My computer is several years old, and I built it myself from components purchased separately. Maybe about 6 months ago, it started randomly freezing. I hadn't installed any new hardware recently.
Whatever I'm doing (browsing the web, chatting in skype, watching a video, etc), the entire screen freezes, including the clock and mouse, and it no longer responds to any input, including ctrl+alt+del etc. My computer is set not to go to sleep or hibernate, but the monitor does turn off after 15 minutes, and sometimes it also freezes when the monitor is off. In that case, there is no way to "wake up" the monitor. When I check the windows event viewer after a freeze of this kind, there is no event other than "previous shutdown unexpected." In addition, no regular 'information' events are logged after it is frozen, so if it freezes in the middle of the night, I can usually estimate what time the freeze occurred by the gap in the event history.
Originally, this happened only once every few weeks. About 3 months ago, I reformatted the computer and gave it a fresh OS. This didn't change the pattern of freezing at all. I've checked the SMART values on my HDDs (they all look okay to me), and 4 or 5 months ago I did stress testing for the CPU and memory testing, but everything came up okay and there were no freezes during testing.
Now (over the past week or two), it's begun to happen almost daily. I've long suspected that it's some kind of hardware failure, but I have no idea what is dying. Whatever it is, it seems to be near death, and I'd love to be able to identify the problem before it goes down so I can start replacing it.
Win7 x64
core i3 550 (no overclocking)
Radeon hd 5750
8GB Memory
5 HDDs, no RAID array
Possibly problematic programs that are always running:
Comodo firewall / antivirus (antivirus usually not 'stateful')
Truecrypt
If there's any other information anyone would like, or anyone would like me to do some tests / dump the results here, I'd be glad to oblige
Thanks in advance for any assistance!
NOTE: I filled this post out once, prior to signing up, but it appears to have been lost. If it was merely "awaiting review" or something, then I apologize for double posting, but I can't find any record of my original post in my profile, the forum, or anywhere else, so I'm assuming the original was lost somehow.
Whatever I'm doing (browsing the web, chatting in skype, watching a video, etc), the entire screen freezes, including the clock and mouse, and it no longer responds to any input, including ctrl+alt+del etc. My computer is set not to go to sleep or hibernate, but the monitor does turn off after 15 minutes, and sometimes it also freezes when the monitor is off. In that case, there is no way to "wake up" the monitor. When I check the windows event viewer after a freeze of this kind, there is no event other than "previous shutdown unexpected." In addition, no regular 'information' events are logged after it is frozen, so if it freezes in the middle of the night, I can usually estimate what time the freeze occurred by the gap in the event history.
Originally, this happened only once every few weeks. About 3 months ago, I reformatted the computer and gave it a fresh OS. This didn't change the pattern of freezing at all. I've checked the SMART values on my HDDs (they all look okay to me), and 4 or 5 months ago I did stress testing for the CPU and memory testing, but everything came up okay and there were no freezes during testing.
Now (over the past week or two), it's begun to happen almost daily. I've long suspected that it's some kind of hardware failure, but I have no idea what is dying. Whatever it is, it seems to be near death, and I'd love to be able to identify the problem before it goes down so I can start replacing it.
Win7 x64
core i3 550 (no overclocking)
Radeon hd 5750
8GB Memory
5 HDDs, no RAID array
Possibly problematic programs that are always running:
Comodo firewall / antivirus (antivirus usually not 'stateful')
Truecrypt
If there's any other information anyone would like, or anyone would like me to do some tests / dump the results here, I'd be glad to oblige
Thanks in advance for any assistance!
NOTE: I filled this post out once, prior to signing up, but it appears to have been lost. If it was merely "awaiting review" or something, then I apologize for double posting, but I can't find any record of my original post in my profile, the forum, or anywhere else, so I'm assuming the original was lost somehow.
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