Help with freezing PC.

Enemy Of Fate

Hi boards, could really use some help here! Built my own PC a while back, was running fine for a few months no problems, but lately its been randomly freezing for no apparent reason. Keyboard and mouse are unresponsive (and if the speakers are on a HORRIBLE screeching sound comes out) and I need to completely power it off to get it to stop.

Now this can happen at almost any time (within minutes of starting up or after hours of use) but it seems to happen less frequently if the computer is doing anything more than running a browser. I find running a game in the background and just alt-tabbing out keeps it from freezing (although it can still freeze while this happens), and I've never had it freeze while actually playing a game at all. However it is a serious problem and I've had maybe 60 freezes over the past month or so, but I've been very busy lately so I haven't been able to look into getting it fixed.

Can anyone give me any ideas on what I can do to stop this? If possible I'd like to exhaust all the software options before I actually have to go in and reopen it up to check hardware, but obviously if that's necessary so be it. I can provide more details if necessary, thanks in advance for any help anybody can give.

_AVALANCHE_

http://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials/433-disk-check.html

Enemy Of Fate

Well after running the disk check for over 3 hours, the computer eventually froze at "58% complete (173902206 of 320311361 free clusters processed)". Any thoughts on what to do next? I will try and run it again sometime, but I imagine the same thing will happen.

ScumLord

Have you checked the event log to see what's crashing? Update all your drivers.

Nothingbetter2d

Enemy Of Fate wrote: »

Hi boards, could really use some help here! Built my own PC a while back, was running fine for a few months no problems, but lately its been randomly freezing for no apparent reason. Keyboard and mouse are unresponsive (and if the speakers are on a HORRIBLE screeching sound comes out) and I need to completely power it off to get it to stop.

Now this can happen at almost any time (within minutes of starting up or after hours of use) but it seems to happen less frequently if the computer is doing anything more than running a browser. I find running a game in the background and just alt-tabbing out keeps it from freezing (although it can still freeze while this happens), and I've never had it freeze while actually playing a game at all. However it is a serious problem and I've had maybe 60 freezes over the past month or so, but I've been very busy lately so I haven't been able to look into getting it fixed.

Can anyone give me any ideas on what I can do to stop this? If possible I'd like to exhaust all the software options before I actually have to go in and reopen it up to check hardware, but obviously if that's necessary so be it. I can provide more details if necessary, thanks in advance for any help anybody can give.

PC freezing can be caused by a few different things


CPU
1. overheating cpu (check that the cpu has adequate thermal paste on it) you can buy artic silver thermal paste in pc world for about €6

2. overclocked cpu (boot into the bios and set the cpu settings to default)

3. damaged cpu (in this case your cpu might need to be replaced)

4. fan not working (check that the heatsink and fan is clear for dust and that the fan spins at at least 3000 rpm)

RAM

step. 1

dl an iso of memtestx86 and burn it to a cd.

step. 2

remove all but 1 memory stick then reboot to the cd you just made.
run the memory test if after 3 passes it still shows clean shutdown the pc

step. 3 swap the memory for another stick and repeat step. 2
continue this until all your ram has been checked.

if none are faulty then put all of them back in. (note ram should all be the same type cl setting and speed) using cl 2.5 with cl 3 for example will cause alot of problems

Graphics card

try reseating the card and ensure the drivers are upto date.

Chipset/soundcard

ensure both chipset and audio drivers are uptodate. even try reinstalling them to remove any bugged registry entries or corrupt files.

Enemy Of Fate

Thanks for all the responses guys, I will test the RAM tomorrow but still working from the idea that it is the HDD, I ran the diagnostic program for my Seagate harddrive (Seatools for windows) and after running the "Long generic test" option for a few hours the computer froze again. How can I tell if it is the HDD for definite if it won't run for long enough to finish the test (or a Disk Check)?

One thing actually I probably should have mentioned is that since I first put the computer together I have never been able to put it into sleep without it BSODing (well it actually blue screens when I try to take it out of sleep). Now at the time I didn't really care as it wasn't an issue for me, and I didn't want to do a full format and reinstall windows after I had just got everything up and running, but I wonder now if that could be linked to all of this.

I checked the event viewer and there isn't really much information (except that there has been 143 crashes ). It just says that its Event ID is 41 and that "The system has rebooted without cleanly shutting down first. This error could be caused if the system stopped responding, crashed, or lost power unexpectedly." There was some other information there as well:

EventData

BugcheckCode 0
BugcheckParameter1 0x0
BugcheckParameter2 0x0
BugcheckParameter3 0x0
BugcheckParameter4 0x0
SleepInProgress false
PowerButtonTimestamp 0

After looking around online it seems that Event 41 doesn't really give me much to go on as it seems to be just a generic "PC failed and doesn't know why" event, I'm not sure if it gives me much to go on. Any thoughts?

Edit - Also all drivers are up to date and as far as I can tell there are no issues with fans or overheating (even when doing something intensive my CPU rarely hits 65+, and usually idles around the 25 mark). Can't remember exact temps on my GPU (a 6950) but I remember checking them before and they were well within normal limits as well.

_AVALANCHE_

Enemy Of Fate wrote: »

(and if the speakers are on a HORRIBLE screeching sound comes out)

Makes me think HDD is borked (only time I ever came across it anyway), try testing it using a Linux Live CD.

Bluescreenview will tell you the cause of the bluescreens if your system is set to save them. I'm near sure it should be by default.

Enemy Of Fate

_AVALANCHE_ wrote: »

Makes me think HDD is borked (only time I ever came across it anyway), try testing it using a Linux Live CD.

Bluescreenview will tell you the cause of the bluescreens if your system is set to save them. I'm near sure it should be by default.

What would using a Linux Live CD do Avalanche? I don't think think Bluescreenviewer would be that useful unfortunately as it doesn't actually blue screen, only locks up. Although now that I think about it maybe if it could tell me why it blue screens when it comes out of sleep that might be helpful, I'll give it a shot anyways.

Nothingbetter2d

Enemy Of Fate wrote: »

What would using a Linux Live CD do Avalanche? I don't think think Bluescreenviewer would be that useful unfortunately as it doesn't actually blue screen, only locks up. Although now that I think about it maybe if it could tell me why it blue screens when it comes out of sleep that might be helpful, I'll give it a shot anyways.

the last time i had a pc that used to freeze all the time it turned out to be a damaged cpu.... as soon as i replaced the cpu with another one i had the pc worked perfectly and still does.

ScumLord

I've had something similar happen to me from a passively cooled graphics cards. Once I spent more than 10 minutes playing something it just overheated.

Can you monitor the temps?

_AVALANCHE_

Enemy Of Fate wrote: »

What would using a Linux Live CD do Avalanche? I don't think think Bluescreenviewer would be that useful unfortunately as it doesn't actually blue screen, only locks up. Although now that I think about it maybe if it could tell me why it blue screens when it comes out of sleep that might be helpful, I'll give it a shot anyways.

It's a good while since I had to use one, Knoppix was my CD of choice but seems it doesn't do it anymore. This comes with this, so you could try that.

Ubuntu has other diagnostics, I don't know if their's one that has them all builtin (without having to run command lines and they're a pain.)

http://livecdlist.com/purpose/diagnostics-->Maybe someone has tryed one of these ones?