Freeze up?

koga73

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Jan 23, 2008
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Hello, im new to this forum. The reason im posting is because I recently built a system. It ran fine for about a week or so and now it freezes up all the time. I cant even be on it for more than five minutes usally. When it does freeze, i have to completly restart the machine. There are no errors ever and nothing in the event log. It freezes once in windows. It freezes at different times, not when one specific task is done. When it freezes, i can still see the screen and am able to move the mouse. ctrl alt del wont even bring open the dialog, it just displays the desktop wallpaper with no icons, taskbar, anything.

At first i suspected it was somethign wrong with xp, so i reinstalled it. Worked fine for a few hours, then the same thing. I have replaced the network card and removed the sound card. The cpu temp is at a cool 15° C.

So after trying to figure out what is happening, im stuck. I dont know if it is a hardware problem (mayb a bad mobo, bad hdd, or bad ram)? or if it is a driver issue.

Stats:
Code:
mobo - asus p5n32-e sli
cpu - intel quad Q6700 (2.66)
ram - corsair 2gb dual ddr2-800
gpu - evga 8600 gt (256mb, ddr3, dx10 ready)
hdd - seagate sata 500gb
audio - sbLive
nic - dlink xtreme N - pcie
psu - xion 600w
case - silverstone temjin tj06
OS - XP SP2

also got a coolit freezone water cooling.
 

ZozZoz

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I was beating my head against the wall when faced with a similar problem that one of my builds (the pc i put together for my younger brother) kept freezing at random.

1. Observe: are the freezes really random or more likely to happen when you surf the net, or maybe play games, and work your way from there.

in my case it was a USB wireless card that caused the symptoms, or, to more specific - an outdated chipset driver that controlled usb ports. it was good enough for other devices, but the wi-fi card and the port driver just didn't get along. Getting the latest driver from asus didn't help (it wasn't latest enough) so in the end it was intel's website that had what i needed.

oh. and the card was also a d-link product. In fact, just before getting rid of the problem for good, I got to the point when that pc crashed once a day (instead of every 5 minutes) when I let the bundled software control the wireless connections, and not windows (by default).

its not bad ram, that's not what happens with bad ram. bad hdd is not the culprit either. Go to intel's site and get the latest chipset driver for your card. Then, install it manually (watch for instructions in release notes). Automatic install leaves current drivers intact for some reason, even if what you try to install is newer.

hope that wasn't too long and confusing.
 

koga73

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Ok, I have narrowed down the issue... with no solution! I noticed that the computer didnt freeze in safe mode, so i checked the running services. After an hour or so of playing with them, I came to find out that Windows Update was causing the freeze when it was opened. I disabled this and was able to use my machine for an hour or so and BAM, again.

I ran memtest... fine!
Bios is up to date.

So, i reinstalled windows xp (and "correctly" activated it through microsoft, because i thought this may have been the issue).

After reinstalling XP for a third time, it worked fine, UNTIL I attempted to update windows. I used windows update (the install is sp2) to get some security updates and such. When it was installing update 59 or so / 89, it froze.

Im really getting frustrated with this. Today I plan on taking everything out except the nessessary, and running a hdd check (the hdd is new btw). If it still freezes and I cannot get a solution before tomarrow, I guess i will be returning the mobo to the store and getting a different one. (I bought the parts the 26 of dec. so tomarrow is my 30 day limit).

I think the problem could just be some kind of conflict that an update has with a driver, not sure through. Any suggestions?
 

gwolfman

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Jan 31, 2007
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That doesn't seem right. Seems too low. Download coretemp http://www.alcpu.com/CoreTemp/ and run that, what's your temps say? Then download Prime95 2.25 here:
http://mersenne.org/gimps/P95V255a.zip
or here http://mersenne.org/gimps/P95V255.ZIP
and select test only, then run the torture test and watch your temps and see if it's freezing.

It sounds like your CPU might be overheating. Maybe the cpu heatsink isn't seated correctly. Or maybe bad power supply. How many passes did you run with memtest+? run it for at least as long or double the time it takes for your computer to freeze; i recommend at least 2 hours and make sure it gives no errors or freezes.

If it keeps freezing, take out all cards/devices except cpu, heatsink, videocard, and ram. See if it keeps freezing. Run in safe mode for a+ hours. If safe mode runs correctly with no problem for over an hour or so, then you might have a driver issue. Update all of them to the latest.

Let me know how that goes.
 

koga73

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Ill do those things. The temp is coming from asus pcprobe. In windows it stays between 9° and 25° C. In the bios if i check temp, it is usally around 20, so im pretty sure the temperature is correct. Thanks for the suggestions.
 

gwolfman

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Any luck?
 

roadrunner197069

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Sending the mobo back will probably not help at all. More then likely its your network card or your sound card.

If not, maybe its possible you have some not so "correctly legal" software that has a virus attached to it.

It worked in safemode so its got to be a driver problem since safemode only loads basic drivers.