Upgrade from hell

[macnbc]

Hi all,

I've posted to one or two other forums online, I'm hoping I can get some new ideas out of this one.

I'm having some mystifying problems coming out of a complete rebuild I just did on my gaming desktop.

The issue I'm running into is, simply, that the PC will freeze up while doing fairly routine tasks like Windows Update, browsing websites, etc.

I have tried pretty much everything I can think of to troubleshoot this thing, but it's very intermittent (may happen after 5 minutes, may happen after 5 hours), and has no easily discernible cause.

Here are my specs:
Intel i5 2500K CPU
Asrock Extreme 4 P67 Motherboard
Cooler Master Hyper 212+ CPU Heatsink
Corsair GS600 PSU
Samsung Spinpoint 1TB HD
8GB (4x2) G.Skill DDR3-1600 RAM
EVGA nVidia Geforce GTX560Ti
Lite-On DVD-RW
Creative Soundblaster X-Fi Xtremegamer
D-Link PCI Wireless-G adapter

I had originally planned on overclocking this PC, and made a couple of attempts at it, but returned it to stock settings after noticing the freezing issue during idling.

On troubleshooting so far, I can discount the RAM, it passed Memtest86+, and I can PROBABLY discount the CPU, because during my attempts at overclocking, the "torture tests" in Prime95 and Intelburntest always passed. (Prime95 for an hour max, Intelburntest for 100 cycles).

As far as temperatures go, they are always pretty low at times of freezing.. mid 30s or low 40s on the CPU.

In case there was a corrupted Windows file somewhere I've gone ahead and done a full hard drive wipe and reinstalled Win7 from scratch, so barring a very bad driver I can rule out a software issue.

I am really at my wit's end on this one and I'm hoping someone can come up with an idea on what exactly the problem could be. I have about 2 weeks left to set up an RMA with Newegg for any potentially defective components, but I really don't know how to figure out what might be defective, if anything.

Help!

 

[gallen89]

I'm not an expert by any means, but I had an issue like this one time, and it ended up being my power supply. One of my 12V rails (I think) died on me, and so when something needed to draw from it, or the power draw just went too high, the system froze up and crashed. Also, it looks like your PSU produces only slightly more power than the computer uses. If there is even only a small defect that is causing a loss of only 5-10% of power supplied, you'd be borderline. If you have a backup PSU with enough wattage, I'd give that a try, otherwise I might take out the Wireless adapter or the sound card and try running the computer without one or the other of those.

 

[macnbc]

I already replaced the power supply, actually.

Originally I was running a 550W Rosewill PSU, but another forum attributed my problems to that, so I ran out and bought the 600W Corsair I have now. It is officially 2 days old. While I'm sure it's possible that it might be a defective one, having 2 in a row might be a stretch.

 

[gallen89]

It could still be a power draw thing, then. If nothing else seems to work, you might try running minus either the sound card or the wireless adapter. I'll sleep on any other ideas.

 

[macnbc]

It could still be a power draw thing, then. If nothing else seems to work, you might try running minus either the sound card or the wireless adapter. I'll sleep on any other ideas.

I'll see if I can scrounge up another PSU to plug into it, but that could take a while. (And even if I did find one it would take a while longer to see if that did the trick)..

The sound card and wireless adapter are actually the only remaining components left over pre-upgrade. They've both worked flawlessly on Win7 in the past using the same drivers they are now, so barring some funky incompatibility with the motherboard, I'm confident they're OK.

 

[tsnor]

Standard debugging is to pull parts until the problem stops. How soon before it hang? If you ran without hanging for a day would you be able to say it's fixed?

I'd pull one of the memory dimms, and see if it's working. If not then run with the other. If still fails that rules out memory. (Testing memory is really hard. The programs do a good job of testing, but they do not catch everything. There is no error detection or correction in modern consumer PCs. Having a memory test fail is pretty good proof the memory is bad. Having a memory test work is not proof the memory is good.)

I'd pull the sound card and see the problem recreate w/o sound card.

I'd pull every part that the system can run without. Get rid of any attached printers, scanners etc.

I'd pull an old hard drive out of another system and see if the system runs OK with a different hard drive (intermittent hard drive failure was cause of my last set of hangs -- only found it when i was trying to do a linux based backup -- windows never reported a problem, smart data was clean. But a new disk drive immediately stabilized system).

Have you tried one of the bootable down-loadable hw diagnostics? A bad MB can cause these symptoms. Find one that you can loop and let run overnight. (These have never actually helped me, but it seems like they should ...)

Do you have another video card you can swap in ? Video and sound are often problem areas.

good luck.

 

[macnbc]

Standard debugging is to pull parts until the problem stops. How soon before it hang? If you ran without hanging for a day would you be able to say it's fixed?

Thanks for the feedback.

I do still have my old hard drive, but it has the same Windows serials that I'm using on the new one, so I'm afraid if I plug it in it'll throw up a red flag. Is that so?

I can rule out the video card at this point. I tried plugging in my old one (GTX260) and it had the same issue.

I'll try it without the sound card/RAM tomorrow and see what happens.

 

[tsnor]

I've swapped hard drives and sound and video before with getting a blip from Windows. I think it's safe to try. You will be unplugging your current disk so it can't be updated or inspected by your older copy of windows on the old hard drive.

If you try the old disk and windows complains you have your choice of stopping or of allowing windows to call home.

I've also swapped MBs and had to go through the online process for telling windows its ok. It was painless even though it was the OEM version of window. I'm not sure it would have been painless if I'd done it a few times for the same serial number.

 

[macnbc]

Update:

I removed the Soundblaster card and the PC's been running for over 2 hours now without hanging up.

I'm going to wait a day or so before declaring the problem solved, but I'm cautiously optimistic. I'll check back in later. Thanks for the help everyone!

EDIT: Several days later and still not a single crash. Sound card nailed it. Thanks again!

 

[macnbc]

Best answer selected by macnbc.