Freezing up PC

[Link97]

Since I installed Vista, my PC has occasionally completely frozen up forcing me to kill it at the power. I am bamboozled by this because I have no idea what the issue is. I can pretty much rule out overheating of CPU and GPU because, despite the CPU being overclocked, they run nice and cool (sort of, nothing excessive).

I delegate to you, to hypothesise reasons for my computer doing this and providing helpful solutions.

Much thanks in advance.

[TAKTAK]

a little more info would be helpful....
what hardware are you using?
installed latest drivers?
i had a problem with nVidia drivers when i first chucked vista on and it kept freezing every 5 mins or so

[matty-hodgson]

it's Vista.. end of

but seriously, does it happen randomly?
or when you've started up a program or something?

is your memory completely stable?
Vista seriously hates unstable memory, mine usually just crashes straight away if i've overclocked it too far..

[Link97]

Q6600 @ 3.0GHz
4GB RAM @ 5-5-5-12 1.890V (on the front of the RAM it says those numbers [V shuold be 1.9V but my bios doesn't do 1.9V >.>) underclocked to a 1:1 ratio (667 I believe)
8800GT not OC'd
P5N-T Deluxe 780i
Seagate HDD x2

I'm 99% sure that my drivers are up to date. Actually, is there a definitive website which I can use to check if all my drivers are up to date?

Should I just set the RAM back to auto everything?

[looney]

does it work on xp without crahsing?

[Link97]

Yep :x

[matty-hodgson]

Q6600 @ 3.0GHz
4GB RAM @ 5-5-5-12 1.890V (on the front of the RAM it says those numbers [V shuold be 1.9V but my bios doesn't do 1.9V >.>) underclocked to a 1:1 ratio (667 I believe)
8800GT not OC'd
P5N-T Deluxe 780i
Seagate HDD x2

I'm 99% sure that my drivers are up to date. Actually, is there a definitive website which I can use to check if all my drivers are up to date?

Should I just set the RAM back to auto everything?

with the 4GB of RAM.. is that 2 or 4 sticks?
maybe you should try putting the NB voltage up a couple of notches if you've got 4 sticks, and try putting the memory voltage upto 2v..
1.89v for DDR2-800 memory is low..

[looney]

Then that should rule out any hardware problems surely?

Vista must be restricting it somehow, have you tried doing a clean reinstall again?

[Link97]

with the 4GB of RAM.. is that 2 or 4 sticks?
maybe you should try putting the NB voltage up a couple of notches if you've got 4 sticks, and try putting the memory voltage upto 2v..
1.89v for DDR2-800 memory is low..

4 sticks, how much do I need to put up the voltage before I start causing problems (ie burning it out, I want to avoid that.)

1.9V is what is says on the pack :x

I don't want to do a reinstall after having just spent hours installing XP, all my drivers and programs, then updating to Ultimate and reformatting my data HDD and reinstalling everything again D:

[matty-hodgson]

4 sticks, how much do I need to put up the voltage before I start causing problems (ie burning it out, I want to avoid that.)

well the NB.. put that up 2 notches and it'll be fine, just with 4 sticks you usually need to boost the NB voltage to get them all to work..

boost the RAM to 2v and that should be fine aswell....

[amdavies]

What PSU are you using ?

Never rule anything out, Vista will probably put more stress on a machine than XP would so overheating of a component could be an issue.

[timizere]

i agree with the memory voltage boost. solves many a problem. and you should be fine at 2.0v

[Blitzen]

This is a problem that is being raised quite a bit now.
Run memtest and see what it comes up with.

For many, memory is indeed the problem. Vista scrutinises the memory far more than XP ever did. If the memory had slight errors in XP then the OS would normally ignore them. Vista doesnt.

This is the first thing i would check.

[Link97]

Rightio, I'll go in search of memtest and do stuff with that and hope things happen and next time I happen to be restarting, I'll tweak the voltage a tad.

My PSU is a 520W SilverStone.

[Thorsson]

What is the RAM?

[Link97]

4x1GB of Corsair DDR2 TWINX 2GB PC6400

Also, NB is set at auto for V and I don't have a program to see what its current voltage is so I don't know what a couple of notches more would be.