Hi guys, I have used this site a bit in the past for help with virus removal to great success.
Now I am having some different issues. The issues are twofold:
First, I built my own computer about 5 months ago for the first time ever. It went pretty well, but I have had ONE single issue that has not gone away, and its a pretty big one. The computer will randomly freeze up. It has happened while I am browsing the web or watching a video on the internet, but tends to happen far far more frequently if I am gaming. This tends to happen about once every hour or two if I am gaming - which game I play seems to matter as well. Hearthstone doesn't freeze up as much as most other games, so I have been playing it more then any other. I played Shadows of Mordor for about 4 minutes and it froze - havent played it since… In addition when it freezes it will make an absolutely awful sound, like its trying to play the last sound it was making when it froze but it comes across as some horrible screech.
This is USUALLY accompanied by a blue screen of death, and I have seen quite a variety of different error messages. I have used a program called WhoCrashed in an attempt to ID why this is happening, but it gives me a variety of responses after analyzing each crash, and it basically says that it may or may not be hardware, software, or driver related (different suggestions for different crashes) so it doesnt seem to be much help.
Second issue that I am having, and probably the more pressing at the moment, is a new issue. Yesterday when i came home from work my computer had shut off. When I turned it back on it gave me a message about an update that had happened (I am running Windows 10). Since then, things have seemed to be running quite a bit slower, and any game that I have opened has run CRAZY slow/laggy. I tried to play some Hearthstone and it was unplayable. I opened Pillars of Destiny because it is a single player game and I was trying to see if this was some sort of internet/connection issue, but again, even the loading screen of these games was choppy/laggy to the point that its unbearable.
I have a nice, new, sleek gaming machine, that I hardly want to fire up and use because of these two issues. I am honestly pretty un informed with a lot of computer stuff - I have learned random things over the years, but there are likely some fairly basic things that I don't know. I have checked that all drivers were up to date (they are to the best of my knowledge) and checked that all devices (such as the graphics cards) are working properly - they are. I also ran MalwareBytes virus scan and it came up clean.
first issue i'd run a memtest to make sure there is not a problem with your memory sticks. :- http://www.memtest86.com/
as to the second problem not being a windows user and having an active dislike of the liberties microsoft and windows 10 takes with an owners hardware, privacy and choices i always assume windows 10 is the cause of any problems.
so the first thing i'd do is make sure windows 10 can not over ride your driver choices (which it does) for your graphics card and then re-install the latest driver again from whatever manufacturer your card is made by.
OK so as to your first suggestion (memtest86) I actually did run the Windows Memory Diagnostic Tool, which came back with no issues. In addition I previously ran a program that was designed to benchmark my graphics cards (I cant remember the name of the program at the moment) that also had an option to test memory. That also showed no issues. The program that you are talking about (memtest86) is sitting on my desktop, I attemped to run it the other day but failed to get it to work (apparantly I did not mount it onto the disk correctly?? I have no more blank CD's here, but I have a USB, which I still was unable to get memtest86 onto as a bootable program). Should I put more effort into that?
I did reinstall my drivers, and actually have not experienced a BSOD since!! So that issue may be solved!!
I also solved an issue with Hearthstone being laggy/choppy by deleting a temp folder… simple fix.
I am still having one remaining issue. Google Chrome is running very poorly - I tend to have between 7 and 15 tabs open at any given time, and previously would do so with no issues. Recently things have been VERY slow - even with less tabs open, but especially with more. Videos in particular are very choppy if I have several open (YES I am talking about porn.. haha). I have turned off the "hardware accellerator" option (everyone recommends that) and currently have all non vital extensions and add ons disables, but am still seeing some problems.
you may have the wrong download for creating a bootable usb stick, you need to download the Image for creating bootable USB Drive from here :- http://www.memtest86.com/download.htm
Right click on the downloaded file and select the "Extract to Here” option. This places the USB image and imaging tool into the current folder.
Run the included imageUSB tool, it should already have the image file selected and you just need to choose which connected USB drive to turn into a bootable drive. Note that this will erase all data on the drive.
seeing how you haven't had a bsd since installing drivers then that would make a ram problem less likely so running a memtest isn't something i'd worry about at the moment.
