CPU/Mobo My PC Freezing every now and then

N

newway01

Disciple
My PC was acting weird for some months. It just locks up sometimes. A complete freeze - Mouse, Keyboard nothing works. I have to restart system every time this happens. It happens in random pattern too. Sometimes it freezes at windows loading screen when I boot it up, or it may freeze after 1-2 hours of gaming/movie/browsing. Sometimes it gives BSOD (different error code each time, mostly 0x00000024).

My current configuration is as given below:

Intel Q6600 2.4Ghz with Arctic Cooling Freezer Pro
MSI P45 C Neo Board
Corsair 1 X 4Gb DDR3 1333mhz
Zotac Nvidia GTS 450 1Gb
WD Green 1Tb + WD Black 1Tb
LG DVDRW Drive
Seasonic SII 520W PSU

OS (dual booting) : Windows 7 Ultimate 64bit + Windows XP Pro 32 bit SP3

On the software side, I've tried these - updated all drivers to latest version, removed any old drivers using Driversweeper, ran chkdsk /f option on all partitions (it corrected some index entry problems which I guess occured due to frequent restarts). Tried defragmenting the drives, but it never completes becoz of the freezing/lockup :(

This problem occurs on safe mode too and on both OS's. System restore mode didn't help either. I re-installed OS but problem persists. So far I have tried fresh installations of Windows 7 32&64bit, Windows XP, Ubuntu 10.10 and the freezing problem occurs there too.

On Hardware side, at first I thought it was the graphics card and so replaced with a spare Nvidia GT240 512Mb, but freezing still occurs. CPU has an aftermarket cooler and case has 4 fans all around and well ventilated. So Overheating may not be an issue as the temp readings were usually as follows when freezing occurs:

Temp (browsing)
CPU - 40-45c
GPU - 38-42c
HDD - 36c
Board - 40c

Temp (HD movie/gaming)
CPU - 50-55c
GPU - 55-60c
HDD - 42c
Board - 45c

I cleaned up the cabby and all fans inside to devoid of dust and removed DVD drive, Artic cooler (put in the default heatsink instead), one HDD etc. to see whether PSU is overloaded. Problem still occured. Also my PSU was Cooler Master Extreme Power Duo 600W which I upgraded to this new Seasonic one when this freezing problem occured thinking it was a faulty PSU.

To check if its a memory issue, I removed the Corsair stick and put in Kingston 2xDDR2 1Gb's which was lying around. Still the same freezing. Tried 4 hard Disks - WD 1Tb (black, green), Seagate 500Gb, Seagate 320Gb with the same outcome. So whats now left to test is motherboard and CPU itself, but no one around me got a spare lga775 board or CPU to swap out :(

Is there some software or tools to test CPU or motherboard for any errors/problems? I tried Intel's diagnostic tool, but it shows no errors.

I am now at wits end. Can someone please shed some light on what may be the problem? Its been months :depressed:

p.s. I am looking for a used motherboard too just in case to test. If anyone got one up for sale, pls let me know on this thread here
 
seems like file system is getting corrupted frequently. i can think of two probable causes.
1 - psu could be faulty and sending erratic power to hdd and might be causing it to make bad or incomplete writes. 2 - hdd might be failing. is the hdd quite old?
can you try booting with a different psu? and with minimum hardware and see if you get the error.

try running whocrashed on your pc. you should get a general idea of what is causing the crashes.
 
agree with 6pack ... seems like PSU is faulty or motherboard issue . check for voltage fluctuations . you can use HWmonitor from cpuid.org or AIDA64 utility to check voltage changes . Also try looking at event viewer within windows to locate crash event and check logs/ dump.
 
Thanks for your inputs. I downloaded 'whocrashed' and will play around with it to see if it can find something. As for voltage changes, what should I check for? I had the HW monitor installed.

And for the HDD, I tried installing OS on 4 different HDD's and freezing occurs on all of them, sometimes in the middle of windows installation. Its highly unlikely that all 4 HDD's are faulty, rite? As for PSU, I replaced a CM 600W with Seasonic 520W when the freezing problem occured. And it came back with the new PSU too :confused:
 
can you do a full memory test from windows 7 or with memtest? i suspect either memory slots on mobo might be the culprit here or memory sticks. check all your memory sticks on a different pc or friends pc for errors using memtest. if you dont find errors on your memory in other pc, do the test again in your pc and see if results match. if you get errors, it might be problem with your mobo's ram slots.
 
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