My system is freezing/locking.

I've tried removing and replacing the non-system drives, checking memory, exiting software, running memory tests, just about everything I can think of. Finally I installed Debugging Tools, thinking that I could at least analyze a crash dump, but I don't know how to generate a crash dump, and it apparently doesn't happen automatically because I've crashed about a half dozen times since installing Debugging Tools and there's no *.dmp file to analyze anywhere on my system.

Symptoms: Everything freezes. The mouse and keyboard are both unresponsive (so I can't use CTRL-ALT-DEL to open the task manager), and even the time and date are frozen in the lower right corner. I am running Windows 7 Pro. The behavior started about two weeks ago shortly after installing an HP-PVR device, but I've tried unplugging that device and deactivating all the software and drivers associated with it, and I still experience freezes. I thought the system might be getting too hot, but the temps are in normal range.

What do I do now. How do I get something to analyze?

Hey freewheeling. We should take the rest of your troubleshooting over here, off of the other thread. I think the next step would be to update all your drivers. Try RadarSync. Its free, and it finds the most current drivers better than Windows' internal driver seeker does. (It also finds updates for all your installed programs).

stevieray said:

Hey freewheeling. We should take the rest of your troubleshooting over here, off of the other thread. I think the next step would be to update all your drivers. Try RadarSync. Its free, and it finds the most current drivers better than Windows' internal driver seeker does. (It also finds updates for all your installed programs).

Click to expand...

That's inspired. Before you said it I got a program called "Driver Detective" that checked all my drivers, and found that the NVIDIA display driver was out of date. I also checked the event viewer, and found that most of the errors were in the Service Control Manager. These were the errors with the three largest counts:

21 Errors! (Event ID 7016): NVIDIA Display Driver Service service has reported an invalid current state 32.

15 Errors! (Event ID 7001): 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.

11 Errors! (Event ID 7031): The Windows Driver Foundation-User-mode Driver Framework service terminated unexpectedly. It has done this 1 time(s). The following corrective action will be taken in 120000 milliseconds: Restart the service.

Click to expand...

I've been running a RAM test for the last eight hours just to make sure the RAM is OK, and there haven't been any errors. I suppose it's wishful thinking to believe that this was all because of an NVIDIA display driver that was out of date. It could also be the USB drivers, which have been problematic in the past, so I might get a PCI USB card, and use that exclusively for my HD-PVR. I also replaced the 32-bit Java, and installed 64-bit Java.

The other possibility, if none of this works out, is to install a different version of Windows (XP-Pro) on one of the drives, and see if that kicks up the same kind of fuss. If it does then it must be hardware.

Oh, it definitely could be nVidia related. their 190 series video drivers caused a ton of issues during the spring and summer... check out the older Seven forum or nVidia forums from that time and you'll see crashes, freezes and BSOD's due to the 190 video drivers all over the place.

Try the latest driver first, and if that doesn't work, the older 185 series drivers might work better on your system than the newer ones.

stevieray said:

Oh, it definitely could be nVidia related. their 190 series video drivers caused a ton of issues during the spring and summer... check out the older Seven forum or nVidia forums from that time and you'll see crashes, freezes and BSOD's due to the 190 video drivers all over the place.

Try the latest driver first, and if that doesn't work, the older 185 series drivers might work better on your system than the newer ones.

Click to expand...

So far so good. It's been working now for over 12 hours (more on less constantly as an HD media server) without a hiccup. Thanks so much for your help, Stevie.

freewheeling said:

I've tried removing and replacing the non-system drives, checking memory, exiting software, running memory tests, just about everything I can think of. Finally I installed Debugging Tools, thinking that I could at least analyze a crash dump, but I don't know how to generate a crash dump, and it apparently doesn't happen automatically because I've crashed about a half dozen times since installing Debugging Tools and there's no *.dmp file to analyze anywhere on my system.

Symptoms: Everything freezes. The mouse and keyboard are both unresponsive (so I can't use CTRL-ALT-DEL to open the task manager), and even the time and date are frozen in the lower right corner. I am running Windows 7 Pro. The behavior started about two weeks ago shortly after installing an HP-PVR device, but I've tried unplugging that device and deactivating all the software and drivers associated with it, and I still experience freezes. I thought the system might be getting too hot, but the temps are in normal range.

What do I do now. How do I get something to analyze?

Click to expand...

Type eventvwr in search. go to windows log>application tab. look for errors ( they have red in the left hand column) that have app hang, app crash, etc in their names. when you find them (there is a lot of data) use the snipping tool (built in see pic) to make a screenshot and the attachment icon (shaped like a paperclip) in the reply form

See Pics

Ken J+

I spoke too soon.

Froze up right in the middle of a recording. I also couldn't install XP-Pro because I get a virus message suggesting that I need to run chkdisk. I don't think I've got a virus. I think XP had some kind of a problem with either my dynamic drive (with a hidden partition) or with SATAII drives in general. I've been running anti-virus software (Trend Micro) pretty religiously for years. I never open any email attachments unless I know before hand that they'll be sent, and exactly what they are. A virus is unlikely, but not impossible, I guess.

zigzag3143 said:

Type eventvwr in search. go to windows log>application tab. look for errors ( they have red in the left hand column) that have app hang, app crash, etc in their names. when you find them (there is a lot of data) use the snipping tool (built in see pic) to make a screenshot and the attachment icon (shaped like a paperclip) in the reply form

Click to expand...

I sorted the errors by severity, and there are both application and administrative. The two most recent freezes happened today at 5:17PM and again at 9:12PM, determined by the fact that the time indicator froze.

I'm getting sort of desperate. Nothing seems to work, and there's not much to go on (at least for me).

I would bet dollar to doughnuts that this is a power supply/heating problem... You have a TON of peripherals for an unknown PSU... Find out the wattage of your power supply and what do you mean when you say your cooling is 30W??? Under powered and overheating?? let us know...

Tews said:

I would bet dollar to doughnuts that this is a power supply/heating problem... You have a TON of peripherals for an unknown PSU... Find out the wattage of your power supply and what do you mean when you say your cooling is 30W??? Under powered and overheating?? let us know...

Click to expand...

I meant 300W, but I've since upgraded to a 550W power supply and there's no change. I have three drives that I generally use, but they'll all SATAII and low power. The IDE drive I have on there was just something I stuck on recently to see if I could run Windows XP on it, but I was getting freezes when I only had one drive connected so I doubt that's it.

The CPU temp is 36 degrees according to the bios, and the system temp is 41 degrees. Overheating?? And the display hardware wouldn't be overheating, because I wasn't even using the display at the time of the last two freezes. It was turned off.

It went all night and then froze again around noon. I just really don't think it's the power supply. The only things I had running was the HD-PVR (which is the whole point of this computer), two PCI cards (a legacy Belkin wireless card that I don't really need to run and a phone card that I sometimes use for faxing.) I had one LCD screen going. Everything else was on the motherboard, including the graphics driving the LCD display.

In other words, I don't think the power supply will solve the problem.

Is it possible the USB bus is bad? Could I have a short somewhere, or a loose lead? I'm using an old KVM switch to connect to a keyboard and one monitor, but have been using it for years. I used it with this computer for 6 months before there were any problems. And I'm using it now on my other computer, because my Windows 7 box is frozen again.

The reason I say it's not the power supply is that I've already tried swapping it with the 300W that the system came with, and it freezes the same way. No difference. I've also ran this without the HD-PVR connected, and it still froze.

Could one of the PCI devices be bad, like the Belkin wireless modem? Could that cause this sort of thing, even when I'm not using it? Other than that, there's only software. Not applications, but the OS stuff.

I'll try unplugging the modem.

Just for grins, here's what I think.

I think something in the OS is corrupted. The drivers are all "right" and up-to-date. A number of other folks on the forum have been experiencing exactly the same thing in Windows 7. They do various stuff, but if and when the symptoms stop there's no particular rhyme or reason for it. Some take out some memory, others do something else.

It would be nice if there were some consistent pattern to the "solutions" but there isn't.

freewheeling said:

The behavior started about two weeks ago shortly after installing an HP-PVR device, but I've tried unplugging that device and deactivating all the software and drivers associated with it, and I still experience freezes.

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Have you tried a System Restore prior to that time? There are probably still entries in the registry pertaining to this. Drivers can also hook themselves into services, some of which are scheduled to execute when certain criteria are met.

Dwarf said:

freewheeling said:

The behavior started about two weeks ago shortly after installing an HP-PVR device, but I've tried unplugging that device and deactivating all the software and drivers associated with it, and I still experience freezes.

Click to expand...

Have you tried a System Restore prior to that time? There are probably still entries in the registry pertaining to this. Drivers can also hook themselves into services, some of which are scheduled to execute when certain criteria are met.

Click to expand...

I have no system restore points that would be useful. I did an "easy transfer" of my original installation (which was on a dynamic disk, which I hear is a bad idea), but there are no restore point from before the transfer, and no restore points on the original installation (on the dynamic disk) from before the point where the freezes/lockups started. So that avenue won't work.

I could install Windows Seven again after repartitioning one of the drives, just to see if that has the same problem (although I can't activate it without a huge hassle).

There is some discussion about a problem with some antivirus software, but I'm pretty sure I've run the system without that as part of my test protocol, and it still froze.

I think it is possible (though not likely) that there's a problem with my current PSU, because it's pretty low quality. But fixing that probably won't solve the freezing problem, because I've run this system with the factory-installed PSU, and it still froze.

I've swapped out everything I can think of, with the exception of the KVM switch. But is that likely to be causing system freezes, especially when it works fine and has done for a couple of years.

The only thing I can think of that I haven't done yet is run some sort of diagnostic of the hardware and drivers, but I don't even know if there is such a thing. I *have* run memory diagnostics, though. If one of my memory sticks has gone bad, it wasn't bad to begin with, because I haven't made any changes there.

Something else worth trying?

I set up a new user account, and am running Windows 7 from that just in case something in my user account is causing the problem. Not very likely, but it's an easy thing to do.

I've currently gone about 12 hours without a freeze/lockup. Don't know what I did, and I've gone this long before and the freezes continued. Here's all I've done:

Create a new user account to run the HD-PVR media server on the USB bus (zero power drain on the system, because it's self-powered)

Removed two small PCI cards that I wasn't using anyway (a fax card and an older wireless network card). Also remove a Logitech camera that I also wasn't using.

Pressed down on the SATA connectors on the motherboard.

That's all I've done. Have no idea whether any of that actually made a difference. All of the stuff I removed had been working fine for a few months before the freezes started.

Oh yes, I also sacrificed a few of my nose hairs as burnt offerings to the computer gods. Maybe that's what did it.

I think it was the hair! Heh.

If the system works fine for a few days, then you could begin reinstalling the hardware, one piece every few days, and see if it freezes. With a little persistence, you'll narrow it down to one card... then you just need to figure out if its hardware (the card itself) or software (bad driver, incompatible program).

stevieray said:

I think it was the hair! Heh.

If the system works fine for a few days, then you could begin reinstalling the hardware, one piece every few days, and see if it freezes. With a little persistence, you'll narrow it down to one card... then you just need to figure out if its hardware (the card itself) or software (bad driver, incompatible program).

Click to expand...

I think the most likely culprit is the Logitech camera, so will try that first. I just received the new Thermaltake TR2 power supply, which is much better quality than my no-name brand, even though it's 50W less (500W vs 550W). It's possible that the cheap power supply just had some iffy connections too. 500W should be more than enough to run my stuff.