- Apr 3, 2010
- 37
- 0
- 18,530
Please read this, even though it is somewhat lengthy! I really need some help here. Thank you in advance for reading this and helping me out. 
Hey everybody. It's very late here on the east coast, and you might wonder why I am still awake at this hour (about 2:30AM). Well, I have been up for a while trying to troubleshoot and fix problems with my PC freezing during games.
Back in Autumn of 2011, after working fine for about 10 months, my high end gaming PC started to have issues and crashes when I would play games. The computer would freeze, make a loud noise, and restart withing 5 seconds without showing me any error message or BSOD. I fixed this problem by uninstalling recent AVG drivers.
Fast forward about 3 or 4 months, and again I started having issues running games. Again, I did a system restore, uninstalled some drivers, and voila! PC running games superbly (superbly?).
Another 3 or so months later and I started having similar problems again. I noticed that my Intel i7 950 would idle at about 50 degrees and get up to 85 or 90 when under load gaming! So naturally I assumed that the CPU could be causing the PC to crash and reset to prevent from overheating, or going past Intel's designated maximum temperatures. I installed a great new heatsink, and got idle temps down to about 38-40 and load temps about 65 or less. So problem solved right? Wrong..
I didn;t use my PC much for the past month or so after fixing the overheating, so I started playing Skyrim. About 5 minutes in, it would freeze. The same would happen for Fallout 3. Countless times. Here is the really weird part. When the game freezes, the PC does not reset. It just freezes and I am unable to do anything. I cannot even use CTRL ALT DELETE. I am forced at this point to force shut down the PC by holding down the power button. This makes me believe that overheating of the GPU or PSU is not the problem, as the PC would shut down to prevent damage. It also makes me believe that this clears any possibility of PSU failure, as I think anything involving the power supply would result in the PC shutting down or resetting.
So I again chalked it up to drivers. With no available restore points (30 days and they delete), I tried to uninstall, re-install, and download new updates for several things, such as the GTX 570 and AVG. I couldn't fix the problem like this, and as I am poor at troubleshooting, I gave up. I have everything backed up and decided to do a fresh install of Windows 7, hoping it would also speed up start times and get rid of that annoying black screen when Windows is starting, before I can sign in.
So I did the fresh install. Set up certain drivers that worked for me in the past, but didn't update Windows, or install AVG, as those were culprits in the past. I installed several drivers and then reset. Unfortunately, Windows crashed on the restart before it could load. It started up the next time just fine, and I installed and played Fallout 3 (how I love Fallout 3). I was able to play for about 10 minutes (5 more than I could before) but then the game froze. Same story, no reset, just audio on a loop and a frozen screen. I force shut down and tried to play again about 20 minutes later. It ran just fine for 15-20 minutes, and not wanting to push my luck, I quit the game and shut down while all was good.
My question is, what could this problem be from if not the drivers? Or do you believe that the drivers were indeed the problem, and that one freeze was just pure coincidence? Please guys, help me out and answer this!
Also, why does Windows startup slower than it did when I first built the PC? Even though I did a fresh install of Windows, it still is a bit slower than it originally was, and the screen goes black for a few seconds, with just the cursor visible, between the "Starting Windows" screen and the login screen. I don't know why a fresh install would still be like this. Please help me out with this too, although it is not as important as the main issue.
Wow, I am sorry for writing a novel here, I am just really in need of help and wanted to give as much info on the problem as I could for you guys.
Thank you so much for reading this, and thank you ten times more for your answers! Please help me out guys!
Thanks so much!
Hey everybody. It's very late here on the east coast, and you might wonder why I am still awake at this hour (about 2:30AM). Well, I have been up for a while trying to troubleshoot and fix problems with my PC freezing during games.
Back in Autumn of 2011, after working fine for about 10 months, my high end gaming PC started to have issues and crashes when I would play games. The computer would freeze, make a loud noise, and restart withing 5 seconds without showing me any error message or BSOD. I fixed this problem by uninstalling recent AVG drivers.
Fast forward about 3 or 4 months, and again I started having issues running games. Again, I did a system restore, uninstalled some drivers, and voila! PC running games superbly (superbly?).
Another 3 or so months later and I started having similar problems again. I noticed that my Intel i7 950 would idle at about 50 degrees and get up to 85 or 90 when under load gaming! So naturally I assumed that the CPU could be causing the PC to crash and reset to prevent from overheating, or going past Intel's designated maximum temperatures. I installed a great new heatsink, and got idle temps down to about 38-40 and load temps about 65 or less. So problem solved right? Wrong..
I didn;t use my PC much for the past month or so after fixing the overheating, so I started playing Skyrim. About 5 minutes in, it would freeze. The same would happen for Fallout 3. Countless times. Here is the really weird part. When the game freezes, the PC does not reset. It just freezes and I am unable to do anything. I cannot even use CTRL ALT DELETE. I am forced at this point to force shut down the PC by holding down the power button. This makes me believe that overheating of the GPU or PSU is not the problem, as the PC would shut down to prevent damage. It also makes me believe that this clears any possibility of PSU failure, as I think anything involving the power supply would result in the PC shutting down or resetting.
So I again chalked it up to drivers. With no available restore points (30 days and they delete), I tried to uninstall, re-install, and download new updates for several things, such as the GTX 570 and AVG. I couldn't fix the problem like this, and as I am poor at troubleshooting, I gave up. I have everything backed up and decided to do a fresh install of Windows 7, hoping it would also speed up start times and get rid of that annoying black screen when Windows is starting, before I can sign in.
So I did the fresh install. Set up certain drivers that worked for me in the past, but didn't update Windows, or install AVG, as those were culprits in the past. I installed several drivers and then reset. Unfortunately, Windows crashed on the restart before it could load. It started up the next time just fine, and I installed and played Fallout 3 (how I love Fallout 3). I was able to play for about 10 minutes (5 more than I could before) but then the game froze. Same story, no reset, just audio on a loop and a frozen screen. I force shut down and tried to play again about 20 minutes later. It ran just fine for 15-20 minutes, and not wanting to push my luck, I quit the game and shut down while all was good.
My question is, what could this problem be from if not the drivers? Or do you believe that the drivers were indeed the problem, and that one freeze was just pure coincidence? Please guys, help me out and answer this!
Also, why does Windows startup slower than it did when I first built the PC? Even though I did a fresh install of Windows, it still is a bit slower than it originally was, and the screen goes black for a few seconds, with just the cursor visible, between the "Starting Windows" screen and the login screen. I don't know why a fresh install would still be like this. Please help me out with this too, although it is not as important as the main issue.
Wow, I am sorry for writing a novel here, I am just really in need of help and wanted to give as much info on the problem as I could for you guys.
Thank you so much for reading this, and thank you ten times more for your answers! Please help me out guys!
Thanks so much!
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