PC Freezing issue
 

Hello RS Guru's. Again I seek some advice on a small issue I'm having.

Here's the details on the PC

Win7
Q6600 CPU
450 PSU
560TI GPU
Forgot what type of mobo.
4gb ddr2 ram
Kingston V300 240gb ssd

I've had this PC running for years with no issues until recently I upgraded to SSD and reinstalled Win 7 64.

The PC runs fine while I'm using it, it only freezes when the PC sits idle for awhile. So I made some adjustments for the screen saver to come on and turned off sleep mode (thinking it'll keep the PC going and not freeze). It still froze while in screen saver mode.

I'm not sure exactly how long it take before it freezes. When I reformatted I didn't install any drivers other than Nvidia drivers. Windows did the rest.

Any suggestions for me to try?

It looks like you've eliminated power management as a possible issue. The freezing could be caused by a wayward background app/process. Take a peek at the processes in task manager (CTRL + SHIFT + ESC). See if anything stands out, like a suspiciously named process, or something taking a lot of CPU time when nothing should be happening.

Another thing to try is run MSCONFIG and disable all your startup items. Then, restart, and let the computer sit and see if it freezes. If freezing is inevitable, then this will eliminate this possibility, or point you in the direction of the problem.

I don't see anything that takes up much memory or processing.

I've just freshly installed windows, so I have nothing installed right now but Nvidia GPU drivers, firefox, utorrent, KMP video player. Windows 7 didn't need me to install any mobo/lan/audio drivers.

Maybe I'll try shutting up utorrent and see if it still freezes. Just over the weekend it froze once mid way as I was using the PC. So it's definitely not a power management issue.

One thing I don't recall doing was formatting my new SSD, I just installed the OS on the SSD. Don't know if that would cause any issues.

Anyone else have any ideas?

TIA!

Just to confirm, when you say 'freezes', you mean you get back to the computer, and its at the desktop, or whatever app you were on, and you can't move the mouse, can't hit ctrl-alt-del etc. is that right?

Can you leave the task manager on the processes tab, then when it's frozen, see if there is something taking up all the CPU time?

Another thing to check might be any ssd compatibility issues with your mobo (need to find out what it is). If you have a Q6600, your computer is upto 7 years old now, so there may be issues

tat is the issue, format your SSD then install your OS on it. This optimizes ur SSD.

Doesn't Windows format the drive that it's being installed on during the installation process? It's hard to believe that Windows 7 was able to be installed on anything other than NTFS.

Freezing can be a number of things. Follow the MSCONFIG advice to see if it's a rogue program during startup. But from my experience, it's almost always a bad hardware driver or a bad format/install. In two instances for me was it hardware (bad memory and dying PSU).

What I would do is the following:

-use msconfig to see if it's a program
-if the above doesn't yield a program, look for new motherboard driver updates, and install them via safe mode.
-if the above still yields freezing, try a reformat/reinstall of windows (this would be a good opportunity to create an image of a clean install for archiving. Makes reformats a million times easier. I use Acronis True Image but there are other (and free) alternatives I'm sure).
-if the above still yields freezing, try reinstalling onto your old disk drive. that would eliminate whether your SSD is the issue
-if that all fails, I'd start looking at your PSU and memory. But at that point, you might as well start looking at an upgrade

Next time it crashes, take a look at your Event Viewer logs. It'll tell you exactly what screwed up.

I think it's utorrent. I've had it shut off and hasn't froze for the last couple days.

When it freezes it basically doesnt let me do anything. Freezes the whole screen/pc. I can't ctrl alt del. I just end up hitting the reset and everything goes back to normal.

I've had this PC running with zero issues up until I added the SSD. I just assumed windows 7 would format the new SSD because it didn't have an option to format first then install.

Thanks for everyone's input. Hopefully I can delete utorrent and reinstall the newest build with no issues.

Also, there is nothing wrong with using an older version of uTorrent if it indeed is the problem. Newer does not always mean better. =D

I never update my utorrent, main problem is I formatted the PC so I had to download it again and the website only has the newer ones to download.


On a side note, I think I fixed it. I had utorrent off and was downloading something when the PC froze again. So I figured it must be the ethernet port, so I downloaded some ancient drivers from asus for the ethernet and installed them. Lone and behold now. 3 days no freezing even with utorrent on.


Anyways thanks again for everyone's suggestions. Helped me narrow it down and solve the mystery again. :)

If it comes back download the program Who Crashed
http://download.cnet.com/WhoCrashed/3000-2094_4-75205821.html
It helped me narrow down my computer crashing, and BSODs.

oldversion.net has all the old versions of your favourite programs.