PC Randomly locking up/freezing

[skittlulz]

About a 3 weeks ago my PC started randomly locking up. I could be playing a game, web browsing, or even not be at my computer at all and it would completely lock up. The display would just freeze, but audio would immediately cut. It would stay like this until I manually shut down my PC by holding down the power button. It has also has happened a few times at start up. Once when the PC just started and it was on the motherboard name/hit f12 for bios screen. Another before I even put in my password for my user name on windows. I can not forcefully recreate the problem, nor have I ever gotten a BSOD, as well as no errors in my event viewer. I'm assuming it is my hard drive but I'm still not 100% sure. Ive checked to make sure it wasn't my ram, cpu, and video card. I'm certain it's not my power supply, the only things left is my hard drive, sound card, and motherboard. I'm not even sure if it's a hardware issue. If anyone could give their 2 cents on the problem it would be much appreciated

Specs:
M489GTD PRO/USB3
AMD Phenom x4 II 955 BE @3.8GHz
corsair TX-650w
6GB Ripjaws DDR3
GTX 460 Hawk
Xonar DX
Western Digital 320GB HDD

 

[icehawk940]

I would check to see if there is a bios update for that motherboard. Also double check to make sure all drivers are up to date. Also i know you said its not your psu what make and model is the psu?Sometimes they will give little suttle signs of a failure on the horizon. Double check your connections as well as and try reseating your memory again.

Hawk

About a 3 weeks ago my PC started randomly locking up. I could be playing a game, web browsing, or even not be at my computer at all and it would completely lock up. The display would just freeze, but audio would immediately cut. It would stay like this until I manually shut down my PC by holding down the power button. It has also has happened a few times at start up. Once when the PC just started and it was on the motherboard name/hit f12 for bios screen. Another before I even put in my password for my user name on windows. I can not forcefully recreate the problem, nor have I ever gotten a BSOD, as well as no errors in my event viewer. I'm assuming it is my hard drive but I'm still not 100% sure. Ive checked to make sure it wasn't my ram, cpu, and video card. I'm certain it's not my power supply, the only things left is my hard drive, sound card, and motherboard. I'm not even sure if it's a hardware issue. If anyone could give their 2 cents on the problem it would be much appreciated

Specs:
M489GTD PRO/USB3
AMD Phenom x4 II 955 BE @3.8GHz
corsair TX-650w
6GB Ripjaws DDR3
GTX 460 Hawk
Xonar DX
Western Digital 320GB HDD

 

[skittlulz]

I would check to see if there is a bios update for that motherboard. Also double check to make sure all drivers are up to date. Also i know you said its not your psu what make and model is the psu?Sometimes they will give little suttle signs of a failure on the horizon. Double check your connections as well as and try reseating your memory again.

Hawk

My bios are up to date but I'll have to check the drivers for some of my other hardware. The psu I'm using is a Corsair TX-650w 80 Plus Certified (Model: CMPSU-650TX).

I'll also try reseating my ram again.

On a side note, I've run memtest as well the Western Digital program to check the hdd for problems (forget the name), and both passed without any kind of problems or errors

 

[icehawk940]

that corsair is an excellent psu if that is the problem corsair is good about there warranty. I have seen video card drivers cause random freezes and lockups before so i would definately check that out.


Hawk

 

[clutchc]

Usually when that happens to me, I need to clean my system of garbage and registry errors. I run CCleaner (do the Clean and Registry both) and defrag. If that alone doesn't solve it, I uninstall the graphics driver and run Driver Sweeper from Safe Mode to clean out old driver files left behind. Look for and remove any Nvidia DRIVER remnants. Then reboot and re-install the lastest driver.

http://www.piriform.com/ccleaner
http://phyxion.net/item/driver-sweeper.html

 

[skittlulz]

that corsair is an excellent psu if that is the problem corsair is good about there warranty. I have seen video card drivers cause random freezes and lockups before so i would definately check that out.


Hawk

I reseated my ram, video card, sound card, also redid all my connections, as well as completely wiping my drive and installing all up to date drivers. I still experianced a crash after this point, this time though the display actually turns off and get a "no signal" instead of just freezing. It's not just the display that turns off though, the computer completely locks up. I'm still in the same boat just the display turns off instead of freezing. One thing I noticed that might be worth mentioning is that the the computer still stays on. It locks up, but continues to run, and it will not power down until I hold down the button for a few seconds.

 

[icehawk940]

Do you have another psu you can put it to test just incase? That corsair psu you have may be going bad which happens but very unusual. Also does your mobo have an onboard video card? If it does pull your card out try running on the stock mobo video and see if the problem goes away. Make sure to uninstall your current video drivers first.

 

[skittlulz]

Do you have another psu you can put it to test just incase? That corsair psu you have may be going bad which happens but very unusual. Also does your mobo have an onboard video card? If it does pull your card out try running on the stock mobo video and see if the problem goes away. Make sure to uninstall your current video drivers first.

I'll try switching out my video card with a spare I have, but I don't have a extra psu on hand. There is no way for me to recreate the problem so I'll have to wait and see. This started happening about 3 weeks ago and it was bad at first. There was a day where it was locking up all day then it didn't lock up once for a week. I also have a new hdd coming since I needed more space, but by the sounds of it it's not even my hdd.

 

[skittlulz]

Giving a little update. The other day I formatted my drive and I still crashed once after that. Later that day I reseated everything and redid all my connections and haven't crashed since then. It's been about a day. I can't say it's fixed since there was one time where it went for like a week with no crashes. Either, thank you for the help.

 

[skittlulz]

Best answer selected by Skittlulz.