Windows 7 freezing

chrismelling · 22 Jan 2011 at 14:11

Recently upgraded to a sandybridge. Build runs perfectly fine, the only problem is that it randomly just freezes, pretty much everything just stops working. Its like a BSOD but the monitors still display what they were on but nothing changes.

When it does it is completely random, it can do it 5 mins after the computer has been booted up or sometimes it can run fine for 10+ hours and then freeze.

Buchanan0204 · 22 Jan 2011 at 15:09

What's the system specs?

Was it a pre-built system or did you do it yourself?

chrismelling · 22 Jan 2011 at 15:18

Sorry I should have put the spec in the OP,

2500k not overclocked
MSI P67A-C45
8GB (2x4GB) Corsair Twin Pack Vengeance
ATI 5770
coolermaster 650w psu

Orcvader · 22 Jan 2011 at 15:35

Curious to know... did you keep the windows install from the old system?

It is always recommended to always to a fresh install of windows after you've changed the motherboard. This is to avoid any major driver conflicts.

4T5 · 22 Jan 2011 at 15:37

I reckon Orcvader is on the money, Was you lazy ?

chrismelling · 22 Jan 2011 at 15:48

Nope, fresh install.

Alexrose1uk · 22 Jan 2011 at 16:12

These sorts of bugs are always a nightmare to sort out.
They can relate to drivers, and in my experience tend to be related to the power, motherboard or RAM if hardware.

Orcvader · 22 Jan 2011 at 16:25

Make sure all the latest motherboard drivers are installed, that could help.

Buchanan0204 · 23 Jan 2011 at 02:12

chrismelling said:
Sorry I should have put the spec in the OP,

2500k not overclocked
MSI P67A-C45
8GB (2x4GB) Corsair Twin Pack Vengeance
ATI 5770
coolermaster 650w psu

What about the hard drive? Was it bought brand new aswell.

Try downloading Seatools and scan your hard disk with it. Personally sounds like a hard drive problem to me.

How do you fix the problem when this happens, do you hold in the power button or does it fix itself after a little while?

AceTK · 23 Jan 2011 at 02:15

Try the ram in different slots

chrismelling · 23 Jan 2011 at 10:51

Orcvader said:
Make sure all the latest motherboard drivers are installed, that could help.

They weren't before but I updated them all today and its still doing it.

Buchanan0204 said:
What about the hard drive? Was it bought brand new aswell.

Try downloading Seatools and scan your hard disk with it. Personally sounds like a hard drive problem to me.

How do you fix the problem when this happens, do you hold in the power button or does it fix itself after a little while?

Running it as we speak, and to fix the problem I am either forced to hold the power switch in or flick the switch on the psu.

Total-Game · 23 Jan 2011 at 12:03

I was having the symptoms you describe on my ASUS P8P67 Pro. A complete system lockup at totally random intervals. It was happening overnight to start with, so the system doesn't seem to recover from the error. When locked up, the only choice you have is to hold down the power button, as the reset button refuses to work.

In my case, it appears to have been caused by the motherboard varying the value of BCLK. When I changed this in the BIOS to manual with a value of 100 (as opposed to Auto), this issue disappeared.

zAndy1 · 23 Jan 2011 at 12:10

When these freezes happen is the HDD activity LED on all the time? Leave resource monitor running and check if when the freezes happen the disk usage spikes at 100%. I've had similar problems and they usually coincided with the PC not recognising the HDD and therefore on reboot it wouldn't boot up. Had to leave it for a few hours and sometimes disconnect the HDD and reconnect it before it would work again. Since upgrading my M/B and CPU to Sandybridge it seems to be a lot better though (not gonna tempt fate and say it's fixed just yet). They're not easy to diagnose these and can be really frustrating, hope you get it sorted out.

chrismelling · 23 Jan 2011 at 12:29

Total-Game said:
I was having the symptoms you describe on my ASUS P8P67 Pro. A complete system lockup at totally random intervals. It was happening overnight to start with, so the system doesn't seem to recover from the error. When locked up, the only choice you have is to hold down the power button, as the reset button refuses to work.

In my case, it appears to have been caused by the motherboard varying the value of BCLK. When I changed this in the BIOS to manual with a value of 100 (as opposed to Auto), this issue disappeared.

I've just checked the bio's and the CPU base frequency is at 10000, surely that's got to be wrong if your telling me to me put it at 100?

zAndy1 said:
When these freezes happen is the HDD activity LED on all the time? Leave resource monitor running and check if when the freezes happen the disk usage spikes at 100%. I've had similar problems and they usually coincided with the PC not recognising the HDD and therefore on reboot it wouldn't boot up. Had to leave it for a few hours and sometimes disconnect the HDD and reconnect it before it would work again. Since upgrading my M/B and CPU to Sandybridge it seems to be a lot better though (not gonna tempt fate and say it's fixed just yet). They're not easy to diagnose these and can be really frustrating, hope you get it sorted out.

Thanks for the tip, will leave it running and keep and eye on it.

Total-Game · 23 Jan 2011 at 12:48

chrismelling said:
I've just checked the bio's and the CPU base frequency is at 10000, surely that's got to be wrong if your telling me to me put it at 100?

Apologies. The MSI BIOS represents the BCLK frequency differently. In my BIOS, it's 100 * 1MHz = 100MHz. In yours, it is 10000 * 10KHz = 100MHz. So, what you have is correct.

However, on the default settings, the ASUS board varies the BCLK from around 97MHz - 103MHZ, which is where my problems stemmed from. I don't know if the MSI boards do the same.

chrismelling · 23 Jan 2011 at 12:54

Total-Game said:
Apologies. The MSI BIOS represents the BCLK frequency differently. In my BIOS, it's 100 * 1MHz = 100MHz. In yours, it is 10000 * 10KHz = 100MHz. So, what you have is correct.

However, on the default settings, the ASUS board varies the BCLK from around 97MHz - 103MHZ, which is where my problems stemmed from. I don't know if the MSI boards do the same.

The bio's does appear to have an auto option for it so I'm guessing it just stays at 100mhz but that's only a guess as I've never really touched the bio's before as I've never attempted to overclock.

chrismelling · 23 Jan 2011 at 17:29

Doesn't appear to be the HD causing it, its hit 100% load a few times and not locked up.

chrismelling · 26 Jan 2011 at 17:47

Well, I thought i had fixed the problem by turning off powersaving. It worked without a freeze for about 4 days, i was over the moon that i fixed it.

Now its come back and its even worse, i installed nothing that could have changed any of the system settings that might have started it again.

I'm losing the will to leave as i need the computer to do my uni work and i cannot give it freezing half way through essay and then losing all the work I've done.