windows 8 or 8.1 constant hard freeze

Dragosmp

New Member
Messages
9
I have never been able to operation windows 8 on my desktop computer, always thought it was a hard drive issue 2 days ago I get a brand new HDD and SSD for main OS, and low and behold it is the same issue, every time I try to install windows 8 or 8.1 it either during or after the installation, it completely locks up, freezes, if I'm playing music it's stuck, can't move mouse, heck with my old hard drive, I literally pulled out my hard drive was looking at my hard drive in my hand and windows 8 on the screen, frozen, this seems too iffy to not be a coincidence, but I got windows 8 to work (magically) no idea how, and when I open device manager it says my PCI lan controller driver is missing, I went online and found it on gigabyte with my motherboard z68-d3-b3 and found the driver, tried installing it, FROZE, hard reset, tried installing again, FROZE, for as I went looking for a solution I came across an article that said do not update z68-d3-b3 bios to eufi, and of course I did about the time windows 8 came out, many people have had problems with the eufi update, but could this cause my computer to crash at completely random times? it's not my hard drives I know that for a fact, I took out my laptop HDD with windows 8.1 on it and I connected it to my desktop and it still froze, used 2 other HDD and 1 SSD with windows 8 and windows 8.1, I tried both pirated and legit copies, I have a key for win8 and win8.1 (just no CD) I am completely lost with this MOBO, windows 7 works perfectly fine zero problems, let me know if I can give any more information so we can try to fix this problem, I've looked all over the web, no one seems to have the same problem I saw posts that told be to turn off HPET, I did, no result. Saw a post to turn on Hyper-V in windows, I did just before it froze, no result. If there's anything you guys know please help, I'm in no way a noob with computers, I have been around and using them for 15 years now, software issues are no problem, but this has me stumped to no end.
 

My Computer

System One

  • OS
    Windows 8.1
    Computer type
    PC/Desktop
    CPU
    i7-2600k
    Motherboard
    z68-d3-b3
    Memory
    kingston 8gb
    Graphics Card(s)
    EVGA gtx 680
    Sound Card
    N/A
    Monitor(s) Displays
    Asus
    Screen Resolution
    1920x1080
    Hard Drives
    1tb seagate - 750gbWDgreen - 120gb kingston SSD nowv300
    PSU
    LSP ultra 750W atx
    Case
    custom
    Cooling
    air
    Keyboard
    Razer blackwidow ultimate 2014 elite
    Mouse
    Logitech g600
    Internet Speed
    fiber optic fast
    Browser
    Chrome mostly
    Antivirus
    N/A
It could be your memory, have you ran any tests on that?
 

My Computer

System One

  • OS
    Windows 7 Ultimate 64bit
    Computer type
    PC/Desktop
    System Manufacturer/Model
    Custom build
    CPU
    Intel Core i7-4770K
    Motherboard
    Asus z87-Pro
    Memory
    G.SKILL Ripjaws X Series 8GB (Dual Channel) (1866)
    Graphics Card(s)
    Radeon R9 290x
    Sound Card
    Sound Blaster Audigy
    Monitor(s) Displays
    2x ASUS MX279H Black 27" IPS
    Screen Resolution
    3840x1080
    Hard Drives
    SAMSUNG 840 Series 256 GB SSD (old ssd failed), Seagate external 3tb, & Seagate barracuda 1tb
    PSU
    Corsair AX1200i ATX PSU
    Case
    Corsair Obsidian 750d
    Cooling
    Black Ice Gtx 240
    Keyboard
    Ducky Shine 3
    Mouse
    Corsair M95
    Internet Speed
    15 Mb/s
    Browser
    Chrome/Firefox
    Antivirus
    Norton 2014
    Other Info
    PC used mostly for home theater and gaming.
It could be your memory, have you ran any tests on that?
As in my RAM? I'm not sure if it is the memory because wouldn't it have any problems with other OS's too? I have 8gb which is more than the requirements for windows 8.
 

My Computer

System One

  • OS
    Windows 8.1
    Computer type
    PC/Desktop
    CPU
    i7-2600k
    Motherboard
    z68-d3-b3
    Memory
    kingston 8gb
    Graphics Card(s)
    EVGA gtx 680
    Sound Card
    N/A
    Monitor(s) Displays
    Asus
    Screen Resolution
    1920x1080
    Hard Drives
    1tb seagate - 750gbWDgreen - 120gb kingston SSD nowv300
    PSU
    LSP ultra 750W atx
    Case
    custom
    Cooling
    air
    Keyboard
    Razer blackwidow ultimate 2014 elite
    Mouse
    Logitech g600
    Internet Speed
    fiber optic fast
    Browser
    Chrome mostly
    Antivirus
    N/A
This exact same thing happened to me last June, in fact that is the reason I joined this forum, to ask for help. I did hours of troubleshooting and got down to the memory/ram, did some tests and bam - a stick of my memory was failing. I replaced the memory and hey, no more freezes. :) There is a lot of software that can be used to test memory (Memtest is what I used).
 

My Computer

System One

  • OS
    Windows 7 Ultimate 64bit
    Computer type
    PC/Desktop
    System Manufacturer/Model
    Custom build
    CPU
    Intel Core i7-4770K
    Motherboard
    Asus z87-Pro
    Memory
    G.SKILL Ripjaws X Series 8GB (Dual Channel) (1866)
    Graphics Card(s)
    Radeon R9 290x
    Sound Card
    Sound Blaster Audigy
    Monitor(s) Displays
    2x ASUS MX279H Black 27" IPS
    Screen Resolution
    3840x1080
    Hard Drives
    SAMSUNG 840 Series 256 GB SSD (old ssd failed), Seagate external 3tb, & Seagate barracuda 1tb
    PSU
    Corsair AX1200i ATX PSU
    Case
    Corsair Obsidian 750d
    Cooling
    Black Ice Gtx 240
    Keyboard
    Ducky Shine 3
    Mouse
    Corsair M95
    Internet Speed
    15 Mb/s
    Browser
    Chrome/Firefox
    Antivirus
    Norton 2014
    Other Info
    PC used mostly for home theater and gaming.
This exact same thing happened to me last June, in fact that is the reason I joined this forum, to ask for help. I did hours of troubleshooting and got down to the memory/ram, did some tests and bam - a stick of my memory was failing. I replaced the memory and hey, no more freezes. :)
arg now the complete horrible mission of finding which RAM stick is bad, I have 1 stick of 4gb from kingston hyperX and 2 stick of 2gb from corsair, but I am still iffy about this, considering windows 7 works perfectly
 

My Computer

System One

  • OS
    Windows 8.1
    Computer type
    PC/Desktop
    CPU
    i7-2600k
    Motherboard
    z68-d3-b3
    Memory
    kingston 8gb
    Graphics Card(s)
    EVGA gtx 680
    Sound Card
    N/A
    Monitor(s) Displays
    Asus
    Screen Resolution
    1920x1080
    Hard Drives
    1tb seagate - 750gbWDgreen - 120gb kingston SSD nowv300
    PSU
    LSP ultra 750W atx
    Case
    custom
    Cooling
    air
    Keyboard
    Razer blackwidow ultimate 2014 elite
    Mouse
    Logitech g600
    Internet Speed
    fiber optic fast
    Browser
    Chrome mostly
    Antivirus
    N/A
This exact same thing happened to me last June, in fact that is the reason I joined this forum, to ask for help. I did hours of troubleshooting and got down to the memory/ram, did some tests and bam - a stick of my memory was failing. I replaced the memory and hey, no more freezes. :)
arg now the complete horrible mission of finding which RAM stick is bad, I have 1 stick of 4gb from kingston hyperX and 2 stick of 2gb from corsair

I edited my post with a program (Memtest). And that also might be the problem if you have different brands of memory or if they are running at different speeds. If they are the same speed that most likely isn't the case though. So you can continue on testing the memory. :)
 

My Computer

System One

  • OS
    Windows 7 Ultimate 64bit
    Computer type
    PC/Desktop
    System Manufacturer/Model
    Custom build
    CPU
    Intel Core i7-4770K
    Motherboard
    Asus z87-Pro
    Memory
    G.SKILL Ripjaws X Series 8GB (Dual Channel) (1866)
    Graphics Card(s)
    Radeon R9 290x
    Sound Card
    Sound Blaster Audigy
    Monitor(s) Displays
    2x ASUS MX279H Black 27" IPS
    Screen Resolution
    3840x1080
    Hard Drives
    SAMSUNG 840 Series 256 GB SSD (old ssd failed), Seagate external 3tb, & Seagate barracuda 1tb
    PSU
    Corsair AX1200i ATX PSU
    Case
    Corsair Obsidian 750d
    Cooling
    Black Ice Gtx 240
    Keyboard
    Ducky Shine 3
    Mouse
    Corsair M95
    Internet Speed
    15 Mb/s
    Browser
    Chrome/Firefox
    Antivirus
    Norton 2014
    Other Info
    PC used mostly for home theater and gaming.
arg now the complete horrible mission of finding which RAM stick is bad, I have 1 stick of 4gb from kingston hyperX and 2 stick of 2gb from corsair, but I am still iffy about this, considering windows 7 works perfectly
It's not necessarily that the RAM stick is bad. It is a NO NO to mix your RAM from different manufacturers because they are different in term of timings even they are rated at the same speed. When you buy RAM, even with the same manufacturer, same model and still they are not guaranteed they will work together and that's why they always sell the RAM in pairs which they already tested with.

What I suggest is to take out the Kingston stick and only use the pair from Corsair to see how it goes first.
 

My Computer

System One

  • OS
    8.1x64PWMC Ubuntu14.04x64 MintMate17x64
    Computer type
    PC/Desktop
    System Manufacturer/Model
    Home Brewed
    CPU
    I7 4970K OC'ed @4.7 GHz
    Motherboard
    MSI-Z97
    Memory
    16 GB G-Skill Trident X @2400MHZ
    Graphics Card(s)
    NVIDIA GeForce GTS 450
    Sound Card
    X-Fi Titanium Fatal1ty Professional Series
    Monitor(s) Displays
    Dual HP-W2408
    Screen Resolution
    1920X1200
    Hard Drives
    256 GB M2 sm951, (2) 500GB 850EVO, 5TB, 2 TB Seagate
    PSU
    Antec 850W
    Case
    Antec 1200
    Cooling
    Danger Den H20
    Keyboard
    Logitech
    Mouse
    Logitech Performance Mouse MX
    Internet Speed
    35/12mbps
    Browser
    Firefox
arg now the complete horrible mission of finding which RAM stick is bad, I have 1 stick of 4gb from kingston hyperX and 2 stick of 2gb from corsair, but I am still iffy about this, considering windows 7 works perfectly
It's not necessarily that the RAM stick is bad. It is a NO NO to mix your RAM from different manufacturers because they are different in term of timings even they are rated at the same speed. When you buy RAM, even with the same manufacturer, same model and still they are not guaranteed they will work together and that's why they always sell the RAM in pairs which they already tested with.

What I suggest is to take out the Kingston stick and only use the pair from Corsair to see how it goes first.

I have a feeling it is my ram... 30 more errors popped up just as I was uploading the pic

EDIT: Didn't fix anything =/ My RAM is probably faulty but unfortunately it is not the cause of the problem, I am just so confused how windows 7 works perfectly, but windows 8 or 8.1 is a loose end where I've tried hundreds of things but none of them are any solutions...
 

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My Computer

System One

  • OS
    Windows 8.1
    Computer type
    PC/Desktop
    CPU
    i7-2600k
    Motherboard
    z68-d3-b3
    Memory
    kingston 8gb
    Graphics Card(s)
    EVGA gtx 680
    Sound Card
    N/A
    Monitor(s) Displays
    Asus
    Screen Resolution
    1920x1080
    Hard Drives
    1tb seagate - 750gbWDgreen - 120gb kingston SSD nowv300
    PSU
    LSP ultra 750W atx
    Case
    custom
    Cooling
    air
    Keyboard
    Razer blackwidow ultimate 2014 elite
    Mouse
    Logitech g600
    Internet Speed
    fiber optic fast
    Browser
    Chrome mostly
    Antivirus
    N/A
This exact same thing happened to me last June, in fact that is the reason I joined this forum, to ask for help. I did hours of troubleshooting and got down to the memory/ram, did some tests and bam - a stick of my memory was failing. I replaced the memory and hey, no more freezes. :)
arg now the complete horrible mission of finding which RAM stick is bad, I have 1 stick of 4gb from kingston hyperX and 2 stick of 2gb from corsair

I edited my post with a program (Memtest). And that also might be the problem if you have different brands of memory or if they are running at different speeds. If they are the same speed that most likely isn't the case though. So you can continue on testing the memory. :)

So I found out my one of my 2gb corsair ram sticks was faulty, so I took both of them out, I redid the test using only the kingston 4gb stick and after 3 hours 0 errors, sot that's fixed =/ I tried installing windows 8 again, same problem it keeps on freezing just near the end of installation usually, and sometimes after, but no matter what I've tried it keeps on freezing.
 

My Computer

System One

  • OS
    Windows 8.1
    Computer type
    PC/Desktop
    CPU
    i7-2600k
    Motherboard
    z68-d3-b3
    Memory
    kingston 8gb
    Graphics Card(s)
    EVGA gtx 680
    Sound Card
    N/A
    Monitor(s) Displays
    Asus
    Screen Resolution
    1920x1080
    Hard Drives
    1tb seagate - 750gbWDgreen - 120gb kingston SSD nowv300
    PSU
    LSP ultra 750W atx
    Case
    custom
    Cooling
    air
    Keyboard
    Razer blackwidow ultimate 2014 elite
    Mouse
    Logitech g600
    Internet Speed
    fiber optic fast
    Browser
    Chrome mostly
    Antivirus
    N/A
Here's a few things you might want to check:
  1. Make sure the Memory you are using is on the Memory Support List for your MB
  2. When installing a single stick of memory, you might have to install on certain slot for it to work properly, check with your manual
  3. Make sure you update the SSD firmware
  4. Increase your Memory Voltage from 1.5V to 1.55V
  5. Try installing Windows with only the SSD. Disconnect the other HD's from PC.
 

My Computer

System One

  • OS
    8.1x64PWMC Ubuntu14.04x64 MintMate17x64
    Computer type
    PC/Desktop
    System Manufacturer/Model
    Home Brewed
    CPU
    I7 4970K OC'ed @4.7 GHz
    Motherboard
    MSI-Z97
    Memory
    16 GB G-Skill Trident X @2400MHZ
    Graphics Card(s)
    NVIDIA GeForce GTS 450
    Sound Card
    X-Fi Titanium Fatal1ty Professional Series
    Monitor(s) Displays
    Dual HP-W2408
    Screen Resolution
    1920X1200
    Hard Drives
    256 GB M2 sm951, (2) 500GB 850EVO, 5TB, 2 TB Seagate
    PSU
    Antec 850W
    Case
    Antec 1200
    Cooling
    Danger Den H20
    Keyboard
    Logitech
    Mouse
    Logitech Performance Mouse MX
    Internet Speed
    35/12mbps
    Browser
    Firefox
Here's a few things you might want to check:
  1. Make sure the Memory you are using is on the Memory Support List for your MB
  2. When installing a single stick of memory, you might have to install on certain slot for it to work properly, check with your manual
  3. Make sure you update the SSD firmware
  4. Increase your Memory Voltage from 1.5V to 1.55V
  5. Try installing Windows with only the SSD. Disconnect the other HD's from PC.

The memory is compatible, checked the slots they are all working good, updated SSD, still nothing, as for increasing the memory voltage......after the update I did to my bios it is locked, I can't change cpu or RAM voltage :mad::mad::mad:, windows 7 works perfectly and detects the RAM and SSD, right now I have 1 HDD with windows 7 and my SSD is windows 7 on it aswell, I disconnected the HDD with the SSD only active, tried installing still froze, I'm starting to think my motherboard is the issue itself, it's the only thing in common, I have upgraded everything except the motherboard just a few months ago, and I had the same problem before and after the upgrade, so I will look online for a new compatible motherboard, but until then I just want to make sure I'm not buying a new one for no reason, thanks for your help :geek::D but the issue still resides.:mad:
 
Last edited:

My Computer

System One

  • OS
    Windows 8.1
    Computer type
    PC/Desktop
    CPU
    i7-2600k
    Motherboard
    z68-d3-b3
    Memory
    kingston 8gb
    Graphics Card(s)
    EVGA gtx 680
    Sound Card
    N/A
    Monitor(s) Displays
    Asus
    Screen Resolution
    1920x1080
    Hard Drives
    1tb seagate - 750gbWDgreen - 120gb kingston SSD nowv300
    PSU
    LSP ultra 750W atx
    Case
    custom
    Cooling
    air
    Keyboard
    Razer blackwidow ultimate 2014 elite
    Mouse
    Logitech g600
    Internet Speed
    fiber optic fast
    Browser
    Chrome mostly
    Antivirus
    N/A

My Computer

System One

  • OS
    8.1x64PWMC Ubuntu14.04x64 MintMate17x64
    Computer type
    PC/Desktop
    System Manufacturer/Model
    Home Brewed
    CPU
    I7 4970K OC'ed @4.7 GHz
    Motherboard
    MSI-Z97
    Memory
    16 GB G-Skill Trident X @2400MHZ
    Graphics Card(s)
    NVIDIA GeForce GTS 450
    Sound Card
    X-Fi Titanium Fatal1ty Professional Series
    Monitor(s) Displays
    Dual HP-W2408
    Screen Resolution
    1920X1200
    Hard Drives
    256 GB M2 sm951, (2) 500GB 850EVO, 5TB, 2 TB Seagate
    PSU
    Antec 850W
    Case
    Antec 1200
    Cooling
    Danger Den H20
    Keyboard
    Logitech
    Mouse
    Logitech Performance Mouse MX
    Internet Speed
    35/12mbps
    Browser
    Firefox

With the update from the BIOS to U1D it was supposed to allow compatibility, I tried it before and it said it was not compatible, after the BIOS update I used the upgrade assistant from microsoft and it said everything was compatible, which is why I'm so confused:cry:
ALSO: I have an option to select the OS type under my BIOS settings, and one option is windows 8 and windows 8 WHQL.

I checked the site and it does say my motherboard is compatible, it's under the specifications, but it does say only supports windows 8,7,xp....if it supports windows 8 should it not support windows 8.1? because windows 8.1 is what I'm trying to install...Don't worry before you nod your head in shame at me for being a nob and all, I tried installing windows 8, still exactly the same problem.
 

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Last edited:

My Computer

System One

  • OS
    Windows 8.1
    Computer type
    PC/Desktop
    CPU
    i7-2600k
    Motherboard
    z68-d3-b3
    Memory
    kingston 8gb
    Graphics Card(s)
    EVGA gtx 680
    Sound Card
    N/A
    Monitor(s) Displays
    Asus
    Screen Resolution
    1920x1080
    Hard Drives
    1tb seagate - 750gbWDgreen - 120gb kingston SSD nowv300
    PSU
    LSP ultra 750W atx
    Case
    custom
    Cooling
    air
    Keyboard
    Razer blackwidow ultimate 2014 elite
    Mouse
    Logitech g600
    Internet Speed
    fiber optic fast
    Browser
    Chrome mostly
    Antivirus
    N/A
Also, at the last page of installation, it says settings some things up, always gets to 95% NOT 1% higher or lower, every single time and then crashes and this pops up "ERROR CLOCK_WATCHDOG_TIMEOUT" and of course freezes at 0% for good measure...
Can't upload the picture for some reason, but this is what it says

"Youre PC ran into a problem and needs to restart. We're just collecting some error info, and then we'll restart it for you (0% complete)
If you'd like to know more, you can search online later for this error:CLOCK_WATCHDOG_TIMEOUT"

Stays at 0%, frozen.

Looked it up online, I couldn't wait till "later" and it seems to be a MOBO/hardware driver issue, which was my first guess because it kept freezing when installing new PCI simple connection driver or something like that, what does it sound like to you guys? sounds like a new motherboard is due?
 

My Computer

System One

  • OS
    Windows 8.1
    Computer type
    PC/Desktop
    CPU
    i7-2600k
    Motherboard
    z68-d3-b3
    Memory
    kingston 8gb
    Graphics Card(s)
    EVGA gtx 680
    Sound Card
    N/A
    Monitor(s) Displays
    Asus
    Screen Resolution
    1920x1080
    Hard Drives
    1tb seagate - 750gbWDgreen - 120gb kingston SSD nowv300
    PSU
    LSP ultra 750W atx
    Case
    custom
    Cooling
    air
    Keyboard
    Razer blackwidow ultimate 2014 elite
    Mouse
    Logitech g600
    Internet Speed
    fiber optic fast
    Browser
    Chrome mostly
    Antivirus
    N/A
Do you have any other devices connected to the MB beside SSD and DVD ? If so, disconnect and try to install with minimum configurastion. Also, you might want to reset the BIOS, take out the battery and leave it out for 10, 15 minutes.
 

My Computer

System One

  • OS
    8.1x64PWMC Ubuntu14.04x64 MintMate17x64
    Computer type
    PC/Desktop
    System Manufacturer/Model
    Home Brewed
    CPU
    I7 4970K OC'ed @4.7 GHz
    Motherboard
    MSI-Z97
    Memory
    16 GB G-Skill Trident X @2400MHZ
    Graphics Card(s)
    NVIDIA GeForce GTS 450
    Sound Card
    X-Fi Titanium Fatal1ty Professional Series
    Monitor(s) Displays
    Dual HP-W2408
    Screen Resolution
    1920X1200
    Hard Drives
    256 GB M2 sm951, (2) 500GB 850EVO, 5TB, 2 TB Seagate
    PSU
    Antec 850W
    Case
    Antec 1200
    Cooling
    Danger Den H20
    Keyboard
    Logitech
    Mouse
    Logitech Performance Mouse MX
    Internet Speed
    35/12mbps
    Browser
    Firefox
Do you have any other devices connected to the MB beside SSD and DVD ? If so, disconnect and try to install with minimum configurastion. Also, you might want to reset the BIOS, take out the battery and leave it out for 10, 15 minutes.

I reset the CMOS battery multiple times, right now only the one SSD is plugged in, not even my disk drive is connected, I've tried every HDD and SSD I have so it's not a HDD issue.
 

My Computer

System One

  • OS
    Windows 8.1
    Computer type
    PC/Desktop
    CPU
    i7-2600k
    Motherboard
    z68-d3-b3
    Memory
    kingston 8gb
    Graphics Card(s)
    EVGA gtx 680
    Sound Card
    N/A
    Monitor(s) Displays
    Asus
    Screen Resolution
    1920x1080
    Hard Drives
    1tb seagate - 750gbWDgreen - 120gb kingston SSD nowv300
    PSU
    LSP ultra 750W atx
    Case
    custom
    Cooling
    air
    Keyboard
    Razer blackwidow ultimate 2014 elite
    Mouse
    Logitech g600
    Internet Speed
    fiber optic fast
    Browser
    Chrome mostly
    Antivirus
    N/A
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