Help diagnosing computer problem: regular freezes

[thecoffeeguy]

o was hoping to get some others to validate my findings on a issue I am having with my Windows 7 64bit home box.

I built this back in about mid October.

AMD 945 quad core 3.2ghz
ASRock Extreme3 870 mobo (running latest BIOS, 1.60)
4gigs RAM G.Skill RAM

Had an existing Geforce 260GTX.
Case is older, but works.
Two 300gig SATA hard drives.

So the rig was running smoothly since I built it in mid October.


All of the sudden, for whatever reason, I started getting freezes today. I mean, I was gaming yesterday and into the night no problems. I turn on my PC, grab some coffee, do a few other things, come back and it is frozen. I had to hard boot. At first I thought it was a fluk.

Well, it happened a few more times. Now I am like, WTF.
Ran a game, to see what would happen, about 10mins in, it freezes. Crap.

I backup my data and just say wth, and do a fresh install of the OS.
This is where it gets weird.

As it is installing the OS, it freezes. Freezes at 65% when unpacking the files for Windows 7 64bit.
Wooow. Never ever had that happen before.

So now I start taking the rig apart. I remove RAM, one RAM in at a time, etc. etc.
Interesting enough, I can boot the box when using a single RAM stick (both boot fine), but eventually, no matter what stick I use, the system ends up freezing. Same thing happens when both are installed.

I was able to get the OS installed and before I went any further, I just wanted to see how the thing ran. At this point, I have both sticks of memory in (4gigs total). As above, it freezes. Did not go any further than installing the OS.

So I narrowed it down to the following:

-memory
-mobo
-video card
-PSU possibly?

So I created a bootable version of memtest and booted into it. I run through all the tests and it comes back with ZERO errors. But check this out. I left for awhile to let it run, when I came back, it had completed (took little over 2 hours to run) and guess what, the computer is frozen!!!!! I could not escape out. Very odd.

I really cant think of what else it could be.

Does anyone have any other suggestions?
I miss something?


Thanks.


TCG

 

[nickbits]

Step 1: reinstall windows

 

[thecoffeeguy]

Step 1: reinstall windows

Already tried that...

 

[KillerBee]

Try swapping the HD's around so it installs to the other one?

 

[thecoffeeguy]

Try swapping the HD's around so it installs to the other one?

That was something else I was going to try. I was going to try installing on the second HD and disconnecting the first HD. My thinking is, could this be a bad HD?

Just trying to figure out why it freezes like this when it was working fine for a month...
Very odd.

 

[ravaneli]

its the cheap as# Assrok mobo. I had that and had the random freezed for months. One day i just replaced the mobo, although didn't think it was bad, and all disapeared.

Never asrok again

 

[RebateMonger]

You need to get simpleminded here. If the system freezes during Memtest, you've GOT to fix that problem first.

Remove everything or replace everything you can.

Remove any fancy video card and replace it with a $10 PCI card. Remove any sound card. remove all but one RAM module or, even better, find a completely different, known-good, module. Remove any hard drives. If you have another suitable CPU, then swap it out. If you have another PC, swap out the power supply.

Stop all overclocking. Pull the motherboard from the case and set it up with just a keyboard and a video card on an isolation pad of some sort.

If the board still freezes, then it's likely the motherboard. If it works, then start adding items one at a time until it starts failing again.

 

[brett42]

Hi,
Have you ruled out overheating? Maybe check the temps and CPU fan under load.

 

[daniel49]

Step 1: reinstall windows

its freezing up with a bootable memtest. its not a windows problem , its hardware.