Windows 7 Crash.

Evening everyone.

My father has an HP Windows 7 x64 PC and recently it has been crashing on him. I have not had a chance to witness these crashes myself, but he says they have been happening on and off for the past week or so. The computer itself is a year and change old, definitely less than 3.

What happens is when someone is performing a process on the computer such as scanning documents or accessing something on our home network the monitor will start to flicker, as if there is radio interference(I'm not sure what the term is for it, but I'm sure you know what I am talking about). The flickering will get progressively worse until the all there is is a blue screen(not BSOD) or a grey screen. I get no keyboard or mouse functions. I suspect this may be an overheating issue, however I wanted to post here just incase it is something more and I can take care of the issue asap. Thanks in advance.

Hello VMPAS.

It would better enable us to help you if the System Specs were available.
There are times when our mind reading abilities don't work that well!

* There are many reasons why a PC " behaves" this way.
These annoying " gliches" may be caused by an overloaded hard drive, overworked CPU, Malware, running 2 AV 's, unnecessary data, Browser addons or you may have unnecessary programs running in the background etc....

* Make sure that you are not over heating.

* Make sure PSU is working properly.

* If overclocking, restore to original.

*Have you checked in Event Viewer?
Type eventvwr in search.
Go to the Windows Logs > application > in the left hand column note anything that relates to the problem.
Please note the event ID, and the source codes and tell us what they are.

* Go to search, type device manager and look for any yellow warning markers.

*Try in safe mode; report back if it works properly.
Start your computer in safe mode

*Clean boot. You may discover what is causing your problem.
How to troubleshoot a problem by performing a clean boot in Windows Vista or in Windows 7

* You may be interested in these hardware tests:

CPU - Stress Test with Prime95
Hardware - Stress Test With Prime95

Video Card - Stress Test with Furmark
Video Card - Stress Test with Furmark

Mem test 86+
RAM - Test with Memtest86+

Thanks for the tip JMH. My apologies about not including more info, I won't make the same mistake next time :). I took the tower out back and aired it out with some compressed air. There seemed to be some dust caked onto the heat sink of the CPU so I made sure to get rid of that and any other dust that remained.

I also checked Event Viewer as you suggested and found a few things under the Application tab:

Event ID: 6000
Descript: The winlogin notification subscriber <GPClient> was unavailable to handle a notification event

EventID: 1002
Descript: FireFox hung up

Thats all I really found so I decided to take a look under the system tab which was not so "boring" if you catch my drift.

A slew of Errors, I'll post some of most of them here(there were quite a bit)

Event ID: 7001
Descript: The Computer Browser service depends on the Server service which failed to start because of the following error: The dependency service or group failed to start

Event ID: 10005
Descript: DCOM got error "1084" attempting to start the service WSearch with arguments "" in order to run the server


Those are most of the errors that came up in Event Viewer. I'm thinking(and Im running a virus scan as I do this as well) is Im going to run a scan disk and defrag in addition to the virus scan. I also have a registry cleaner that I will run also. I'm also going to try out the tools you posted as well, and thanks for sharing them. Hopefully all it is is a matter of running a few scans and having the computer clean itself up.

Thanks again for the help :).

You mention a Registry Cleaner...which one?
A lot of us here do not recommend using Registry Cleaners.
FYI. In all the years I have used computers I have NEVER used a Registry Cleaner.

Please read below

Generic advice -
If you do not have knowledge of the registry, then you would probably be better off leaving it alone, and definitely not placing blind trust in a program to do the job for you.

To advise anyone that a "Registry Cleaner" works, and that it will fix or speed up their machine {or all the other nonsense that is often propagated about these things} can mislead people.

Should you decide to go ahead -
Make sure you have
1.a current System Restore point created.
2.a recent "Back up" of your computer- preferably to an external HD.

I see. What would you recommend then as far as something to maintain the registry? I have used AUS Logics Reg Cleaner. Seems to work, but admittingly I have not seen actual results, so I guess feeling silly is warranted as of right now. As I said before though if there is something you know of that has reputable results I would be more than interested in giving it a whirl.

Depending on one's surfing habits computer "Housework" should include ...

Removing any software you have evaluated and decided you don't want to keep.

If necessary >Run: SFC /scannow (from a command prompt) - and let it check/repair/verify your system files

Disk Check

Disk Cleanup - Open and Use

Disk Defragmenter - Open and Use

Remove temp files> Start > Run > %temp% > ok

FYI
Increase PC speed: Optimize your computer, help your PC run faster

SFC /SCANNOW Command - System File Checker

Use Option two.