ESO (and only ESO) randomly causes my PC to lock up, forcing a hard reboot

Transairion · September 2018

This is an issue I've had for ages now (pre-Summerset), but I thought it was just due to my PC and thought nothing of it... but when I finally took my PC in for repairs, got it upgraded and wiped and did a clean install... lo and behold ESO still has the same issue. So of course I took the PC back once again, and 17 hours of stress testing confirmed whatever is happening isn't a hardware issue, but software to do with ESO itself and they can't help me.

So the issue is, ESO will seemingly at random freeze/lock up the entire PC and not react to any input. It only occurs when ESO is used, and happens at random: walking through town, collecting mats out in the wilderness, middle of PvP... even sometimes just trying to load into a character! Everything stops, no input registers, can't Ctrl-Alt-Delete to force close ESO or anything. If left alone after 10-15~ minutes my PC just gives up and turns itself off. Most baffling is that Event Viewer can't find any events related to the lockup, only incorrect shutdown (due to forced reboot by me or eventual shutdown after 10-15~ minutes) so I really have no idea what's causing this. This has been occurring both before and after my PC was upgraded, with both the previous install and the newer clean install.

At this point it happens more than once daily and as you can guess, is extremely frustrating to try and play with random locking up! Below are my PC details;

System Summary

[System Summary]

Item Value
OS Name Microsoft Windows 10 Home
Version 10.0.17134 Build 17134
Other OS Description Not Available
OS Manufacturer Microsoft Corporation
System Name (REDACTED!!)
System Manufacturer Gigabyte Technology Co., Ltd.
System Model To be filled by O.E.M.
System Type x64-based PC
System SKU To be filled by O.E.M.
Processor Intel(R) Core(TM) i5-3570K CPU @ 3.40GHz, 3801 Mhz, 4 Core(s), 4 Logical Processor(s)
BIOS Version/Date American Megatrends Inc. F10, 23/03/2012
SMBIOS Version 2.7
Embedded Controller Version 255.255
BIOS Mode UEFI
BaseBoard Manufacturer Gigabyte Technology Co., Ltd.
BaseBoard Model Not Available
BaseBoard Name Base Board
Platform Role Desktop
Secure Boot State Unsupported
PCR7 Configuration Binding Not Possible
Windows Directory C:\WINDOWS
System Directory C:\WINDOWS\system32
Boot Device \Device\HarddiskVolume2
Locale United States
Hardware Abstraction Layer Version = "10.0.17134.1"
User Name (ALSO REDACTED!!)
Time Zone AUS Eastern Standard Time
Installed Physical Memory (RAM) 8.00 GB
Total Physical Memory 7.96 GB
Available Physical Memory 4.39 GB
Total Virtual Memory 9.21 GB
Available Virtual Memory 4.19 GB
Page File Space 1.25 GB
Page File C:\pagefile.sys
Kernel DMA Protection Off
Virtualization-based security Not enabled
Device Encryption Support Reasons for failed automatic device encryption: TPM is not usable, PCR7 binding is not supported, Hardware Security Test Interface failed and device is not InstantGo, Un-allowed DMA capable bus/device(s) detected, TPM is not usable
Hyper-V - VM Monitor Mode Extensions Yes
Hyper-V - Second Level Address Translation Extensions Yes
Hyper-V - Virtualization Enabled in Firmware No
Hyper-V - Data Execution Protection Yes

Display

[Display]

Item Value
Name AMD Radeon HD 7800 Series
PNP Device ID PCI\VEN_1002&DEV_6819&SUBSYS_E221174B&REV_00\4&B77C4C1&0&0008
Adapter Type AMD Radeon Graphics Processor (0x6819), Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. compatible
Adapter Description AMD Radeon HD 7800 Series
Adapter RAM (2,147,483,648) bytes
Installed Drivers C:\WINDOWS\System32\DriverStore\FileRepository\c0328911.inf_amd64_a81756cbffedb936\B328940\aticfx64.dll,C:\WINDOWS\System32\DriverStore\FileRepository\c0328911.inf_amd64_a81756cbffedb936\B328940\aticfx64.dll,C:\WINDOWS\System32\DriverStore\FileRepository\c0328911.inf_amd64_a81756cbffedb936\B328940\aticfx64.dll,C:\WINDOWS\System32\DriverStore\FileRepository\c0328911.inf_amd64_a81756cbffedb936\B328940\amdxc64.dll
Driver Version 24.20.11016.4
INF File oem7.inf (ati2mtag_R575BDS section)
Color Planes Not Available
Color Table Entries 4294967296
Resolution 1920 x 1080 x 59 hertz
Bits/Pixel 32
Memory Address 0xE0000000-0xEFFFFFFF
Memory Address 0xF7E00000-0xF7E3FFFF
I/O Port 0x0000E000-0x0000E0FF
IRQ Channel IRQ 4294967293
I/O Port 0x000003B0-0x000003BB
I/O Port 0x000003C0-0x000003DF
Memory Address 0xA0000-0xBFFFF
Driver c:\windows\system32\driverstore\filerepository\c0328911.inf_amd64_a81756cbffedb936\b328940\atikmpag.sys (24.20.11016.4, 539.87 KB (552,824 bytes), 23/05/2018 12:54 AM)

Anyone got any ideas? Thanks in advance

ZOS_Bill · September 2018

Another player recently posted here about ESO locking up their PC randomly. Their issue was related to which hard drive the game was installed on. If you have multiple drives, try switching the ESO install location to a different drive and see if the same lock ups happen.