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Computer freezes while starting up

Last response: in Systems
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Hi everyone,
I custom built my pc over a year ago and it's been working great until recently. I just bought a new 6870 from Sapphire and installed the drivers it's been working fine. Yesterday my little brother was playing a game (minecraft) and it blue screened on him. Now when I try to start up it gets to the desktop and then freezes around 2 minutes in. I'm not sure what it is called but the screen went all distorted and then it froze.
I've tried to do a system restore but for some reason there are no restore points. System repair has also done nothing.
Right now I am using my separate installation on Windows XP, but I have no idea what to do. Since Windows XP works fine I'm guessing it's an issue with my drivers, but I'm not really sure.

My system specs
Windows 7 Professional 64 bit
MSI 790FX-GD70 AM3 AMD 790FX ATX AMD Motherboard
PC Power and Cooling S61EPS 610W Continuous @ 40°C
AMD Phenom II X4 955 Black Edition Deneb 3.2GHz Socket AM3 125W Quad-Core Processor
SAPPHIRE 100314SR Radeon HD 6870 1GB 256-bit GDDR5
CORSAIR XMS3 4GB (2 x 2GB) 240-Pin DDR3 x2
LG 22X DVD±R DVD Burner Black IDE Model
Western Digital Caviar Blue WD5000AAKB 500GB 7200 RPM (Windows 7 is installed on this)
Western Digital Caviar Black WD1001FALS 1TB 7200 RPM
Western Digital Caviar Green WD5000CSRTL 500GB 7200 RPM (Windows XP is installed on this)

Thanks in advance

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Homebuilt system Expert

I have a similar computer and running Windows 7. I was also shown a blue screen once. I am thinking it has to do with the OS able to handle some system calls more than the actual hardware but I may be wrong. But otherwise, my computer runs fine after that reboot. Since you are running fine on Windows XP, it makes the assumption more solid.

Problem at your end however is more impacting. Since you have your Windows 7 running on Western Digital Caviar Blue, you got the Blue screen! :p  kidding.

I would first check if you have over clocked your RAM modules and/or CPU. If this continues to happen on Windows 7, you should get a memory dump and submit here for analysis or check on forums that specialize in analyzing memory dumps. Also, your system restore feature seems to have been turned off hence no restore points. Search on the internet how to enable it, etc. Make sure you are running Windows 7 based drivers at least for your motherboard and graphics card.

Do you think your power supply is of good quality and sufficient? Try running with one lesser hard disk and see if that makes a difference while playing the same game just to make sure you simulate in the same way.


If the screen showed distortion - check your graphics card drivers and see if all fans are running and download RealTemp or CPUID and monitor temperatures on taskbar continually.

I haven't overclocked my CPU or any of my RAM sticks. It just randomly started doing this yesterday and it freezes when I'm not running anything. Just while it's still booting up on the desktop screen it'll freeze. I've run demanding games on high settings and speedfan didn't go over 54c on any of the sensors. So I doubt it's over heating.
I've checked the fan on my video card and it's working fine.
I tried pulling out the hard drive that XP is stored on but it still froze so I doubt it's a power supply since I have a 610 watt power unit. How would I be able to find the memory dumps? Also, what forum would you recommend I post to with the files?
How would I be able to check my drivers before my computer freezes? I don't think I can do that in safe mode. Is there a way to do it on XP or in safe mode?
 
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