Windows 7: Apparently random Win7 lockup and freezes...

Hello,

I successfully installed Windows 7 64-bit RC today. However, I have a problem.

Running Windows, Windows 7 will randomly lock up and completely freeze permanently at random points during opertion. So far I have not been able to run Windows for more than about 20 minutes without it locking up.



Il assume this is a hardware problem, since it is a clean install.

Specs:
4GB Ram
80GB HDD
Intel Pentium 4 640 (3.2 GHz)
NVidia Geforce 7900

If there's anything else I should list, please say.

Thanks!

Jack

Randon freezes can be caused by power, sleep, hibernation settings. You ever get a BSOD? id so could you zip and upload it? could you go into event vierwer (ebent viewer in search) and see if there are any errors relating to this problem?

Ken

Dont assume anything ... this could be anything from an outdated driver to a bad burn on your DVD... I suggest that you try re burning a new DVD at the slowest possible speed and re install. If, after doing that, you still have problems, we'll go from there.

Tews and Ken (toosenken)

This presents exactly like the overheat issue earlier. P4 3.2 = hot.

JackWH - please download and run RealTemp.
Real Temp - CPU temperature monitoring

Here we go again.

Freezing can be from so many things. Memory settings, drivers, low voltages, overheating, bad installation of the OP system or flawed ISO, something plugged into a USB port when installing Windows or just general instablity.

Chuckle. Yes. I am flinching.

Just want to rule out a possible problem that Windows provides no native indication of. Other than freezing 20 minutes into a boot.

the "20 minutes" didnt stand out till you mentioned Heat

Ken

We learned a valuable lesson in the previous challenge. In this thread, I think there is a possible second indicator (besides the higher temps on this processor) - it is reasonable to conclude that the mobo/cpu assembly has some age on it.

Tews - like my new sig?

Thanks for the help so far guys. I saw some of you noticed my other hardware post (and perhaps weren't taking it too seriously... :P) but I didn't mean to double post or whatever, they were two seperate issues really.

Anyway, back on topic.

There are no Bsods at all. Just freezes, however they are no longer 'permanent' as I first thought.

The 'hangs' happen now at ANY point after 7's startup. It's been as late as an hour and as soon as 30 seconds. The hangs appear to be for RANDOM amounts of time. Anything from 1 minute to 1 hour iv experienced. The clock will freeze and any mouse movements I do or butto s I press don't register - but when the computer unfreeze, everything I did whilst frozen suddenly 'happens' on the screen, if you get me.

It is not an overheating issue. I talked to a chap in PC World today about it. It's a PCW unit and he said the spec wouldn't overheat like that (of course, he may be wrong, but I have a bloomin noisy fan and the CPU in tests never went over 55 degrees). Intels website says operating range goes up to 65 degrees C, so again I don't think it's overheating.

I will re-burn slowly my ISO tomorrow morning and reinstall, but in the meantime, do you guys have any other ideas or tests to try first?

Thank you!

Righto. Looking at my Event Viewer for the times of two crashes, I can glean absolutely nothing...

One crash happened at 11:19. This crash lasted 4 minutes. The event log shows these entries for 11:19:
* I was installing some driver updates when the crash happened, although I can pretty much confirm it was not my NVIdia card or its drivers that are causing the crash - re-installing Windows 7 AND taking the graphics card out (using onboard chip) still creates the crash, before 7 has even seen the graphics card)

My next crash was at 11:30. This lasted around 5 minutes. But there were no logs written to the event viewer at all during this...?!

Any further ideas before I re-install with a fresh burn?