Idea's

BeerCheeze · Posted: Wed, 07 Mar 2012 11:42:11 Post Subject: Idea's

Ok, looking for some idea's on what might be going on. My PC will randomly hard lock, can't do anything but hit the power button.

There is nothing I can do to reproduce making it happen - it can be under load and lock up, or it can be sitting there overnight doing nothing, or I could be browsing the web... I've tried running stress tests on the CPU, GPU, Memory, HDD and all pass. I've tried changing the voltage on the CPU and Memory, nothing changed. It's on a fairly new install of Win 7 x64 Ultimate, on a new WD HDD. I have a PC Power & Cooling PSU so I doubt it's that... although now that I think (really just occurred to me while typing this) about it my UPS isn't working correctly (if we get a power blip it shuts off)... hmmmm

Well while I look into that, any other ideas?

**Doctor Feelgood** · Posted: Wed, 07 Mar 2012 11:56:03 Post Subject:

Scanned clean on the software side?

Any recent driver updates? I am not sure why - but my kid's computer starting rebooting randomly about a month ago... No predicting it... In the end it was the video card, which had been in there for years, but recently had new drivers applied. It is an nVidia chipset motherboard with an ATI card, and now that it has an nVidia card in it all is well again... Bang Head

skarydrunkguy · Posted: Thu, 08 Mar 2012 23:56:58 Post Subject:

check the event log in windows - lots of time something will run amok right before a lock up.

defrag your HDD - if the swap file spans any bad sectors, wacky things can happen.

are you overloading the USB bus (ATM machine... I know...)? I've seen plugging in a bunch of stuff sucks too much power away from other important stuff and causes locks/crashes - and/or it can confuse the hell out of windows.

I've also had too many strange things happen with aparently good, but aparently bad power supplies. If you've got an extra laying around, swap it out and see if that solves it.

Disable all non-essential hardware (unplugging it is even better) to isolate it more if you're confidant that its a hardware issue.

Does the same thing happen in safe mode?

$.02

**JimBowy** · Moderator Joined: 02 Aug 2003 Posts: 1627

try a different PSU for a few days

BeerCheeze · Posted: Fri, 09 Mar 2012 12:03:40 Post Subject:

Thanks guys, I don't think it's a driver issue as I've gone through a couple different versions of them. Also it's lasted through a rebuild (OS).

The USB thing is possible as well... HDD is fine (checked) and nothing in the logs (checked). Safe mode isn't worth the effort since it can go hours or days between lockups.

Unfortunately right now I don't have a spare PSU that will work in my system laying around and I sure hate to spend the money on testing... but I might have to. Going to I think resolve my UPS problem 1st then go to the PSU - Meanwhile I think I'll go through all my USB devices and see if I can unplug anything or maybe move something to my powered hub..