New Problems (DotA2 freeze/crash, Chrome crash, unable to shut down)

[theevilisback]

So I got new problems that have creeped up since yesterday. Here's the chain of events:

Playing Dota2 with my friend. Running programs are Dota2 (fullscreen), Ventrilo, Skype, Chrome, Steam, AVG, and Malwarebytes. Game freezes prior to first queue popping. Unable to do anything, forced to shut down by holding power button. This will become common over the next 3 hours.

Get into game 1. Died, game freezes. Have to hold power button again to shut down. Proceeds to freeze another time in the next game, seems like nothing specific needs to happen to cause this.

Went to bed last night around 5am. Computer was running, but nothing was actually running aside from skype and steam (at least in foreground).

Woke up at 2pm, noticed tons of problems. Google Chrome would not load up. Found a chrome.exe stuck in the task manager, couldn't close it. Ok, no big deal. Rebooted system, AVG Free suddenly is broken. Shows up in toolbar as @ProductType90, UI is full of @BTN things, basically it's broken. Again, no big deal. Reinstall that. Well, I can't uninstall. OK time to do a system restore to last week. System finishes restoring, shut computer down and go to work.

Get to work, plug everything in, takes about 30 minutes to get the wired connection working. No idea what caused that. Go to use chrome, it is working fine. Scanned PC with AVG and Malware bytes, nothing comes up. Closed out chrome, chrome.exe cannot close again, basically cripples my chrome. Rebooted and again the same thing that happened before happens again. AVG breaks. OK. Try to uninstall everything again. Chrome can't uninstall (nothing at all happens), got AVG uninstalled. Use Firefox to redownload chrome and force a second installation on after deleting the chrome folder. It seemed to do the trick.

Came home. Played Dota2. Everything is working well for the first time in a while. Browsing net waiting for queue to pop, suddenly I can't load any web pages. Chrome is stuck at "waiting for cache." Close chrome, chrome.exe is hanging again. From that point on, DotA is running very choppy from an FPS standpoint. Almost as if there's about a half second delay in click to it actually happening.

Now i'm here.

TL;DR version: Chrome hangs, Dota Crashes, AVG breaks. Constantly my computer cannot shut down. Either hangs at Shutting down or Logging off screens.

If anyone can tell me what to do aside from a fresh reformatting and reinstall of Windows 7 and maybe the Asus stuff, I'd greatly appreciate it.

[theevilisback]

I'd also like to add this (really baffling me):

Whenever I have to do that whole forcing my computer off thing, Steam requires me to accept everything as if I just downloaded it, along with Skype (it actually will go through the "setting up a new profile" thing) This happens EVERY Time. 😕

[dstrakele]

The Chrome "waiting for cache" message and having to recreate your Steam and Skype Profiles after each lockup sounds like file corruption.

I recommend running CHKDSK C: /F /R from an elevated Command Prompt (right - click on the Command Prompt icon and choose to "Run as administrator" from the popup menu and enter the command).

Alternatively, you can run the "Error Checking" routine in the "Tools" tab of the Properties of C:. Be sure to check the "Check for bad sectors" checkbox.

[FailNinja]

This just happened to me no more than 10min ago, froze while playing DOTA2, went into the forum and saw this post. so i restarted the computer by holding down the power button. everything seems ok now. Played another round of DOTA2 and everything went smooth. soooo i dunno what the issue was.

did any of you find the problem and resolution other than restarting?

[dstrakele]

Here's a post with some other recommendations for DOTA 2 lockups: http://dev.dota2.com/showthread.php?t=29735. This is a summary, but there are many threads about lockups on http ://dev.dota2.com.

[theevilisback]

Also, none of those problems on the DoTA thread pertain to what happens with me 😞

[dstrakele]

theevilisback wrote:
Also, none of those problems on the DoTA thread pertain to what happens with me 😞

Any thread reporting a lockup while playing DOTA 2 may pertain to you. They just may not be as detailed in reporting the various symptoms leading to the eventual lockup.

[theevilisback]

Finally got step 1 of your recommendations done. Everything from the chkdsk came back clean.

Prior to doing this I went and played a few games of DotA. Only one crash this time around. I still have no specific thing that could be causing the problem that I'm doing, as it happens totally randomly.

There are also times where it's like, my computer is gradually dying. Near the end of my 3rd game of Dota, while I was dead I was actually reading these forums. Suddenly I noticed that all the tab icons at the top of chrome were spinning and at the bottom it says "waiting for cache..." This is what I simply think of as my computer saying "All systems are failing." Finished up my game about 5 minutes later, sure enough Skype is no longer responding, Chrome is dead, windows explorer is failing, I can't bring up the task manager, I cannot open any other programs, Steam stops responding. If you can diagnose that over the net I will find a way to give you a cookie because it's happened 3 or 4 times, and every time I instantly think "holy crap I need to shut this thing down before it completely locks up"

[dstrakele]

It sounds like there may be a bad leak of Nonpaged Pool memory or GDI Objects and the symptoms you report occur as the loss of resources becomes critical. I suspect the game may need a patch.

If you restart your laptop between games, you may be able to play longer. That's the only way to recover "leaked" resources, if this is what is actually happening.

You can also monitor Nonpaged memory and GDI Objects use by process in Task Manager. It may help troubleshoot the problem by identifying the offending process.