[darkfire777]

Problem: My computer freezes every now and then, completely freezes as in the mouse cursor stops moving, winamp stops playing etc. (I haven't been able to check whether my caps lock lights respond as it hasn't frozen since I saw that.)

It happens infrequently, from a few times a day to not at all. I haven't been able to determine any specific program that causes it, but it seems to happen more often while I'm playing games.

At first I thought it was temperature but although my temperature isn't the lowest in the world (42C CPU, 58C GPU) it's not sky-high. Gothic 3 would stall everytime at the same point and after I updated NWN2 it stalled when I tried to start it. Then after a long bout of elimination I uninstalled StyleXP and everything worked dandy. Now suddenly it froze again, not in a game or anything and it doesn't freeze at those specific points in Gothic3 and NWN2 anymore either though.

I've very recently reformatted, I've scanned with Kaspersky, Ad-Aware, Spybot, nothing.

I haven't changed my hardware recently, nothing new has been added. My graphics card's been artifacting as well but it's been doing that long before the stalling thing.

Is there any way to determine exactly what's causing this?

Specs:
2.8Gz Pentium D (Dual Core)
7900 GT GForce (XFX) 256Mb
1Gb Dual DDR2 RAM (2x 512Mb)

[Advertisements]

Hi there.

Lets make sure your capicators are not burning out or bulging. Open up your tower case and make sure none of these are burning out.

Here is a picture if you need to see some.
http://www.tnpcnewsl...close-up-sm.jpg

[ultimateslacker2]

Hi there.

Lets make sure your capicators are not burning out or bulging. Open up your tower case and make sure none of these are burning out.

Here is a picture if you need to see some.
http://www.tnpcnewsl...close-up-sm.jpg

[THUNDER BOLT]

hi 777 try doing these
check iif it is one of your programs
- disconect computer from the internet

runbox command
- press keyboard buttons: winkey + r
- paste this in slot: msconfig
- press: enter
- press tab: start ups
- record which start ups are enabled
- disable all start ups
- turn off the computer
- turn the computer back on
- see if a start up has come back on
- tell me if after a while the same thing happen
(tells us that it is program related)

check drivers
runbox command
- press keyboard buttons: winkey + r
- paste this in slot: devmgmt.msc
- press: enter
- go through each icon in turn
(any yelllow blobs meaning missing drivers)

[happyrock]

do NOT disable your firewall or anti virus in start up ...if its a laptop there are other things that need to start with windows also...what make and model of computer do you have...if you don't know get everest home and run it...

http://www.filehippo...d_everest_home/

while your in the everest program...click on sensors...then get a screenshot of the results...post it back here...

have you run a anti virus program or any tools like Ad-aware or spybot search and destroy..

Random crashes in games can be the result of a few different problems. Typically, it's a heat issue, a driver issue, or a problem with the game. The first thing you should do is check for a patch for any of your games that are crashing. It seems like common sense, but frequently we receive complaints from people trying to run games that have been patched three or four times. Once you've updated your games, you need to update your videocard and chipset drivers. Get you videocard driver from the company that manufactured your card's chipset, either ATI or nVidia. You should also check for newer drivers for your motherboard's chipset whenever you update your videocard drivers. Outdated motherboard chipset drivers are one of the main causes of general system instability....

Edited by happyrck, 01 January 2007 - 07:11 AM.

[darkfire777]

Just wanted to say thanks guys for all the help.

I tried all of that and well frankly it just got worse (although I doubt that's related to the things I did).

Then yesterday, totally unrelated I removed the one hard drive that was for some reason suddenly not showing up in explore... and it hasn't frozen since. So I'm hoping (SO badly hoping) that that was the problem, because if that's not the problem, then it has to be related to my graphics card and I'd much rather replace an 80Gb HD than a 7900GT card (although it's buggy anyway, stupid XFX).