Best way to determine an intermittent problem?

StevieP · 2 Jan 2015 at 12:37

I've been living with an issue on my desktop PC (see specs in sig) for months now but really want to find out what is causing the problem!

Essentially my PC will randomly lock up - the screen will stay on but everything freezes and I'm forced to do a hard reset to get it working again!

This can happen whether I'm browsing the internet, gaming or even if I've just left the machine on to download a Steam game for example!

Annoyingly there doesn't appear to be any pattern as some days it will work perfectly and others it will just freeze - sometimes within 10 minutes and other times it could take hours!?!?! :confused:

I've looked in the event viewer but have zero idea of what I'm looking at or for to be perfectly honest!

Short or systematically removing a component at a time and seeing if that was the issue (and even this is not practical as it's too random!) what is the best way to try and figure out the issue??

Thanks....

StevieP · 2 Jan 2015 at 13:32

I've actually done a full reinstall a couple of times since the problem started and it's made no difference! (And I've also updated the firmware on the SSD too!)

Unfortunately I don't have a spare drive kicking around so might have to look into borrowing one from somewhere!

Is there any merit in delving into the event viewer or won't that help??

StevieP · 2 Jan 2015 at 17:08

ED209 said:
have you ran check disk on the HDD yet? might be something worth doing

the PC with the issue, is it the one in your sig?

I've not run any tests - do you mean the in-built "check disk" on the tools tab in "properties" for the drive within Windows 7? (and yes, the one with the issue is the one in my sig!)

StevieP · 2 Jan 2015 at 19:38

I'll run memtest now to see if it brings up any issues!

I've run check disk but wasn't in the room when it finished and the PC had just booted into Windows (as it's my OS disk it had to reboot and do it during the boot up) - I assume if it had found anything nasty it would have alerted me or not rebooted???

StevieP · 3 Jan 2015 at 08:05

Hmmmm, memtest ran 4 passes with no errors and I also left Prime95 running overnight and all was well this morning!

Anyone have any idea where I go from here?

StevieP · 3 Jan 2015 at 11:07

I'm doubtful it's a software issue to be honest as I've done a couple of full reinstalls and the problem has still been present!?!?

I fully expected the machine to lock up during the Prime95 test as it's crashed doing a lot less in the past!