PC hangs when playing music, watching video, gaming before and after clean insta

[baronduff]

Hi all, my PC randomly hangs and makes a lovely noise (through the speakers rather than the computer itself) when listening to music, watching vids online/offline, gaming, basically at any time, when there is no sound it still hangs for a second when moving the mouse but makes no noise through the speakers. I've just done a clean install and have removed all OC to see if it makes any difference, all drivers are up to date with latest versions from manufacturers, i'm about to pull out my sound card and use onboard sound to see if that's the issue, but i believe i've tried that once before. Have experienced BSOD on this rig, but haven't had it for a while.

Here's my rig:
Win 7 Ultimate x64
Intel i5 3750K, stock speed
8Gb Crucial PC3-10700H RAM
Gigabyte Z77-DS3H mobo (F9 BIOS - not F10 beta)
Saffire HD7770, stock speed
M-Audio Audiophile 2496
OCZ Agility 3 120Gb SSD (Firmware 2.25 I believe)
Seagate Barracuda 500Gb HDD

Any help greatly appreciated, not sure if i've missed any info, please be easy on me!
Adam

P.S posted in Drivers as seemed more appropriate than general, maybe i'm wrong...

 

[jamesshelton]

Have you tried keeping the task manager open to look for a spike in memory usage from a particular process? Might be able to pin down the process that's causing it so you at least have a lead on what to do next.

 

[smorizio]

make sure the ssd on the intel chipset port and not on the 3 party sata chipset. also what the size of your power supply it make and model???

 

[photonboy]

The FIRST thing to check is your memory via memtest:

www.memtest.org

You can ALSO run the default memory application for Windows 7/8 (google for how) which involves a reboot though it might not be quite as good as memtest.

Other troubleshooting:
If Memtest is fine, then shut down your PC and remove ALL HARDWARE that isn't required to boot your PC to eliminate any of that hardware.

*Question*
Did you make any major hardware or software changes prior to this issue happening?

 

[baronduff]

Jameshelton: yes I've looked for cpu and memory spikes and I'm not seeing anything

Smorizio: may be on a 3rd party sata driver, will have a check, all I did was set bios to AHCI when installing, have got some intel storage bloatware running which seems to just confirm everything is set up but will check. Psu is a novatech 600/650w, its bog standard but it's only a few months old, I
I used coolermasters power estimator tool which seems to think I've got enough power :S

Photonboy: I've run a few blend tests in p95 (which I believe stress the ram) and its not thrown up any issues, it seems to be too random to be memory as sometimes I can do everything as normal, sometimes it will play up as soon as I start up and sometimes it will take an hour of running, but I definitely want to rule it out so will run memtest and let you know the results. The cpu, mobo, ssd/hdd, psu all went in at the same time, sound and graphics added afterwards, but couldnt tell you when the problem started unfortunatly, i clean installed both times because i had to with the mobo and a few days ago because of the issues.

Thanks for your replies guys!

 

[baronduff]

Hey gents, just a quick and strange update; so I pulled out my sound card (and uninstalled the drivers) as I thought it was the most probable cause, ran smooth for a few days, thought id found the problem, then it reappeared, except, the sound has changed, presumably because its going through different electronics to reach the speakers, seems to have changed pitch!?

Ran memtest all fine no faults, so thought, what the hell lets pull the graphics out, dont need that to do a bit of mixing; long story short, windows wont load without the graphics, gets through post etc to the loading icon and then restarts. Annoying. Have run in safe mode, attempted start up repair, thinking clean install without any additional cards, will have to resort to the 360 for a couple of days put music on pc to run so can listen out for the dreaded noise. Joy!

Cheers again will let you know what it ends up being!

 

[baronduff]

Probably brick my ssd with all this reinstalling!