PC Freezing Randomly, Hard reset required

[Kaise123]

I built my PC about a year ago and have allwaya had a few minor problems with it (Occasional freezing, USB ports not working etc) and now i have a really bad problem. The computer will randomly lock-up while it is on, no matter what I am doing. It used to do this occasionally but it stopped after a while and it had been running quite well. Now it will freeze usually every hour or so and sometimes it will even do it on the 'Welcome' screen.

I originally thought it was a ram problem so i ran Memtest (The windows one) and it froze at 21% (Was there for 4 hours) so i thought it was a memory issue. I would have used Memtest86+ but I did not have internet access to download it. So the next day I went to a friends place with internet to purchase some replacement ram (another reason for not doing more testing is that the ram i had was not from a well known reputable brand) So I bought an 8GB pack or Corsair Vengeance ram (2x4GB, 1600Mhz, 9-9-9-24) from eBay.

I installed this in my PC thinking that it would solve the problem and it seemed to work fine for about 4 hours, and than it froze. It than froze roughly every hour after that.

I have tried this: Resetting BIOS to both 'Fail-safe' and 'Optimized' Defaults, Replacing RAM, Re-seating RAM, Checking everything is connected properly, removing any unnecessary components, Re-installing windows (twice), Using Memtest86+ (After replacing ram) and there are no errors and it does not freeze.

Another thing that bothers me is that the ram is only running at 1333Mhz, even after resetting the BIOS and the only way to make it run at the 600 it is meant to is by setting it to 'turbo' mode, which also over-clocks my CPU to 4Ghz (Which sort of scares me ). I have tried many BIOS settings but to no avail, it continues to freeze.

Another (Possibly unrelated?) issue is that most of my USB ports do not work properly and require a restart of the computer to register anything that is connected, but the USB 3.0 ports and the eSATA/USB ports work fine. I originally thought this was a PSU issue so i bought a new PSU.

Here are my system specs:

Motherboard: GIGABYTE P55A-UD6 Rev. 1

CPU: Intel i5 660 (3.33Ghz)

GPU: ATI Radeon HD 5750

RAM: Corsair Vengeance 8GB (2x4GB, 1600Mhz, 9-9-9-24) (Was Team xTream 6GB (3x2GB) 2000Mhz (Always ran at 1333))

HDD: WD Caviar Black 1TB (Was originally a WD Enterprise storage drive of some kind)

PSU: Corsair HX750W (Was GIGABYTE 550W cheap PSU)

OS: Windows 7 Ultimate 64-Bit SP1 (To test if the disk is corrupted I have tried my friends Home premium 64-Bit, same result)


I would like to know if there is anyway of solving this or is my MB/CPU 'stuffed'? DO i need to set different voltages as some other threads suggested? There are so many BIOS settings on this board and the instruction booklet looks like it has been translated from Chinese with Google translate, so it doesn't really help me at all.

The crashes freeze the mouse, keyboard, screen, sound everything. The sound just locks up in a loop if anything is playing (Plays pretty much the not it froze on over and over)

It will not crash at all if I just leave it alone, but it will crash if i am using it even if I am just playing music, browsing the web or just moving files around. It does crash more often while running games, and crashes mostly when running Minecraft. Temperature is NOT an issue with my CPU virtually never getting above 55C (I have it set to warn me if it gets to 60C) and my graphics card never gets above 65C. I have good ventilation and there is very little dust in my case, as i clean it often. I had made no hardware or software changes when the crashes started (They started while I was playing borderlands multiplayer)


Hope that someone can help with this because it makes my computer virtually unusable because I lose everything I am working on when it crashes.

I think i included everything i need,

Kai Waugh

 

[Kaise123]

One more thing, when i reset the BIOS to any of its defaults it automatically has the CPU over-clocked to 3.46Ghz, But changing it back down or even under-clocking makes no difference.

 

[hpdeskjet]

Could be bad RAM slots on the mobo.

 

[Kaise123]

Could be bad RAM slots on the mobo.

Is there a good way to test this? I have run Memtest86+ overnight and no errors are shown. Could ESD cause this because when I first built the computer i did not earth myself :S

 

[hpdeskjet]

Ah sorry. I mentioned that as a possibility when I saw this

"I originally thought it was a ram problem so i ran Memtest (The windows one) and it froze at 21% (Was there for 4 hours) so i thought it was a memory issue. I would have used Memtest86+ but I did not have internet access to download it. So the next day I went to a friends place with internet to purchase some replacement ram (another reason for not doing more testing is that the ram i had was not from a well known reputable brand) So I bought an 8GB pack or Corsair Vengeance ram (2x4GB, 1600Mhz, 9-9-9-24) from eBay.

I installed this in my PC thinking that it would solve the problem and it seemed to work fine for about 4 hours, and than it froze. It than froze roughly every hour after that."

I must've missed this part:

"I have tried this: Resetting BIOS to both 'Fail-safe' and 'Optimized' Defaults, Replacing RAM, Re-seating RAM, Checking everything is connected properly, removing any unnecessary components, Re-installing windows (twice), Using Memtest86+ (After replacing ram) and there are no errors and it does not freeze. "

If I'm understanding you correctly, you are saying your system only freezes after you manually adjust settings for RAM?

In the mean time, here is a thread related to Intel CPUs and RAM: I'm not sure if this applies to your CPU, but I suppose it is beneficial to be cognizant of this information:

http://www.tomshardware.com/forum/333313-31-intel-speeds

As for your USB ports not working and whatnot, I think this whole thing could possibly signal a faulty mobo. The best way I can think about testing this is using another mobo.

 

[Kaise123]

If I'm understanding you correctly, you are saying your system only freezes after you manually adjust settings for RAM?

Sorry for the misunderstanding, what i was trying to say is that the Memtest does not freeze (Like the windows one did, before i replaced the RAM) but the computer still freezes.

As for your USB ports not working and whatnot, I think this whole thing could possibly signal a faulty mobo. The best way I can think about testing this is using another mobo.

I was afraid someone was going to say that :S. I can't even find the info on how long the warrenty is on my mobo, but i think that its 3 years which means it still has a year left. I might send an email to Gigabyte.


I read http://www.tomshardware.com/forum/276950-30-gigabyte-p55a-memory-problem and I have seen several other threads that have similar solutions to freezing and i was wondering if anyone would have a guide for my MB.

Does anyone know the correct settings as far as voltages and timings go for my MB/Ram?