pc freezing

[hayes]

So i just bought a new OCZ Stealth Xtream 500W PSU and about a week on the pc has started to freeze, mouse, keyboard and screen will be completely unresponsive. The ram is fine and the computer is less than a year old. Any ideas on how to solve this problem would be appreciated.
the spec is:
core 2 duo E6420
500gb sata hd
xfx 7900gt with zalmen vf900 cu
asus p5vdc-tvm mobo
2gb ram

Btw the freezing occure more often when playing a game.
thanks.

[edp33]

Perhaps it's overheating, particularly as its more noticable playing a game - keep an eye on the temperature readouts

[tomawest]

Agreed.

Also the error logs can show you some information as to what is happening.

IF it freezes... turn it off and turn it straight back on again... go to the bios and if the temperature is anything around 60 - 70 degrees celcius then I would look into better cooling equipment. Also remount your CPU.

[NeoVector]

Most likely CPU/VGA card over heating as previous comments. If you need to re-install coolers, use a decent quality paste, it really does make a difference, i never really believed it myself, but recently i had to fix a pc, used a good quality paste (£7 a syringe) and reduced the idle temp from 70*C to under 60!.

[tomawest]

check what the best way to put paste on your cpu is as well. It can make a few degrees difference also.

[hayes]

ok i checked temps when it freezes and the temps seem to be fine, under 50c for both gfx card and cpu. im going to flash the mobo bios now. btw the other day when i was playing spore these weird artifacts showed up, like small squares that appeared in the place of for example a tree, quite hard to explain but does make me think that the graphics card is on the way out. thanks for all the replys btw.

[edp33]

you could also check event viewer under administration in control panel might have recorded some problems there.

[hayes]

i flashed the mobo bios an updated to the nvidia drivers that have just been released and the freezing hasnt happened since, however if they do il check the event viewer, thanks for the help peeps.

[Touche36]

You need to find if the problem is software or hardware first, so reinstall programs, drivers, DirectX then Windows if you need to. Once you have verified it is hardware, take the computer down to a minimum configuration by removing extra parts that aren't needed, then boot the computer and test. If it is OK, then add the parts back in one by one until the problem re-appears. If you are having problems with the computer at it's minimum configuration, you may need to swap parts from a known-good PC to identify which part is causing the problem. Power supplies can cause wierd problems when they start to go so you may want to check this first.

[hayes]

thanks il try that soon... so it froze again today and i went on event viewer an got this

<Event xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/win/2004/08/events/event">
- <System>
<Provider Name="EventLog" />
<EventID Qualifiers="32768">6008</EventID>
<Level>2</Level>
<Task>0</Task>
<Keywords>0x80000000000000</Keywords>
<TimeCreated SystemTime="2008-09-29T18:47:48.000Z" />
<EventRecordID>15480</EventRecordID>
<Channel>System</Channel>
<Computer>James2-PC</Computer>
<Security />
</System>
- <EventData>
<Data>19:44:46</Data>
<Data>29/09/2008</Data>
<Data />
<Data />
<Data>80241</Data>
<Data />
<Data />
<Binary>D807090001001D0013002C002E00D001D807090001001D0012002C002E00D0013C0000003C000000000000000000 00000000000000000000010000000B000000</Binary>
</EventData>
</Event>

does this explain anything? i really am out of my depth when it coems to this

[Touche36]

I don't think there's anything in there that helps. If the problem started after you changed your PSU, try the old one (or borrow a friend's) and see if it's OK again. PSU problems can give weird symptoms.

[hayes]

ye ive put the original psu back hopefully its just the new psu as thats a simple exchange.