Curious Computer Crashes

Here’s a computer quandary for you.

System specs:
(bought from IBuyPower.com)
AMD Phenom X2 555
Asus Motherboard
ATI Radeon 5670 1GB video card
Displaying via HDMI output to 1080p HDTV (sound and video provided by the TV)
Windows 7 64 bit
Google Chrome web browser

And other nuts and bolts which don’t seem pertinent to the problem, but I will provide their info as well if anyone who can help needs to know.

So the problem I’ve got is this:

She crashes! Blimey mate it’s frustrating…I’ve got it narrowed down to one specific task during which it crashes…streaming Netflix. And so far, only when streaming Netflix. Not when streaming Youtube, or Hulu, or Yahoo video.
Never during any other operation. Never during graphically intensive games, never during normal file browsing, never during internet browsing, never during any other program at all.

So here’s the question - why? What is it about Netflix’s software that my computer doesn’t like? I’ve played games for literally 10+ hours with no problem. But when streaming Netflix (fullscreen), it crashes. Now it’s not immediate, I can watch my videos…but give it 15 minutes, or sometimes 30, sometimes an hour, the image switches to a black and white vertical pinstripe pattern, sometimes black and green vertical pinstripes, the audio will continue for a couple seconds, and then BAM. Freeze up, and immediate reboot.

Any insight would be greatly appreciated. The tech support at IBuyPower is helpful…if not a bit young. I swear the guy there Eric must be 18 years old. They gave me a few suggestions to narrow it down but basically want to swap the video card out. That seems a bit drastic at this point don’t you think? It’s only ONE program causing the freeze. It’s gotta be software related right?
:confused::confused:

I’m not familiar with how Netflix works, is there a client that you can remove and re-install/update or does it stream straight through a website? If it’s through a website you could try using a different browser.

Another thing to look at is the Event Viewer, since this is a problem which can be duplicated you can mark the time the fault occurs, then boot up and look at the Application and System logs to see if it gives any indication. Also, try disabling automatic reboot on system failure, it should then display a BSOD listing the fault rather than automatically restarting.

Oooo! Oooo! Update!

It just happened when streaming Pandora. The pinstripes were blue and white this time though. I wonder if the pinstripes are somehow related to the image being displayed at the time of the freeze? And if the USB plugin wireless network adapter I’m using is related…

So I tried using Internet Explorer…and upon logging into Netflix to stream video, it prompted me to download “Microsoft Silverlight”. Then it tells me that “Silverlight is not compatible with 64 Bit systems.”

WTF? Microsoft makes a product that is not compatible with it’s own OS? I guess it was designed for older versions of Windows that weren’t 64 Bit.

Anyway…that is unrelated and so I didn’t pursue it further.

Besides I don’t want to skirt around the problem by using a different browser. I want to ultimately know what is causing the freezes, and repair/replace the offending component.

It’s a new PC so it’s kinda frustrating. And no thanks, I’m not into Mac or the ridiculous price tag. I just want my new gaming rig to work…and to stream videos to my 42"HDTV. Is that so much to ask? /scarcasm

And what if the non-standard browser you are using is that component? (As seems quite likely.)

Even if you really love Chrome, switching to another browser to use Netflix is a very minor inconvenience compared to futzing with hardware, and (unlike hardware) it is free. Surely it is at least worth testing to see if the problem occurs in other browsers.

I have not used Chrome a lot, but in my experience, although it is a tad faster, it is not as stable as Firefox (which makes sense considering how much longer Firefox has been in development).

You might try to find a newer video driver for your current video card.

All good suggestions:

I would try browser first since if you have stable video on everything else, screwing with newer drivers may not be the best option.

Were you running the 64 bit version of Internet Explorer? I’m pretty sure I have Silverlight installed on my computer, and it’s running Windows 7 64 bit.

I have Silverlight on my Mac, and that’s 64-bit as well.

There’s really no reason to use 64-bit IE.

There is a slim possibility that this is hardware related, though your machine is pretty darned new, and you are gaming on it for hours with little apparent trouble.

Nevertheless, some years ago I had similar problems to what you described. The weird patterns and hard crashes came up when I started certain programs that did video. In my case, it was when I watched TV with the Media Center program: it would look fine for five minutes and then conk out.

After trying every crazy thing I could—I eventually wiped the machine and put the original factory image on it—I finally started looking at the boards in the machine.

My video card had several capacitors that had little brown dots appearing in the center of the “Y” groove in the top. Here is a picture of similar caps, though mine weren’t as obvious. Once I replaced the video card, the problem went away.

After you have eliminated everything else, consider hardware issues.

I just used my Blu-Ray drive for the first time to watch a Blu-Ray movie and it looked rather unimpressive. Definitely not what I expected from a “higher quality” format. I thought it looked worse than standard DVD, let alone hi-def DVD.

And, all throughout the movie, I had image related problems. White horizontal lines would flicker across the screen intermittently, and the image would destabilize often and flash a rainbow colored ghost image of whatever scene was playing at the time, then return to normal. A few times the display just went black, and after a few second pause, it would return, but the video had not stopped in that time, it picked up right where it would have been had I closed my eyes for a few seconds and reopened them.

I’m definitely looking at some kind of video card related problem; I think my best next course of action is to try swapping the card and see if the problems goes away or changes at all. It’s free with my warranty to do this, and at the very least it will whittle down the problem.

Oh, and if Google Chrome is the problem, I would expect to find more users than just myself experiencing the issue. Are there any decent group-complaint websites any of you know of? Something where I could find similar problems? I’ve tried googling but I don’t get too much and I may not be using the right search terms.

Thanks for the help!

Before you go changing your graphics card check the event log first, it may list occurrences of the driver failing and needing to be restarted. Regardless of the contents of the event log I would look into upgrading/downgrading your graphics driver before you go spending any money.

So this event viewer…i searched for it via the handy dandy windows search box in the start menu. pulled it up, and it gives me nothing really. no events to speak of. just some stuff dated from before i owned the computer, and an event as of this moment, where i opened the event viewer.

What information is contained in the event viewer? and how is it helpful?

I agree it may be a hardware issue, but, as a temporary solution, you may want to try turning off hardware acceleration. Ordinarily I’d recommend updating your driver, but since you’re still under warranty, I’d swap out first.

The System section of Event Viewer should at least list the services starting up each time the computer is booted. Something has been changed away from default if it isn’t listing anything. For example, here is a snapshot of the latest entries in my event viewer.

Event viewer will list any errors such as bugchecks and BSOD codes that are able to be captured as well as any failures to write to the HDD or instances of the graphics driver being reset due to it stopping responding. In the cases of a total hardware failure the event log usually doesn’t pick anything up as the PC is no longer working enough for events to be listed but during normal operation loads of entries are added.

The tech support guy is probably correct. Every time I had artifacts on the screen followed by a computer crash it was a video card that was overheating.

Maybe some stray cable is blocking the video card fan from spinning or maybe the card is simply defective.