1 children)

i will try it but I'm quite confident that it will be unresponsive/not reachable since if the kernel was listening it would respond to the alt + PrntScr + REISUB by unmounting the drives and I would see it when I examine the logs afterwards

[–] [email protected] 11 points 11 months ago (1 children)

To be clear, dmesg -w should be run before you do anything to cause the crash. It will continuously print kernel output until you press ctrl+c or the kernel crashes.

In my experience, a crashing kernel will usually print something before going unresponsive but before it can flush the log to disk.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 11 months ago

from now on I'm having it open and shown on the screen show if it happens again I'll see it. thanks

[–] [email protected] 5 points 11 months ago (5 children)

Try this

https://memtest.org/

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[–] [email protected] 5 points 11 months ago (1 children)

Can you be more specific when you say "plays videos"?

Like in vlc, or YouTube, or something else? What videos? Like, 4k hevc videos, or literally anything?

[–] [email protected] 2 points 11 months ago

mostly on youtube, usually at 720p30fps. I think if I go to 60fps it crashes even faster. Also I've tried watching on freetube and on firefox + mpv, but it can crash in all combinations

[–] [email protected] 3 points 11 months ago (1 children)

Why do you suspect gfx card?

What happens if you use a different video player, or play different videos ie different codecs?

I used to have a similar issue but updates at some point fixed it. I think it was codecs.

Do you have an onboard gfx card you can use instead to test?

[–] [email protected] 4 points 11 months ago (8 children)

Why do you suspect gfx card?

because it happens only on video. Also if it is an 60fps video I start hearing the fans spinning like mad

What happens if you use a different video player, or play different videos ie different codecs?

haven't tried specific codecs. Usually it is youtube videos but makes no difference if I play them on firefox, on chromium, or even on opening them on MPV

Do you have an onboard gfx card you can use instead to test?

yes, there is one. Good idea.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 11 months ago

Also if it is an 60fps video I start hearing the fans spinning like mad

ok this is definitely not normal. Check the temperature of your GPU. Is the GPU physically clean? Is the air flow ok? Do you have the chance to test with a different GPU? An overheating GPU can definitely lead to the described symptoms.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 11 months ago

If the fans are spinning maybe check if it still happens when you point a big standalone Fan at the graphics Card.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 11 months ago (4 children)

Also if it is an 60fps video I start hearing the fans spinning like mad

Do you know that it's specifically the GPU's fans or is it just some fan spinning up?

Is it actually using your GPU to decode? You need a fairly modern GPU to decode many YT vids nowadays.

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[–] [email protected] 3 points 11 months ago

I think a live boot cd or trying to use an integrated gpu, if available, (both I saw already suggested) are better steps but you could also try blacklisting nvidia and use nouveau. Could point to those drivers if it works ok.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 11 months ago (1 children)

journalctl helps with viewing log files.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 11 months ago (1 children)

but will I see anything more than what I see in /var/log ? I have checked all possible logs.. Or was your suggestion just for a better way to check the logs in general?

[–] [email protected] 3 points 11 months ago

Whenever I have no clue what’s happening I turn to journalctl and google. It’s just how I learned to parse log files and investigate.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago)

I had a similar problem a while back and it turned out to be my Asus motherboard's "AI" frequency control hard locking the system. Took me days of troubleshooting and headaches to figure this out. Ended up switching it off in BIOS and everything is stable now. Just my 2c.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 11 months ago (2 children)

Would it be too much to remove the GPU and run videos? How often does it happen? If it's easy to reproduce, and it's not too much work, you can try removing the GPU and using onboard gfx to see if the problem persists.

Another suggestion, maybe try different drivers.

Alternatively, you could boot do a new install to a usb, install the same or different drivers or both, to see if the problem persists.

This does seem like a stability issue, either on the hardware or firmware side. It could even be as simple as reseating the GPU.

btw, do you happen to remember whenabout the first crash happened? Did it start out sporadic and grow more frequent?

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[–] [email protected] 1 points 11 months ago (1 children)

I used to have some similar issues when playing games, and the cause of it was my motherboard's firmware. Maybe check and see if it is up to date?

[–] [email protected] 1 points 11 months ago (2 children)

sorry if it is trivial but how do I check it?

[–] [email protected] 2 points 11 months ago

Hmmm I don't really know. You can try with this tutorial I found.

The way I did it, is I checked my motherboard's website, and saw they posted a recent firmware update.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 11 months ago

It's really easy. The manufacturer's website will have a page for your motherboard, where you can download new versions of bios. They'll have instructions how to flash it. Should be as easy as downloading the bios update to a usb drive, restarting to bios and selecting the update option and pointing it to the usb drive.

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