Windows Vista pc freezes(nothing new under windows!)

Hi everyone, you have probably heard this a thousand times but i am going to continue anyway.

I built a whopper of a pc in FEB of this year and installed windows vista home premium 64 bit, every thing was running fine until:


For some strange reason and I dont know what sets it off but the computer will freeze every 20 seconds for about 10 seconds. Nothing responds not even the mouse. I have tried re-installing the o/s several times, updated the drivers etc, updated the bios( when first put together) I am at a loss.

My system is as follows;
Asus M2n32 SLI Premium vista edition mobo
AMD x2 6000 @ 3.0ghz
Asus geforce 8800 gtx gfx(not overclocked)
3GB of system ram
Soundblaster audigy 4 wdm sound
4x sata hdd not raid enabled(sata1-4)
1x sata pioneer dvdrw drive(sata 5)
1x ide pioneer dvdrw drive.
Microsoft wireless mouse and keyboard.

The freezes did happen whilst i was typing this message, but they can happen at any moment.
Does anyone believe the hdd is on its way out............
please help


cheers lee

 

Hello Lee and welcome to the Board

You can start testing the drive and memory:

The drive's OEM should have a diagnostic tool.

RAM testing tools:
http://oca.microsoft.com/en/windiag.asp

http://www.memtest.org/


If those come up blank, then look at your backgrond processes - disable one by one or disable all.

 

thnx

thanks for the tips friend i will get onto pronto.

lee

 

notices

Hi again i noticed that after a fresh install of vista my main drive, after removing the partition and re- installing a new one etc, shows 232 gig on setup but in my computer when vista has finished it says 40 gig has been used....not right surely?

 

No, it doesn't seem right - the most I've seen used was 18+ GB and that was for Ultimate beta.

 

still freezing

Hi folks still freezing, sometimes after 3 hours sometimes after 2 mins.
i`ve now bought a new 500 gig hd to try on then gonns try and strioit back to basics and try that.
bloody pc

any other suggestions or has anyone had a similar problem

cheers lee

 

unpredictable freeze

If you're getting unpredictable freezes(not related to how long the PC has been running or how hot it is) it makes me think of ram collisions. Esp. since you put it together I'm wondering if there's a device using a block of ram that Vista is trying to use.

If not that then perhaps some kind of bus collisions? Usually if you have a bad component and it locks up, well it's locked up. Temprorary freeze seems a bit strange to me. Maybe some people heavy into overclocking will have more advice(I just run my stuff the way it comes out of the box, with software tweaks.)

 

Hi,

I can probably give you some tests.

You seem to think it is related the (OS) drive. You have a lot of disk drives. If you are repartitioning and reinstalling Windows, disconnect as many secondary drives as possible. For Windows XP, I found the best way to partition, format and install Windows was to disconnect/remove any other HDDs. Test run using one HDD (even without an optical drive connected) for as long as you can before reconnecting the others.

If I suspect any problems with the way the dive has been set up, I use the manufacturer's utilities to format and partition the drive. I don't make one HDD a logical or extended partition of another HDD

You can run the HDD testing utilites that should be available for download from the manufacturer's website.

You will need a very good power supply. Read and run the power calculator here:
http://www.journeysystems.com/?powercalc

Is hardware getting overheated? Everest in my signature may give you temperature readouts, you may want to try the current trial version from the Lavalay's website, it will give a readout of most sensors.

Type event into the search bar. Check what is happening at the times of the freezes. There are methods of logging (Resource Monitor). See if say, the CPU usage goes to 100% during the freeze.

RAM, is it all the same make and model? Are the modules located with their matching module as specified in the motherboard manual? Some motherboards have special requirements for when all the slots/DIMMs are being filled.

Enough tests for the moment?

Matt

 

re

Hi folks thanks for the replies, the ram is two identical sticks of crucial ram which went in when i made the pc, I tried another two but my system went into a loop, I took one of the new sticks out( leaving two old and one new) in the bays. Do you think this could be the problem?



thanks happy new year and peace to us all........

lee

 

re

Hi folks just run everest and these are the results everything looks normal to me.The voltage was constant to memory and both cores. The temp for the cpu stopped at 69/70 and the fan was working fine aswell. I left the cpu stress test running for at least five mins on full.


cheers lee

 

Yes, have you tried going back to the original modules? Modern motherboards are working on "matched RAM" modules, your motherboard may not work correctly if you use one matching pair and one odd module. The motherboard manual should give you information about how the RAM should be configured.

The CPU seems quite stable from your testing (no freezes).

The areas to investigate appear(?) to be the RAM or the drive setup at the moment.

Did you investigate the other suggestions?

As you can expect, freezes are not supposed to occur in Vista. Something is quite wrong as far as Vista is concerned. We do not know specific details about your system, so you will need to give us feedback on the areas we suggest.

You have done a BIOS upgrade, that's fine, but I have not known it to be related to freezes. Where did you upgrade the drivers? I suggest the most compatible drivers may be found at the manufacturer of the hardware.

If it might be a problem with, say, software running hardware, I expect you may see it from Event Viewer and if you know it is going to happen...set up logs to follow what is happening.

Matt

 

re

Hi again, right the situation is this.
disconected all the drives except the ide dvdrw, put the 500gig hd in and removed the new stick of ram and left the two old ones in.Installed vista on the new drive leaving the others disconected for a while.......no freezes. Installed the up-to-date sata and chipset drivers plus the gfx drivers.......no freezes. Reconnected all the sata drives except the dvdrw( this was last night) and still no freezes ye ha.
I will try and reconnect the dvdrw drive later but not yet.
The only thing that concerns me is that i have 2gig of ddr2 ram that when i put the full 4 gig in my motherboard the system goes into a loop, any ideas.

cheers for all the help really appreciate it

lee