PC completely freezing up.

[altitude2k]

OK, I'll try and provide as much information as possible.

A week ago I decided to install the Windows XP x64 trial, just to give it a go. Up until then my computer has been working fine. I tried it out for a week, and although there were some annoyances (unsupported firewall/antivirus/defrag software, and slower applications) it worked fine. The annoyances got to a point where I decided to just reinstall standard Windows XP Pro.

This was yesterday, and a couple of hours after my computer has started to randomly freeze up. When I say freeze I mean completely stop. The screen freezes on the last image, my music stops, activity from my HDD LED stops, I can't move my mouse, CTRL+ALT+DEL doesn't work and results in me having to reboot. Once back in everything works fine. These are very infrequent, it has only happened twice today.

I am sure it's not my graphics card as even my music stops. I have flashed my motherboard with the latest BIOS update. I have reviewed my temperature logs and they are all normal (chipset, CPU and GPU), voltages haven't altered either. When it has happened my PC hasn't been under any particularly heavy load. Examples are when all I am doing is listening to music, defragging my HDD and performing some rendering in CAD. I have been playing some pretty resource-consuming games (Doom 3 and BF2) and it hasn't frozen.

Anybody have any ideas? My setup is as below in my sig. I'm wondering, no matter how unlikely, if it is XP causing the problem and whether it is worth formatting once again.

Thanks in advance.

[altitude2k]

And it just did it again...

[plesuvius]

Do you have the same drivers as your stable old Windows XP setup had? Maybe you installed some newer drivers which were unstable. You might want to try installing latest manufacturer drivers (like Asus, etc) rather then straight from the chipset vendor for example.

It's also possible a marginal PSU issue or temperature issue just happened to come along at this time. Try checking for dust in fans and simple stuff like that, and if you can swapping out the PSU or dropping a hard drive for a while to see if it helps.

I think your new install is the most likely culprit, though. Good luck with this.

[0iD]

Are you overclocked at all? What about RAM timings. Run memtest and/or prime 95 for a while & see what happens.

[altitude2k]

The majority of my drivers came from Windows update. I might try redownloading them from ASUS or the nVidia site. Although is this likely to be a driver issue?

My RAM timings are at factory settings (400mHz?) and CPU is not overclocked.

[altitude2k]

I have run memtest for about an hour and it found no errors.

[0iD]

Well I don't mind saying I'm stumped too Short of a re-format & re-install I don't have a clue either. Soz.

[altitude2k]

Well after reinstalling the drivers for the chipset it hasn't happened yet. My fingers are crossed. To me it doesn't seem like the sort of thing that an error in the operating system could cause, but I'll give formatting a go as a last resort.

Cheers for your help.

[latrosicarius]

I have the exact same problem. Windows just randomly "freezes"... mouse completely stops, keyboard is not responsive. Video output stops (or if monitor was in sleep mode at the time of freeze, it won't detect any video signal when turned on).

More coincidentally, we have some of the same hardware:
-- ASUS A8N-SLI Deluxe mobo
-- Creative SoundBlaster Audigy 2 ZS
-- (and of course, WinXP Pro w/ SP2)

I have a feeling that the sound card might be the culprit because I recently installed it and never had the problem before. Also, more often than not, the crash involves some sort of audio playing, or turning on/off speakers (which, yes, the sound card CAN detect).

I also ran Memtest86 (overnight in fact) to check my RAM, and no errors at all. I downloaded all new drivers (graphics card, chipset, new BIOS), to no avail. It's getting annoying as hell... it's completely random, has nothing to do with heat or the stress of playing graphically intense games like Doom 3 / FarCry / HL2 / BF2.

I sincerely doubt my PSU is to blame; it's a $120 dollar ThermalTake 680w W0049, and I would be pissed as hell if it was messing up. But it's not getting hot, making any sounds, and Asus Probe shows that all three voltage rails are stable and within 0.1 volts of their intended voltage.

I'm at a loss... I'll try re-installing my sound card drivers again, but I hope this gets better... Anyone know anything about this sound card causing problems like that? I have the exact same thing in another WinXP Pro (SP2) rig and it works fine (no freezes).

[Ferral]

It does sound like a driver issue this one, I was going to mention chipset drivers but you have done that one already.

Do a full system scan for viruses / malware and spyware, sometimes they can cause problems like this.

Also make sure you have latest drivers for soundcard, video card and anything else you have in youre system.

Finally, if anything is overclocked drop it back to stock and see if that stops the problem.

[OmarSantiago]

I'd bet good money it's the Audigy: you need to install the drivers and applications from the CD and then patch it from Creative's website. I don't know why but I've seen it often enough. Windows will run just fine on drivers from it's update site (as they're all WHQL certified) and you can quite happily use it's VGA and networking drivers.

[noTHINGface]

More coincidentally, we have some of the same hardware:
-- ASUS A8N-SLI Deluxe mobo
-- Creative SoundBlaster Audigy 2 ZS
-- (and of course, WinXP Pro w/ SP2)

And another coincidence, I have the exact same hardware and suffered the exact same problems. I removed the card and carried on with the on-board chip... And never looked back to be honest! Creative stuff just gets on my wick!

[latrosicarius]

Wow, well it's been a couple weeks since I uninstalled my sound card drivers and freshley reinstalled the new ones. The computer has not frozen up yet, so my fingers are crossed. Who knew it was related to such an obscure, yet easy-to-fix thing like soundcard drivers!

Okay thanks for the tips and directions, guys!