Solved! Help, strangest problem I've ever encountered

[Jetster220]

Ok, so bare with me on this.
I've got a Ryzen 2400g now that was in a HP desktop i bought, it's ran perfect for about two years. I had been running folding at home for roughly 3 months nonstop, one day, I put the pc to sleep, next day, I wake it up and suddenly it begins dropping wifi. I can restart the pc it works for about 60 seconds, then acts like it has no internet connection, still shows WiFi is connected, just no internet. Now i tried using a usb wifi adapter to see if it was my pcie card that went bad, same issue persisted. I tried a few more things, ended up completely reinstalling windows, nothing, same issue. So, I've now since replaced the entire motherboard, swapped the cpu, ram and hard drives over to a new case and did a fresh install of windows. Same issue is still persisting. So, not here's my question after all that, can this issue, somehow be caused by something in the cpu itself going bad? I'm just trying to get some confirmation on my theory before i drop money on a new cpu.

 

[Hitman928]

Might seem like a silly question, but are you sure it's not your router or modem?

 

[aigomorla]

hardwire the PC directly to the router via lan cable, and try to repeat the scenario and see if its reproducable.

 

[moinmoin]

You sure you got a Ryzen 2500G?
Other than that I'd suggest looking at your wireless router or wherever you get your Wifi connection as the cause.

 

[Jetster220]

I don't have a very easy way to hard wire it, router is in another room but I'm going to attempt to find a long cable to do so today. I'm very positive it is not the router though, as I have 20 other wifi devices in my house and nothing else is having a issue, so I don't see how it could be the router when all my other devices are not having problems. Also, sorry, its a Ryzen 2400G.

 

[LightningZ71]

Lets also look at the other usual suspects with home wifi issues:

Did you get a new cordless phone recently? Move around any appliances? Install a fish tank? Did a neighbor get a new WIFI router?

Also, go online and find out how to make a bootable USB Linux installation, boot the PC from that USB stick and see if it behaves the same way with the linux stick. That should rule out a weird OS issue.

Now, onto your current installation: Have you poured through the Windows Event Viewer logs? If it's some sort of hardware error causing a software problem that it crashing your wifi network adapter, you'll likely see entries in the event viewer (probably system, or application). That might get you somewhere.

It's possible that the sustained heat from Folding has caused the PCI bus drivers on the chip to degrade to the point that they are causing PCI bus resets that are causing windows to fail the Wifi adapter after a certain number of them. But, that's like really, REALLY remote...

 

[Jetster220]

I will try the Linux boot stick and look through windows event viewer. Nothing else in my environment has changed, and also none of my other devices have any WiFi issues at all.

I feel like I may actually be looking at this being the really really remote case scenario. Because after running folding for months, i suddenly decide to stop doing it, uninstalled it from my PC, turn off PC, then the very next morning this issue appeared and has followed this CPU across motherboards. It seems crazy, but it's making more sense.

 

[ehume]

I like the suggestion that a neighbor got a new wireless router. IIRC, there is software for detecting outside routers. Heck, even Windows can show you available networks.

 

[coercitiv]

An easy way to check for radio related problems would be using your phone wifi in close proximity to your desktop. There are easy to use apps that tell a lot about the quality of an wifi connection such as the free WifiMan from Ubiquity. The Android app is a treasure trove in terms of useful information, while the iOS app is much more basic (the OS itself doesn't allow proper reporting).

You should be able to easily inspect: wifi signal strengh, channel allocation including any nasty overlaps with your neighours, a complete list of connected devices (including your PC if it does connect), and a speed test tab which is important since it also dispplays real time ping latency to gateway and big servers from google/fb/twitter.

Even if it may not help you this time, this tool is always good to have on a smartphone.

 

[Jetster220]

Yeah I've done all that testing of the wifi already, and also I have 4 other devices not including my phone in the same room with no issues. I know everyone wants to go straight to the router but that fails to explain how it's an isolated issue to this one device. There's also the correlation that this issue cropped up right after i stopped stressing the cpu with folding, and it followed the cpu across motherboards.

 

[ehume]

Yeah I've done all that testing of the wifi already, and also I have 4 other devices not including my phone in the same room with no issues. I know everyone wants to go straight to the router but that fails to explain how it's an isolated issue to this one device. There's also the correlation that this issue cropped up right after i stopped stressing the cpu with folding, and it followed the cpu across motherboards.

Following the system across mb's is what you would expect with external causes like a neighbor's router. Also, you would expect differing sensitivities in your devices. I like the cable test. Too bad you cannot move the malfunctioning unit temporarily to the router room.

 

[Jetster220]

I'm going to test with hard wire, just have to get a really long Ethernet cable. I've checked for neighbor WiFi, nothing has changed in that aspect.

 

[Jetster220]

Ok, so I solved the problem. It turns out, that I actually had two bad wifi adapters, which both happened to be exhibiting the same symptoms, infuriating. I was able to get a Ethernet cable long enough to plug in and determine that worked fine, then borrowed another wifi adapter from someone to just give another go, and bam it worked. Nothing like having two separate components fail individually at the same time.

 

[LightningZ71]

Definitely frustrating. I have a z390 board and a 9900k that will just not stabilize. It's got a memory error that is highly inconsistent. I went through half a dozen ram sticks that all tested just fine on other systems yet each gave different and inconsistent ram errors in testing. I eventually borrowed an 8700 from another PC that worked perfectly in the system which proved that the 9900k has a bad memory controller.

 

[ehume]

It's rare, but it sounds like you got snake-bit.

 

[lenjack]

"bare with me "

No thanks. Not with strangers. "bear with me", maybe.