Random Freezes Depicted as Kernel 41

Can you describe the freezes, as there are no .dmp files in your .zip. Does the whole system freeze, mouse cursor and all? What do you have to do to get it working again?

OK, next question - do you have a PS/2 keyboard attached to the computer, or a USB one? If you have a PS/2 keyboard, I can give you a few registry entries that we can use to turn that PS/2 keyboard into a way to test if the hardware has caused the hang, or if the kernel is still running and only Windows has hung. If you have a USB keyboard, this won't work (PS/2 is an interrupt bus, USB is a polling bus, and as such can't cause an interrupt from user mode).

OK, make these reg changes, shut down, plug in the PS/2 keyboard, and boot up:

1. Create or set the following registry value:
Key: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\i8042prt\Parameters
Value: CrashOnCtrlScroll
Type: REG_DWORD
Data: 1

2. Open the Control Panel, double-click the System applet, and select "Advanced System Settings"; this will open the "System Properties" window. Go to the "Advanced" tab and click the Settings button under the "Performance" section header. Click the Advanced tab and click "Change" under "Virtual Memory". Set the pagefile to be located on the partition where the OS is installed, and set it to be equal to Physical RAM + 50 MB.

3. Also in the "System Properties" window, click on the "Advanced" tab, then click the Settings button under the "Startup and Recovery" section header. Make sure "Complete Memory Dump" is selected (see 3a if this is not in the list). You can change the location of the memory dump file to a different local partition if you do not have enough room on the partition where the OS is installed.

3a. If the "Complete Memory Dump" option in step 4 is not available, you will need to manually set this registry value:
Key: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\CrashControl
Value: CrashDumpEnabled
Type: REG_DWORD
Value: 1

4. You will need to reboot for these changes to take effect.

The next time that the system appears hung like you mentioned, please go to the keyboard and hold down the RIGHT CTRL key (NOT the left one) and press the SCROLL LOCK key twice to cause the computer to bugcheck and create a memory.dmp file. If it does create a .dmp file, Windows wasn't actually hung, and the .dmp will help us figure out what's causing it. However, if you press the keys right and it does NOT crash, you can be pretty certain the system itself has stopped servicing interrupts, and you have a hardware issue.

You might want to make the reg changes, reboot, and do a quick test when things are working to make sure you know how things work and how to do the crash via the keyboard before you get into a hang state.

So it finally froze up again, and the registry command you gave me did not work. I did notice however that it often hiccuped while playing Heroes of Newerth. The game has been notoriously called out about its memory management. Perhaps its the RAM?

How do we diagnose whats wrong from here?

Thanks again in advance.

Running out of resources definitely would not cause Windows itself to freeze - it might be *really* slow and LOOK hung, but the keyboard interrupt would still work. Hence, if you know you pressed the keyboard combo correctly (and it seems you've been successful when testing, so I have no doubts you did) and the system was still hung, you need to start investigating hardware. Given you say this mostly happens when playing games, I'd start looking at system RAM and the video card, specifically. It's not Windows' fault as you've probably already surmised, and I doubt it's a driver issue (again, Windows itself would still be servicing hardware interrupts even if the user-mode portion is hung, but it's not at this point if the keyboard combo does not crash the box when hung).

Make sense?