New homebuilt has frozen a few times, how should I diagnose?

[brownbat]

I recently built a system, the details are here.

In the last 3 weeks since I've owned the system, I've had a total system freeze* 4 times. I'm a little worried that I did something wrong applying thermal paste, only because I've never done that before. But these freezes seem to happen after I've left the machine for a little while not under heavy load, or shortly after I've resumed from sleep. It's never happened while gaming, and RealTemp (even though I haven't calibrated it with an infrared thermometer or anything) seems to always stay below 30 degrees C. (That's fine, right?)

Maybe it's a RAM thing, or maybe it's just that Win7-64bit is a little buggy.

It does not seem consistently repeatable, I can't trigger it, but it does seem to happen every so often.

Any tips on how I can catch this event to fix it? Can you help me rule out the thermal paste thing, which worries me the most?

*By "freeze" I mean no blue screen, the mouse and keyboard stop responding and the screen gets fixed as it is. Num and caps lock are nonresponsive.

Other than these pretty rare events, the system runs beautifully.

 

[db17k]

I just updated my BIOS to the latest version, looks like i was 2 versions behind. Everything has been running stable for the last 3 hours, which for my system is looking good. May want to see if you have any bios updates available from your mobo manufacturer

 

[ekoostik]

Not yet, hasn't crashed yet. Based on my previous timeline, could be up to two weeks before I know for sure if the problem is still around. I'll check out the BIOS though, thanks.

*BIOS updated. Fingers crossed. With all the changes, if the problem goes away, I won't really be sure what fixed it.

I misunderstood your conversation with db17k, thought you were experiencing crashes again. Glad things have been running well for you!

I just updated my BIOS to the latest version, looks like i was 2 versions behind. Everything has been running stable for the last 3 hours, which for my system is looking good. May want to see if you have any bios updates available from your mobo manufacturer

Hopefully the BIOS update helps. Gigabyte was very good about issuing a series of 'beta' BIOS updates as they worked through earlier adopter issues. You probably missed something like 10 BIOS updates spread out over those 2 versions! There were some stability fixes made that corrected my system. Hopefully one of the changes addresses yours, too. The only other problem I had - freezing and crashing - was related to the video card drivers. You didn't mention your GPU, if you're like most people who've had problems recently you have an AMD card. It took them a few updates to get issues sorted out with Windows 7 (64, maybe 32 as well). What OS and what GPU do you have?
If AMD check that you have the latest - probably version 9.11 from 11/17 - from here: http://support.amd.com/us/gpudownload/Pages/index.aspx

 

[ekoostik]

db17k, another thought - have you run memtest86+ yet? If not, and if you have another crash, you should give that a shot to check for any RAM problems.

 

[db17k]

thanks for all your help guys. Looks like the Bios update didn't work for me, as it crashed again an hour later. Anyway I tried to run the Memtest86 on start up, but it wasn't booting from my usb flash drive. I was running out of time before work so i haven't tested the RAM yet. Although I do work at Fry's so I just picked up another set of 2x2gb corsair ram while i was there today, and slapped it in just now. Interesting note though I was talking with a customer about bad ram and he said if my system crashes, more specifically freezes with mouse, screen and everything it's 99% likely to be bad RAM. So hopefully you are both correct and that ram was bad.

As for video card I am running an ATI Radeon 4350HD (AMD card i suppose since they're one and the same) I just checked and my driver is 8.71 so i'll go and download that updated driver.

As for OS i'm also running Windows 7 64bit.

I'll see how things go with these changes and let you guys know. Thanks again!

 

[db17k]

So i changed out the RAM and an hour later the system crashed. I was running Raid configuration with 2 160 gb barracuda drives, but they were 5 years old and loud. So i replaced them with one new barracuda drive, with no raid and reinstalled windows. Although i don't get the freezes i used to get, i now get BSOD. They are giving me an error i haven't seen before though.

BSOD code 0x00000101 which is described and hopefully resolved in this article

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/975530

i'm going to try this hot fix and hopefully things work out.

 

[aclipse]

a few months ago my system keep crashing/freezing a LOT
i.e. keyboard num lock non responsive, mouse also nonresponsive, screen looks like a photo.
sometimes it won't even boot

chances of getting it to work is like 1 out of 10, i just had to keep restarting
or try again in the next hour or so

changed RAM stick and works till now
it was cheapo RAM though,

 

[db17k]

Hmm as strange as it seems I believe the problem was my Wireless network PCI desktop card.

I was using a Belkin N1 wireless Wireless desktop card, model# F5D8001 ver. 1000, Windows 7 drivers - not available.

I switched it out to an older Airlink Wirless N card and since the switch no crashes for 6 hours. Also I've been using a CPU/Memory monitor which was recording high spikes in CPU processing randomly while the computer was just sitting at idle (with the Belkin card installed). Since the switch to the Airlink I've had absolutely no spikes in processing and the CPU usage percentage is hanging round 1-4% as opposed to the 8-13% CPU usage at idle with the Belkin card.
Only time will tell if this is the fix for me or not. *crossing fingers*

oh I've been running a Bit Torrent program in the background, but that's the only program that's been running during this monitoring.

 

[valeman2012]

I believe this is clearest one that i find
I like to bump thus thread 2009 and its almost clear related to my issue
But when i research these issues it seem like mostly people self-built new or old computers gets this issue more and none of them were correctly resolved (They ether buy a new computer when they just bought one or RMA )

Keep i note the crash issue there no pattern
Sometimes computer Freezes completely constantly after few min of start up
Sometimes computer freezes in 1 hour - 12 hours
Sometimes computer freezes in the next 2days or later days

My computer his a Old System regardless new or old people have the unresolved issue