Why is my PC freezing?

[nimchip]

Hi, my pc runs World of Warcraft and Heroes of Newerth fine and used to be able to run BF:BC2 fine forever but lately it has been freezing at random times even on times that aren't even graphically intensive (such as the end of the round score board and so on) but including those that are. It also froze a couple of times on Deus-Ex: HR. Obviously I go into the event viewer and of course Win7 says it's event id 41, which is synonymous with every type of hardware problem available. Is there any way I could find out what is causing the freezing with software? Or do I have to go through temperatures/prime/memtest and so on?

My pc isn't overclocked. It's a 920 i7, gskill 6gb ddr3 ram, evga nvidia 260 gtx, Corsair 650 txw psu.

 

[Outlander_04]

most likely a software problem

use msconfig to turn off programs so they dont automatically start when you boot . Leave only windows processes , AV and firewall

then run the game in a window and see if any other program is using system resources by opening taskmanager

 

[Wamphryi]

I disagree. I think Hardware is the problem. Make sure your PSU is putting out the right voltage. Swap out the PSU and or GPU if you can. Run Memtest to check the RAM. If it passes the RAM test and the problem still continues then it is likely the Motherboard.

 

[tsnor]

Here is Microsoft's take on this: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2028504

Since this started recently "..run BF:BC2 fine forever but lately..." how about checking for recovery points and see what drivers got loaded. Reload them. Try old version again see if problem goes away. See what fixes got loaded in your windows update history -- suspect something with device driver.

For HW debug, can't hurt to boot to stand-alone mem test. Can't hurt to stress your system with a 3D graphic test -- that'll warm up your PSU,etc, and let you know if they are weak. Can't hurt to use realtemp to monitor temps and make sure you are not pushing things. What hardware cards do you have installed -- any soundblaster, etc.? Do you enable sound over hdmi ? These are things that can be removed to see if things get better. I assume if you can get to event viewer that device manager, etc are all clean.

Good Luck, post what it turns out to be. I have very similar i7-920/gtx260 system so want to know.

 

[nimchip]

I'm just wondering if there's a program that gives me more info than the standard event viewer generic event id 47 fatal error...

I use on-board sound and network. What I mentioned is what I have.