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I'm currently diving into C# and wanted to play around with the new Metro-styled-applications introduced with Windows 8, so I updated my Windows 7 to Windows 8 Consumer Preview.
The problem I'm facing right now is, that the system freezes after 3-5 minutes. It does not take any input from the keyboard or mouse and it does not recover (at least not in less then 10 minutes).
Since I have a background in Linux, I'd like to find some information about the cause of the freeze, but I have no idea where to search.
I checked the system-logs (under "System Control" -> "Management") but they only record that the system was shut down unexpectedly (doe to the face that I held down the power-button to reboot the PC). There is no useful crash-information in there.
I don't want to spend hours on randomly reinstalling drivers and doing things that "might help". Isn't there any place I can find some useful information about the freeze?
Before you ask:
- I installed Windows 8 as an updated on my old Windows 7 installation (which worked fine by the way).
- My hardware fits the minimum requirements (specs can be found here, the MacMini 3,1 model with 2GHz processor).
- I have updated the graphics-card drivers to the newest Windows 8 drivers from nVidia.
Edit: I'm now using the final Windows 8 Pro on my machine and it had the same issues as the developer preview.
However, after deactivating the new "dynamic ticks" feature, the system is now stable and works like a charm. I didn't try it with the DP, so I don't know if this might be to fix for it, too.
Lukas Knuth
Posted 2012-03-12T18:57:26.490
Reputation: 195
1system-logs you mean Windows Event viewer? – Diogo – 2012-03-12T19:17:09.863
@DiogoRocha yes. My system is in German, so I don't know the exact English translation. – Lukas Knuth – 2012-03-12T19:34:07.350
Sure, no problem, I would suggest you to look on Windows Event Viewer to analyse crash events. This is the most powerfull tool embedded on windows to debug crashes. But if you already did it, for now(on Windows 8 beta) I have no idea how to find an answear unless post on a specialized or the oficial Windows 8 forum. – Diogo – 2012-03-12T19:37:56.563
1I guess you first have to determine at which level the lock up occured. Maybe press the Caps Lock key a few times and see if it's the kernel. If so, there won't be any error log unless you can somehow trigger a bluescreen afterwards. – billc.cn – 2012-03-12T20:24:53.043
@billc.cn and by "somehow" you mean? Also, what is supposed to happen when I press the Caps-Lock key? The light on my keyboard flashing up? – Lukas Knuth – 2012-03-12T20:42:02.070
You'll have to trigger a software/hardware fault that would normally cause a blue-screen and then you can get a memory dump. Yeah, if the Caps Lock LED responds, you can at least be sure the OS kernel is still responding to interrupts. If you want a more reliable view, you can run a windows kernel debugger from another computer. – billc.cn – 2012-03-12T22:17:49.147
@billc.cn It seems, that the kernel is root-cause, since pressing Caps-Lock does not do anything. How would I go about setting up the "kernel debugger"? – Lukas Knuth – 2012-03-13T11:02:49.750
I've had similar problems with an Nvidia GeForce 9m card. While I was not able to find any useful log information, going to
View advanced system settings, performancesettings, and selectingadjust for best performance(essentially removing eye-candy, I believe), the freezes seem to have become much less frequent(daily instead of hourly). Not sure if this implicates the video driver problems, or if the improvement was coincidental as opposed to causal. Worth a try though. – jthetzel – 2012-03-21T21:52:29.543@jthetzel I have a GeForce 9400M, so I'll try it out. But this does not solve the problem. – Lukas Knuth – 2012-03-22T19:31:54.753
When does the system freeze? When you're debugging your C# app or just generally? You may want to try loading into safe mode and seeing if that still replicates the issue as it may lead to new paths of investigation. – Dave – 2012-08-30T08:17:55.080
@DaveRook you're a little late :D I already "downgraded" back to Windows 7 again, as there where no fixes and it seemed to be a driver problem on nVidia's side. – Lukas Knuth – 2012-08-30T19:30:05.140