Hello all,
Long story short;
I've been chasing down Win 11 Pro freezes over the past couple months, system ran fine for a couple years before this.
As of 2 days ago, I've found that disabling PSS Support in the BIOS seems to solve the issue, and now I want to know if this is indicative of a bad CPU, a bad motherboard, or a new Windows bug?
Longer version;
I've swapped out every component besides the motherboard and CPU (ASUS ROG Zenith II Extreme, Threadripper 3970x), as I do not have spares of those. I've updated both BIOS's, cleared CMOS, set factory defaults many times, eventually wiped Windows 11 and attempted to re-install Windows, but found that it would freeze at around 92%, I tried Windows 10, and had similar results. I tried using Microsoft generated images, Rufus generated image, I installed Linux to see if that could help me chase it down. I tried many different BIOS settings, even reseated the CPU. I was getting ready to give up and warranty the CPU, but decided to try the different the different CPU specific settings first, and that is when I found turning off PSS Support actually allowed Windows install to complete successfully, and not only that, but there have been no more random OS freezes.
CPU: Threadripper 3970X, water cooled, no thermal issues.
MB: Asus ROG Zenith II Extreme
BIOS: 1802
Mem: 2 sets from compatibility list, one set not, all repro exactly the same
GPU: AMDRX7900XTX, and swapped with nvidia 2080ti, same behavior from both
Drive: All M.2, swapped them out, moved them around, same result every time, same result in either RAID or AHCI mode.
OS: Windows 10 Pro, or Windows 11 Pro, latest install image.
PS: 1500 watt Thermaltake and 1600 watt Asus, both same behavior
USB stick: Different USB stick, different speeds tried in USB2, USB 3 and USB C port, only difference is what percent Windows 10/11 would Freeze at, slower would freeze at a lower percent, higher would get further, best was USB C at ~92%
