System lock ups. Please help.

Crolanpw said:

So, I've been having issues with my recently built computer. Sometimes when I am playing a game, watching movie, opening a program, or even when I'm starting up the computer I've have system lock ups that require me to restart to get it back and running again. If there is a sound playing during the freeze, it will often get stuck too and repeatedly play the last little bit of the soundfile over and over rapidly. Kills the eardrums to say the least. -_-



I've updated every driver I can find and still am having the issues persist. I'd originally thought it was an issue with my graphics card but I'd switched the one I had been using for a second card and the issues still persist. I've checked the ram to see if they were faulty and the memtests keep coming back ok so I figure that can be ruled out.

The only times I've been able to recreate the lockups with 100% accuracy is when I attempt to install either Dragon Age or Mass Effect 2. Both installations freeze at various percentages. Sometimes it will get as far as a 50% installation while other times it freezes at the 13% mark.

I'm using Windows 7 Professional x64
my speccs are:

ASUS M4N75TD AM3 NVIDIA nForce 750a SLI ATX AMD Motherboard
Western Digital Caviar Black WD7501AALS 750GB 7200 RPM 32MB Cache SATA 3.0Gb/s 3.5" Hard Drive -Bare Drive

OCZ 4GB (2 x 2GB) 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM DDR3 1600 (PC3 12800) XMP-Ready Rev.2 Desktop Memory Model OCZ3X1600R2LV4GK

Original video card: MSI N250GTS Twin Frozr GeForce GTS 250 512MB 256-bit GDDR3 PCI Express 2.0 x16 HDCP Ready SLI Support Video Card

Switched to: Galaxy geforce 210 1gb video card

Any ideas what might be causing this? I'm running out of ideas. Not being able to install games is driving me crazy.

Hi Crolanpw and welcome


If these are true BSOD's a dmp file is generated.

We really need the actual DMP file.

If you wish to have others assist you with your computer's BSOD symptoms, upload the contents of your "\Windows\Minidump" folder. The procedure:

* Copy the contents of \Windows\Minidump to another (temporary) location somewhere on your machine.
* Zip up the copy.
* Start your own thread in the "Crashes and Debugging" section of the forum and attach the ZIP archive to your post using the "paperclip" (file attachments) button.
* Briefly describe the problem history and circumstances in the same post. Somebody will attend to your query as soon as possible.

If it is not a true BSOD you can still gleen information by doing this.

As you no doubt know by now freezing isnt usually caused by hardware. Freezes such as this are often caused by conflicts in software, too little ram, and many other things.

Several things you can try

1-run a system file check to verify and repair your system files
(type cmd in search>right click and run as admin>SFC /SCANNOW)

Let us know the results

2-check event viewer (type eventvwr in search). go to the windows log>application tab. Look for critical errors (they have red in the left hand column) that say app hang, app crash, or anything related to the problem.

When you find them note the event ID and source codes and tell us what they are.

3-boot into safe mode (with networking). Does it still do it then? If not it is probably a software conflict.

4- go into device manager (type device manager in search). Are there any "unknown drivers" with yellow question marks on them?

Let us know the answers and if you need further assistance

Thanks in advance


Jan