Computer freezes (seemingly randomly) but not in safe mode

[Zhaoman]

I put together a computer for my little brother with the following components:

Q6600
Asus P5KPL-AM
2x 2GB 800Mhz Corsair DDR2
Sapphire 5770
640GB WD Hard Drive
550W Be Quiet Dark Power Pro

The computer appears to be freezing randomly even after a clean re-install of Windows 7 with no other drivers or updates installed. It could be on the desktop or while I'm doing anything really.

I took it to a Novatech shop and they said they couldn't find anything wrong with it and it didn't freeze when they ran Prime95 and Furmark for hours. I have installed and ran Prime95 small FFT and Blend for 3 hours myself, I have ran Furmark for 2 hours, I swapped different memory sticks around, ran the windows memory test (standard and extended), checked the HD with HDTune and the Windows HD error checker all with no errors and temperatures were measured with CPUID HWMonitor and Coretemp and were stable throughout. But as soon as I start up Steam or try to install Office or even just browse the internet it freezes within minutes and I can't complete installation (funny how it didn't freeze during the tests!). I am not ruling out that that was a lucky coincidence.

So then I started it up in Safe Mode and was able to run Steam and download 4 games overnight with no problems, and now I'm browsing the good Hexus forums and posting this with no freezing yet.

It's all a bit strange, maybe some basic Windows service is making it wobbly at the knees. The trouble is this is as far as I know how to go and I have no idea how I'd test for which basic service or driver is making it go bang. I am almost convinced at this stage it is not a hardware fault. Any help on this very annoying matter would be greatly appreciated before I lose my sanity!

[kompukare]

These kind of things (randomly) are hard to diagnose. Since safe mode works, I'd try msconfig.exe and try to find which service etc. is stable and which is not.

A lot of reboots and waiting but that's probably the easiest thing. Maybe try a clear CMOS too in case the motherboard has some weird settings.

[AETAaAS]

I would try installing Service Pack 1. With a multitude of patches, hopefully something sticks and then the system will run fine after that.

[Zhaoman]

OK thanks, I'll try msconfig. But it sounds like I would have to start each service and wait for it to freeze? What if the problem is caused by a combination of services? And yeah I cleared the CMOS before I built the computer but I guess it wouldn't hurt to clear it again...

@AETaAS: I managed to install all the windows updates and get the computer up to date but not without a lot of freezing I might add... Maybe I'll do another clean install and load SP1 from a USB.

[jim]

Are you sure the media is good?

Is this the second windows install that has caused issues?

[Zhaoman]

Yeah I used this exact disk to install Win7 on my mum's computer and also to do a clean install on my Dell laptop. That was some time ago but I never had any problems with it before.

I don't think it's the audio driver or graphics since it freezes before they've even been installed which is usually my go to culprits

And it's been running no problems in Safe Mode all night and all day so far... Any chance I could get it to run in Safe Mode all the time with just the graphics and audio turned on? That'll do for my brother I think! And save me from losing my hair!

[kompukare]

OK thanks, I'll try msconfig. But it sounds like I would have to start each service and wait for it to freeze? What if the problem is caused by a combination of services?

In theory yes! If you could automate it and get it to freeze on command but no, the best way is to try a bunch of services at a time. And hopefully get there with only a few tries

[Zhaoman]

OK thanks, I'll try that.

If it was my computer I think I'd be much more relaxed since I could just take my time and try new things every day until I found the culprit but I have to leave for uni soon so it's a concern if I don't get it fixed soon...

[Zhaoman]

What I can now say is downloading a game on Steam makes it crash quite fast, within minutes usually or at least within an hour, and this is what I use to test for stability now. What I can also say is that if I start it in Safe Mode then Steam has no problem downloading and installing several games overnight and I did this over the last three nights so I have some confidence in what I'm seeing now.

This is where things get somewhat interesting: I have used msconfig to disable every service I can disable, including the Steam Client Service, and now the only services running are the ones that are running in Safe Mode and three which I can't disable which don't run in Safe Mode (Group Policy Client; Microsoft Network Inspection; and Task Scheduler). The PC still crashes shortly after I run Steam, and now I'm posting this in Safe Mode. But it still doesn't crash when running a game or Prime95 (I tried the Large test this time; and I'm still not ruling out a coincidence).

So this is what I know: Safe Mode seems to work with no problems. The computer crashes randomly even with nearly all services disabled, and crashes much faster when downloading something with Steam. It has never crashed while running something intensive, often for hours, but could crash soon after exiting the program (this could still be coincidence but I have been monitoring this for a week now).

So are any ideas what this could be at this stage? Could those three services which I couldn't disable be the problem? What else doesn't run in Safe Mode that I could be overlooking? Any help would be massively appreciated and thanks to all the replies so far!

[kompukare]

Well, lets see,

Task Scheduler: are there any tasks actualyl scheduled though?

Group Policy Client: don't see how that could be a culprit.

Microsoft Network Inspection: Maybe, although hardware/drivers might explain why Steam downloading crashes.

Does network work in Safe Mode?

Do you have any other NIC you can try? Either a wireless USB or a PCI/PCIe one. If yes, disable the onboard in the BIOS and see if the crashing is gone.

Might be a memory leak in the NIC driver though so trying another driver for the NIC might do.

[Zhaoman]

What do you mean by network? I start Safe Mode with Networking and it works fine if that's what you mean.

I do have a USB wireless thing that I know works, I could try that. But the thing is it was crashing after a clean install of Windows, not connected to the internet with no drivers (afair), yet works happily in Safe Mode with Networking. So there has to be something that doesn't run in Safe Mode that is making it unhappy and it doesn't seem to be any of the services in msconfig.

Maybe it's the chipset drivers, those were the first things I loaded onto it after a clean install, but I'm pretty sure I left it to see how it was before I installed any drivers and it crashed... Just in case I didn't, how would I go about removing the Intel chipset drivers

[Jonatron]

Are you using IDE or AHCI mode (a BIOS setting)?

[Zhaoman]

Pretty sure it's IDE since I don't see AHCI mentioned anywhere. In SATA Controller settings (I think) it gives IDE or RAID. There's a lot about Masters and Slaves which I thought SATA did away with back in the olden days!

[aramil]

If my memory is serving me correctly in safe mode it does not activate all the extra features of the network interface (task offload/etc)

So the issue could be with the driver settings. if not the driver it self.

[kompukare]

What do you mean by network? I start Safe Mode with Networking and it works fine if that's what you mean.

Ah, ok Safe Mode with Networking means network working.

Maybe it's the chipset drivers, those were the first things I loaded onto it after a clean install, but I'm pretty sure I left it to see how it was before I installed any drivers and it crashed... Just in case I didn't, how would I go about removing the Intel chipset drivers

Are you using the old drivers from the mobo DVD? If yes, try finding more recent drivers. Also, (grasping at straws here) if you're going to stick with 4GB you have the choice of 32 bit and 64 bit. If a driver has a mistake maybe it only has it in the one version and not the other. Although
http://www.asus.com/Motherboards/P5K...rt_Download_30
list a combined binary for both 32 and 64. Those are from 2009, while Realtek do have more recent ones (doesn't mention RTL8112 though):
http://www.realtek.com.tw/downloads/...&GetDown=false

I think aramil may have a point; so it's possible that in Safe Mode the NIC is being driven with a more basic feature set and hence doesn't crash.

[big_hairy_rob]

In the past with a similar motherboard we have had all sorts of problem with the motherboards Hard Drive controller (when raided) which would cause a freeze every 2-5 seconds lasting about half a second. Using taskmaster we identified this as the hard drive controller which when fixed caused the problem to go away.