Win8 Computer Freezing - Memtest86 Restarts/Freezes

First off, I'd like to apologize, I'm brand new here and I wasn't sure where to post this, since it's not a BSOD problem or installation or anything, my bad if it's in the wrong place.

I bought my computer pre-built, February of this year. It was fine for 3 months or so, and then it started to freeze while playing Minecraft, Skyrim and World of Warcraft. After a while, it also began to freeze during flash applications, and simple browsing in Chrome. Here's my DxDiag: View attachment DxDiag.txt

Now it freezes on a daily basis, at least twice a day. I've downloaded CoreTemp for win8, and it doesn't seem at all to be overheating. I have NOT overclocked this computer, I'm too n00b to know how.

It seems to freeze when I do something quickly, or switch between apps quickly. This made my fiancé suggest running Memtest86. I've done this from a USB image, and every time I do, it simply shuts down after a couple passes. Does this mean it's a RAM issue? I'm sorry, again, I'm so n00b and my fiancé works constantly so I don't have him around to fix my problems.

Thank you for any advice in advance, and please let me know if I can be of assistance or give you more information.

Here's my suggestion:

1. Open the Elevated Command Prompt and type: chkdsk C: /r /f to make sure that your HD is not defected. This process will require a reboot and will take a while to complete.
2. Next, open the elevated command prompt again and type:
   dism /online /cleanup-image /restorehealth
3. Next, again from elevated command prompt, type: sfc /scannow

Please report back and tell us what you find then we'll go from there.

Thank you for those suggestions, topgundcp, I did everything as you said, and this is what happened.

Chkdsk ran, I didn't get a report or anything, nothing unusual popped up, it ran for about 3 hours and eventually just said "100% complete!" and started up. DISM said "Restore operation completed successfully. The component store corruption was repaired. The operation completed successfully." I don't know what DISM is or what that means. Could you explain?

sfc /scannow finished and said "Windows Resource Protection did not find any integrity violations."

What does this mean, if anything, and what would you suggest now?

Step 1: your disk is in good health
Step 2 & 3: Repair any Windows System files if they were corrupted.

The next step, we want to run the Memory Diagnostic test. Please download: Memtest86+ - Advanced Memory Diagnostic Tool and burn it to a CD or a USB stick. Set your BIOS to boot from CD/USB and let it run for at least 6 PASSES unless you have an error. Again, this process will take hours to complete so please be patient.

I'll gladly do it again, but I did this, as I mentioned in the first post, and each time (I tried 3 times) it shut down my computer.

f0kz0r said:

I'll gladly do it again, but I did this, as I mentioned in the first post, and each time (I tried 3 times) it shut down my computer.

Click to expand...

Did you actually run the test with memtest86+ or did you use the test from Windows ?

f0kz0r said:

It seems to freeze when I do something quickly, or switch between apps quickly. This made my fiancé suggest running Memtest86. I've done this from a USB image, and every time I do, it simply shuts down after a couple passes.

Click to expand...

Yes, I ran Memtest86+, from a USB image.

Sorry, Now I saw you indeed ran the memtest86+ but you said it shutdown after 2, 3 passes. What I would suggest is to run memtest86+ again with one stick only to see if you still have the same problem.

I've done as you suggested, run Memtest86+.

I checked both sticks in all four slots interchangeably (stick 1/slot 1 then stick 2/slot 1, continuing) and each time the computer either shut down or restarted after 16 +/- seconds.

To check if it was a problem with my USB or Memtest, I tested again with a DIFFERENT USB stick and a different USB port. No go, still either shut down or restarted after about 16 seconds of testing.

My motherboard is on the side of the case (this is my case LINK), and I noticed that the case was VERY HOT, almost too hot to touch right behind the processor. It's overheating, isn't it?

The problem you have so far does indeed indicate you might have heating issue, the CPU has its own thermal sensor and if it gets too hot, it will shutdown your PC immediately to avoid damage to the CPU but in your first post you said that you ran CoreTemp and it seems normal.

So my next suggestion is to double check the CPU heat sink, make sure it is firmly seated, and also you might have to take the heat sink out and apply some thermal paste to the CPU. Make sure that both the CPU and Heat Sink are clean, wipe out any old paste before applying the new paste.

Since you bought this PC pre-built, they probably use the stock heat sink that came with the CPU, those are not good, I do over clock all my desktop PC's so temperature is the most important thing to look at when over clocking.

Looking at the picture of your case, I can only see one fan in the front so I can not tell how good it is but having a good case is very important and sometimes we tend to over look. I use an Antec 900 & Antec 1200 cases for my PC's and they do provide good airflow and in the long run, it will pay off.

Okay, thank you for all your help. It's a stock Coolermaster heatsink, so you're probably totally right. I have room also for two fans at the top of my case for two 120mm fans. Would that help at all? My fiancé suggested that having them blowing out of the case might also help with cooling. I think at some point soon we'll check out the heatsink issue, but we have our wedding coming up so that might have to wait.

Again, thank you for all your help, you've been awesome.

OK and congratulation to both of you and wish you the best on your wedding.
Your fiance is right, the fan should draw the air out of the case.