Pi 3 freezes when using GPIO?

[tussiez]

Fairly recently, . A jumper cable was connected to GPIO pin 4. The program worked, but I realized that Raspbian had frozen, while the program was still running. I was only able to shut off the Pi by removing the power cable. I've owned the Raspberry Pi 3 for a few years now, so it's been bounced around in a box for a while. I am thinking about doing further projects involving the GPIO (e.g. distance sensor, motors) but am worried that the OS might not be able to function while using the GPIO. There is one visible missing part on the Raspberry PI (see picture) that might be the problem. When I ran the program, I had the latest version of Raspbian installed and the Raspberry Pi was connected to a keyboard, a mouse, and a 7 inch TFT screen that was driven with HDMI and powered with an independent power source (battery pack). The Pi was also powered by a battery pack. Right now, I have two possible reasons for the GPIO: the missing part, or the power source. The battery pack was fully charged and was supplying 5V 2.1A, sufficient enough to power the computer. The battery pack is only a few years old and has not been heavily abused, plus the Pi was not showing any signs of overheating or low voltage. What are your thoughts? Should this be a problem or not, or maybe there is a solution?

By the way, here is the part missing:

[Burngate]

The part you've circled is the WiFi antenna, I believe.

GPIO header pin 4 is 5v, not actually a GPIO at all - unless you mean pin 7 which is GPIO 4

Whatever, Raspbian should work quite happily whilst using GPIOs. Whatever your program was doing, if it was driving or sensing a GPIO it was possibly doing so via calls through Raspbian.

So ... what program were you running, and how did you work out that Raspbian had frozen?