Hello,
I have a 4.5 year old homebuilt Windows 7 PC that recently started freezing up randomly. Basically the screen stops completely, whatever sound that was playing loops infinitely and the mouse & keyboard become unresponsive. Leaving it for 30+ minutes does nothing. Eventually I am forced to use the reset button on the computer to force reboot.
There are no obvious event log entries that point to the problem and the timing is seemingly random. However, I have noticed it does tend to happen when I am watching videos or gaming. It's happened a lot on Amazon video. But it has also happened when just using Office apps or browsing other websites.
There have been some recent hardware/software changes.
1) Moved from wired LAN cable to wireless USB adapter
2) Changed Power Options from High Performance to Balanced (so it goes to sleep automatically). I had to do this because I moved recently and my new roommate does not like the computer always being on and never going to sleep.
3) One of the disks in my RAID array died so I swapped it out.
A few other things I've noticed:
- When the freezing occurs and I force reboot, sometimes the PC won't recognize my SSD boot drive and gives me a "Reboot and select proper Boot device" message. If I manually disconnect the SSD, let it sit for a while, and then reconnect/reboot, it resolves the issue.
- When I try to go into setup (this is a UEFI? setup screen, one of the newer colorful ones), it partially renders the screen and it freezes up there. Like the top half of the main menu appears, and the bottom part is completely black. Sometimes it works after a few tries.
- If I disconnect the SSD completely, I don't get the freezing when I enter Setup.
- I suspected the SSD (Crucial m4 256gb) was the culprit but when I tried a brand new SSD (Toshiba OCZ 480GB), the same thing happened - freeze upon hitting 'DEL' to enter the Setup screen.
Given these, I suspect the issue is something with the motherboard itself (bad SATA controller?) or possibly the graphics card (EVGA GeForce GTX 680).
I have run sfc, memory diagnostics and disk checks, as well as Malware Bytes and found no errors.
Would be fantastic if someone has run into this before or could otherwise help determine what the root cause here is. I already have a new motherboard / CPU / memory / SSD / power supply on standby in case I need to do a system overhaul.
Thanks very much for your time!
I have a 4.5 year old homebuilt Windows 7 PC that recently started freezing up randomly. Basically the screen stops completely, whatever sound that was playing loops infinitely and the mouse & keyboard become unresponsive. Leaving it for 30+ minutes does nothing. Eventually I am forced to use the reset button on the computer to force reboot.
There are no obvious event log entries that point to the problem and the timing is seemingly random. However, I have noticed it does tend to happen when I am watching videos or gaming. It's happened a lot on Amazon video. But it has also happened when just using Office apps or browsing other websites.
There have been some recent hardware/software changes.
1) Moved from wired LAN cable to wireless USB adapter
2) Changed Power Options from High Performance to Balanced (so it goes to sleep automatically). I had to do this because I moved recently and my new roommate does not like the computer always being on and never going to sleep.
3) One of the disks in my RAID array died so I swapped it out.
A few other things I've noticed:
- When the freezing occurs and I force reboot, sometimes the PC won't recognize my SSD boot drive and gives me a "Reboot and select proper Boot device" message. If I manually disconnect the SSD, let it sit for a while, and then reconnect/reboot, it resolves the issue.
- When I try to go into setup (this is a UEFI? setup screen, one of the newer colorful ones), it partially renders the screen and it freezes up there. Like the top half of the main menu appears, and the bottom part is completely black. Sometimes it works after a few tries.
- If I disconnect the SSD completely, I don't get the freezing when I enter Setup.
- I suspected the SSD (Crucial m4 256gb) was the culprit but when I tried a brand new SSD (Toshiba OCZ 480GB), the same thing happened - freeze upon hitting 'DEL' to enter the Setup screen.
Given these, I suspect the issue is something with the motherboard itself (bad SATA controller?) or possibly the graphics card (EVGA GeForce GTX 680).
I have run sfc, memory diagnostics and disk checks, as well as Malware Bytes and found no errors.
Would be fantastic if someone has run into this before or could otherwise help determine what the root cause here is. I already have a new motherboard / CPU / memory / SSD / power supply on standby in case I need to do a system overhaul.
Thanks very much for your time!
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