Windows Freezes

I continue to have multiple freezes when idle or only surfing. I've done a very thorough search through all logfiles and, strangely, I find no entry whatsoever on the exact time of a previous freeze (exact time being within a minute....)

What kind of 'thing' could cause freezes, no logging, and nog problem when in safe mode....? The only thing I've not been able to check yet is what driver safe mode uses for the graphical card. (gtx570). After a clean w7 install, that driver has been updated to the latest nvidia drivers and I'm not sure how to force usage of default safe mode driver as a test in normal operation...

I hope (very much) that I've found it.... after 4 freezes today, I noticed that despite full driver updates, the cardreader module still had old 2006 drivers. Disabled all of them (CF, SD etc) and am now 5 hours without freeze. I was triggered because I got information on the driver in the logfiles, even though not warnings or fault.... If still ok tomorrow I'll post full details...

Could make sense as the cardreader is not enabled in safe mode when things went fine....

SledgeDG said:

I will keep my fingers crossed but generally a driver is not automatically bad just because it's old (except those from the pre Windows 7 era)
I must admit at one point I got confused and thought you said the box would freeze in safe mode as well. Hence my advice to start exchanging hardware. If the card-reader really is the reason that would be great. If you ever need one (until you get a working driver) you could always pick up a USB version that only gets connected if needed.

Aren't all 2006(!) drivers pre-W7? I'm still running cleanly now but it is still to early to confirm the fix. I had one instance of a 48 hour clean run.... and am now doing +/- 24 hours....

I guess this solves it. I've now got >48 hours of freeze-free running. Stable, no glitches at all and have since installed loads of other stuff that this forum sometimes quotes as the possible cause of freezes or BSOD's. bear in mind, I've NEVER had a BSOD on this system. Only freezes.

As stated above, I strongly suspect that the 2006 drivers for the built-in multi-cardreader were the problem. I disabled all as you can see in the snip attached. No problems since I did that.

To be honest, I've not yet had the time or energy to fully prove it... by turning them on again do nothing else and expect another freeze. I will do so sometime in the near future.

What is also interesting is that during this long fault-finding process, I swapped Norton360 for Avast (and windows firewall) and that made no difference. It kept freezing up on me. Iow, in my case, Norton was not the gigantic problem causer that it is claimed to be in many other threads in this forum.

And, again in my case, everyone could have different experiences... iTunes and fullfledged gtx570 overclocking + ASUS Sabertooth AI software + overclocking now all work fine. No influence on the freezing.

Finally to finish off one detail point on the Intel drivers on the ASUS distribution that comes with the motherboard. ASUS has since updated their INTEL drivers, even though not to the newest available at INTEL direct.

@SledgDG, thx for all the help! It's been fun

Cheers,
Mark