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Computer failing, can't find cause. Please help!

Last response: in Systems
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My computer's been crashing for a very long time now, and I've tried everything I can think of other than buying myself a new PC.
The crashes aren't arbitrary, they're actually very predictable, and usually end up leaving me with a frozen computer and either a single color on the monitor, or a single color with vertical lines.

I've tried:
RMA'ing my motherboard, Graphics Card
Trying out another graphics card (Although it was ATI as well)
Buying new sticks of RAM unplugging all my fans, unplugging my DVD Drive,
Trying a brand new PSU
Installing all the drivers myself, and then later using Driver Genius
Installing my OS and my SSD, and HDD (Each with the other unplugged)

I have tested out my CPU and Graphics card overnight, and both of them stay at low temperatures

If it helps, specs are:
I5-2500K (W/ Cooler Master Hyper212+)
P8P67 Pro Rev 3.0
2x 4gb HyperX Genesis
MSI 6870 Hawk II
Corsair GS600 (PSU)
OCZ Vertex 3 120gb SSD
WD Caviar Blue HD 500gb

Times when it most often freezes (I'll add as I remember):
In the menus of Battlefield Bad Company 2 (NOT when playing, ONLY in Menus)
Alt-tabbed out of a game (Not instantly, may take some time)
For whatever reason (May be relevant), when I open the map on Arma II

A million thanks in advance!

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Deoxiribonucleic said:
Only with games, fortunately.
Also, crashes sometimes during map changing on Garry's Mod. And it could just be me, but I think it gets worse the longer I go without doing a fresh install of windows...


Which drive are these games installed on? Could be a bad sata cable which I bet you didn't change out.
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It's funny, right as I typed that, that idea hit me like a pile of bricks...
They're installed in the HDD, but I use the SSD for the OS. Although, now that I think of it, I might have played games on both drives (Without having swapped any cables). Regardless, I've got two extra cables and am going to try it tomorrow. Thanks for the suggestion :D 

Deoxiribonucleic said:
It's funny, right as I typed that, that idea hit me like a pile of bricks...
They're installed in the HDD, but I use the SSD for the OS. Although, now that I think of it, I might have played games on both drives (Without having swapped any cables). Regardless, I've got two extra cables and am going to try it tomorrow. Thanks for the suggestion :D 


I had a problem with my SSD a couple of weeks ago and I finally fixed it (I hope) by changing the allocation time for searching for harddrives in the BIOS. It was the same issue that the computer would just freeze but after the freeze it wouldn't find the SSD all the time.

Deoxiribonucleic said:
Well, I hope you have better luck than I just did.. after a fresh install of windows (With different SATA cables on everything), my problem remains... Any other ideas as to what it might be?


Ok now the problems getting difficult. Is there any exclamation points in device manager?

Are you overclocking? (should have asked that first)
Homebuilt system Authority

1) are your drivers updated?

2) Try updating your bios
http://www.tomshardware.com/forum/308518-30-update-bios
3) How old is this build?

4) Could it be over heating?

5) try running a GPU and CPU stress tester(use seperately) and monitor temps with gpu-z(for graphics card temp) and core temp(for cpu)
GPU
http://www.ozone3d.net/benchmarks/fur/

CPU
http://www.numberworld.org/y-cruncher/

GPU-Z
http://www.techpowerup.com/gpuz/

Coretemp
http://www.alcpu.com/CoreTemp/

5) Could your ram be having issues? run memtest
http://www.memtest.org/

6) Check your hard driver/SSD
-Start menu
-Computer
-Right click main disk(for me it is C
-Properties
-Tools
-Error checker

7) Run burnintest
http://www.passmark.com/download/bit_download.htm

8) After it crashes run who crashed
http://www.passmark.com/download/bit_download.htm

hope this helps :D 
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