Freezing after 3 weeks of no issues... don't know where to look

[Ceuper]

Hi. I built my system about three weeks ago and it's been working flawless since then, until a few days ago.

Here's the system:

Asus P6T SE
Core i7 920
BFG GTX 275
Linksys WMP54G Wireless adapter
6GB OCZ DDR3-1600 RAM
Antec Earthwatts 650

Here's what's happening. Anywhere between 2 minutes and an hour after restarting, my entire system will freeze
up. Any sound that's playing will have the 'broken record' effect and repeat continuously. The mouse is moveable
but nothing responds. The keyboard is totally unresponsive; ctrl+alt+del doesn't work. The only thing I can do is
reset.

At first it happened while listening to music with Winamp, so I assumed it was a problem with that. I tried
running foobar instead, but same issue. Thinking it was a sound driver problem, I did a fresh install of the
latest sound drivers. Then I realized that my computer would freeze no matter what I was doing. At one point it
would freeze within 30 seconds every time I reset, until I tried immediately doing a clean restart. That seemed
to work but it crashes within an hour every time anyway.

My i7 920 was lightly overclocked, but I tried using factory settings and had the same issue. I haven't installed
any new drivers or programs to speak of lately; this came out of the blue. In fact I had't really
done anything new with the computer when this problem arose.

I did a virus scan with avast! and nothing showed up. I checked the event viewer but couldn't find anything
suspect whatsoever. My active programs are uTorrent, Ralink UI, avast!, and Realtek HD Audio manager. Those have
been running since 3 weeks ago without any issues, however.

I'm not sure where to start looking for answers with such a vague issue. Any suggestions would be appreciated.

 

[redblade_88]

Can you have your computer standby for 1 hour or more in the bios and monitor if your computer temperature becomes abnormally high say for example at 80 degrees and up. please post back.

 

[Ceuper]

Can you have your computer standby for 1 hour or more in the bios and monitor if your computer temperature becomes abnormally high say for example at 80 degrees and up. please post back.

Thanks for the help. It hasn't crashed once tonight, for some reason. I've put RealTemp on to record my temperatures for the next while as I use my computer. The only difference is that I have done a Windows update. Maybe I'll just let it sit for now and hope it doesn't freeze again but post back if it does. Just for reference, how can I put my computer in BIOS standby and monitor the temperature?

 

[redblade_88]

you have to manually monitor the temp of your pc in the bios.

enter the bios by pressing f2 then go to "H/W monitor", depending on your MOBO.
then in there you can see the actual active temperature of your MOBO and your processor then wait for about an hour. just to see and rule out if it's a software issue or a hardware issue. well you can do it if ever your computer starts exhibiting overheating symptoms again, which i hope not. ^^ cheers

 

[Paperdoc]

I like both the temp check and the memtest ideas. You might also consider re-examining the inside of your case for a loose connector that started out OK at the time you built, but has shaken loose a little since then.

 

[Ceuper]

Thanks so much for the help guys. If I get the issue again I'll try those solutions and post back.

 

[Ceuper]

Well I was having the issue again after a couple of days of nothing at all. Strange.

After doing some reading I manually set the RAM to the stock timings of 8-8-8-24, and the voltage to 1.6v. I tried setting it to 1.65 but the MOBO could only use 1.66 (intervals of .02) and I know the Core i7 isn't supposed to have RAM at a higher voltage than 1.65, so I just left it.

I did a memtest for about 45 minutes until past 100% coverage and there were 0 errors. I haven't had a freeze since I manually set the timings but I guess we'll just have to see how it goes.

 

[Ceuper]

Well butt... I had the problem again. I'm going to do a chkdsk and see what comes up. If nothing, I'll run memtest all night just to make sure it's not the RAM. After that, we'll see...

I guess I forgot to mention that my harddrive is a WD 750GB.

 

[Ceuper]

Still having this issue at random points. It usually freezes once a day, shortly after starting my computer. I did a chkdsk and a memtest and there were no errors. Could use some help.

 

[oflackn]

I'm having the same issues as well.
i have p6t se, i7 model.

I also have a linksys wireless adaptor, maybe this could be causing the problem.