Vista freezing

[centaurlord]

I just recently built a new computer. I have vista home premium. Vista is constantly freezing, or getting a blue screen. It runs fine for a while then freezes or blue screen. The problem report says that it is possible that it is caused by my CPU, Ram, motherboard, or PSU. How do i go about finding out the true cause of this problem. All 4 of those a brand new, and are compatible with each other. I have installed new drivers for each that has drivers. please help.

 

[mpjesse]

Continuous BSOD's are usually 1 of 2 things:

Bad RAM
Faulty drivers

Please post your system specs so that we can better help you with your problem. In the meantime, try running memtest86 to see if you get any memory errors. Be sure to run memtest at night when you're sleeping, it takes a few hours to complete.

http://www.memtest86.com/memtest86-3.3.iso.zip

(burn a CD with that ISO and boot from it)

 

[centaurlord]

I have the Asus PN5-E SlI motherboard, core2duo 6400, corsair ram, corsair psu, and pny 7950 gt. i talked to some guy who said the voltage on the ram might be too low. think that could be a cause?

 

[mpjesse]

Given those specs, it's unlikely to be a driver problem. Though I wouldn't completely rule it out.

The voltage could be a problem, but that's doubtful too. Still it can't hurt to check. Look up the data sheet on your RAM from Corsair's site... it'll tell you what the correct voltage is. Then go into the BIOS and make sure your ram is running at that voltage.

Don't forget to try the memtest86 thing. The problem is starting to look like bad RAM.

 

[centaurlord]

I just changed the voltage from auto to the setting the website says. I will do the memory test after i find my cd burning program. Hopefully this will get fixed soon. I'll let you know what the test says.

 

[centaurlord]

The memory test has been going for 7 hours so far, and has found no errors. When will the test be over? I'm going to install XP probably to see how stable that is. then go back to vista... any other suggestions?

 

[centaurlord]

Memory is fine. memory is set manually. Vista reinstalled... did not install the nforce memory controller update... seems to be ok so far, (been 30 minutes)

 

[KwyjiboNL77]

I have this same board (ASUS P5N-E SLI) and it is very picky about RAM and settings. A common advise is to set the Mem timings to the manufacturers timings and voltage and set it to 2T. Also, most people seem to have more stable result using only the Black slots, not the yellow ones.

 

[milkmanjb]

I used to get Blue Screens all the time. I did a clean reinstallation, and now everything is cool (for 1 week; though the last times I had problems after 1 day, so i think I'm in the clear now). All I changed was setting everything in BIOS (memory timings and stuff) before installing. I don't know why it worked, but it did.

 

[Ganjaholic]

I have also been suffering the inevitable freeze up's at random intervals myself, and it's really annoying, i have a dual boot setup with xp and whenever i use xp i have no problems at all, i think i will find out my Ram Timings and set them manually in the hope that it might work and allow me to get back to using my vista, seems to be quite alot of "Vista Freezing" posts in various forums M$ really should pull the finger out.

 

[joke]

I don't know if you've tried it or not but Vista comes with a VERY comprehensive memory test suite - it located my bad bits, I later confirmed with with an overnight run of memtest86 (low voltage, bios setting was too conservative).

I don't think its fair to blame memory issues on Vista - it may actively use more of your memory for caching; much more than XP ever did, but I think that's probably a good thing as my files load a lot faster. After a small adjustment in the first week after installing Vista, I never had another bsod (if you don't count that one bad ATI driver - but that's a different story).