pc freeze randomly! help

[aci]

Since the day those guys built it, unfortunately I can't seem to find out whats wrong with it. I even took it to a so called expert who swears it was fine & it never did it to him in the two weeks he had it. As soon as I got it back it happened again

He also locks up a lot on start up & sometime takes three or four times to start up. Rarely does it once its running, mainly on start up or shortly after. FANs in my pc are still spinning around. When it freeze my mouse just shut down laser and keyboard is locked. Keep pressing num lock but nothing. And sometimes weird noise is comming out my headphones when it freeze. I really dont know what is going on bros HELP ME PLEASE

 

[rgd1101]

how old is the pc? spec?

 

[aci]

PC is old maybe 5 years.
I have 8GB RAM DDR3
Windows 8.1 pro 64-bit
Intel(R) Pentium(R) CPU G2030 3.00 GHz (2CPUs) - 3.00 GHz
AMD Radeon HD 6670 1GB GDDR5
PSU 450W
Monitor 1440x900

 

[IrvSp]

PC is old maybe 5 years.
I have 8GB RAM DDR3
Windows 8.1 pro 64-bit
Intel(R) Pentium(R) CPU G2030 3.00 GHz (2CPUs) - 3.00 GHz
AMD Radeon HD 6670 1GB GDDR5
PSU 450W
Monitor 1440x900

I've had similar problems, but there was NO pattern. 4 1/2 year old computer, similar h/w. What I did to 'fix' it first was open the case. There was a lot of dust inside. The CPU was caked and the Radeon HD4970 was too. Cleaned ALL that out. Problem went away, but not for good.

It started 3 or 4 days ago, maybe on the 30th of Dec. Stopped yesterday.

One thing I did was replace my video card. The HD4000 series ATI considers Legacy and I'm on W8.1 and there are no drivers for 8.1 for that card. I did 'play' with the beta driver, but I had persistent problems running CCC and on shutdown I got a .NET dialog box that it had an error.

That led me to replacing the video card with an HD7770. A few weeks after that the lock-ups and freezes started again.

There were things that happens on the 29th:

• 
  I used a Registry cleaner and it might have removed something it should not have.
  
  The video driver was updated automatically

On the day that it appeared to fix itself I ran MS Word for the first time since putting in the new video card. It needed to be re-registered. After that, problem was gone.

I was getting random re-boots, freezes and my BlueTooth mouse and keyboard has NO connections, and once I got the buzzing from the speakers. I'm quite sure something s/w wise was the problem, and I associate it with probably the registry cleaning.

So my suggestion is that IF you did clean the registry restore it and see if it fixes it (assuming you backed up what was removed). Otherwise open the case and clean it.

 

[johnbl]

Go to control panel, device manager, find your high definition audio devices and disable all of them except the one you want to use. reboot, see if your problem comes back.

 

[aci]

IrvSp has described everything that is happening to me. Exactly that! My screen sometimes goes black. I opened the case and i saw that there is no dust inside of it. Everything is new! And i saw that there is a lack of THERMAL PASTE under FAN, maybe thats the problem ? i cleaned registry, defragmented hard disk, everything that i can do about cleaning i did it. It freezes 5 times during this comment OMG!

 

[IrvSp]

I forgot to mention another 'fact'. Are you using FireFox??? I am and it seems most if not all the time (I know it happened only ONCE when I was not running FF but a game, and that was the time the audio locked up) is when it was locking up/freezing the system.

If so, you might not be aware that FF changed a setting, Hardware Acceleration.

From the Mozilla forum:

================
Try disabling graphics hardware acceleration. Since this feature was added to Firefox, it has gradually improved, but there still are a few glitches.

You might need to restart Firefox in order for this to take effect, so save all work first (e.g., mail you are composing, online documents you're editing, etc.).

Then perform these steps:

Click the orange Firefox button at the top left, then select the "Options" button, or, if there is no Firefox button at the top, go to Tools > Options.
In the Firefox options window click the Advanced tab, then select "General".
In the settings list, you should find the Use hardware acceleration when available checkbox. Uncheck this checkbox.
Now, restart Firefox and see if the problems persist.
================

Since we both have ATI drivers, this could be the cause.

However, I know I fixed that and made a change before I got the new card and the problem 'stopped'. My problems restarted when W8.1 updated my video driver for me. It could be a loading order issue, a plug-in or extension causing it at well.

Today I had the freeze again. I've re-enabled the acceleration and will see if that helps. Of course, the game hang could be caused by graphics acceleration it could have been using.

I'm starting to suspect the ATI driver or an extension in FF...

 

[IrvSp]

And i saw that there is a lack of THERMAL PASTE under FAN, maybe thats the problem ?

If you are missing thermal paste you'd be locking up constantly as the CPU would overheat. It would continue when running and repeat quite often.

The paste should be between the CPU and heatsink, not the fan which is what I assume you meant, if not you don't need it on the fan.

 

[aci]

Thanks for reply. I called an engineer to my house (my cousin) he checked everything and he told me that maybe the problem is my RAM is damaged or there is an error occurred at certain memory. He will replace my stick with another stick of 8gb ram and we will se if there is any problem with RAM.

 

[IrvSp]

Memory normally doesn't 'heal' itself after the first failures.

You might want to get the latest MEMTEST86 (http://www.memtest.org/) that will test your memory.

 

[aci]

THERE U GO! I runned memtest 86 latest version for 7 hours. 3 passes and 115 ERRORS!!! So my RAM is problem! And my CPU temperature was 90C while i was running memtest! IS THAT NORMAL? or bad ?

 

[IrvSp]

THERE U GO! I runned memtest 86 latest version for 7 hours. 3 passes and 115 ERRORS!!! So my RAM is problem! And my CPU temperature was 90C while i was running memtest! IS THAT NORMAL? or bad ?

I re-ran MEMTEST+ 5.01 this morning. No errors and my CPU was at 66C.

I don't know if your CPU temp is 'normal' or not? Depends on the spec's for the CPU. The Tcase spec for my i7-920 is 70C, so mine is probably OK.

Each CPU has different spec's and also airflow in and around the case matters as does the cooling type, air vs. liquid.

 

[rgd1101]

90c is high for CPU. it might be the issue.

 

[aci]

Which issue ? is it lack of thermal paste ? cuz i really have it a little bit on my CPU .

 

[aci]

I think i fixed my problem. I underclock my RAM from 1333 MHz to 1000 MHz. Stay tuned...i hope this is the solution...