Windows 7 randomly freezes

Hello all,

I'm having the exact same problem. Random freeze ups where the Keyboard, and mouse and everything just locks up and the only recorse is to do a hard power down and reboot. Sometimes just the freeze up and sometimes with the odd sounds as mentioned above.

I never get a BSOD though just the freeze ups, one thing that is really odd though is that it does it a lot while viewing pictures but it can happen at any time.

I've tried a fresh install (several times), updating drivers, and BIOS and yet the problem still persits.

I thought maybe it was my Boreas MTEC controller on my case but I changed cases and went back to air cooling and have the same damn problem.

Could this be related to ASUS motherboards, I have another Windows 7 install on my HTPC and it never locks up but it has a MSI MB and an AMD processor.

I hope someone finds a solution to this problem. I don't recall having these issues with XP 64 when I first built the gaming rig, but Windows 7 has given me many issues.

Is it possible as mentioned above the install DVD could be corrupt? I used a different one to install Windows 7 on my HTPC.

My Specs for the problem machine are

i7 965 CPU (Not overclocked)
EVGA 295 Video Card
12G Corsair Dominator RAM
ASUS PT6 MB
Windows 7 64Bit OS
2 Western Digital 300 VelociRaptor in Raid 0
PC Power & Cooling 850W Power Supply

Thanks guys I will take your advice and give it a try and post my results.

Ran Memtest last night came out good, also ran HD test on my first HD in my Raid array which came out good also, I started the second HD test this morning before work and will view the results when I get home.

If all is well I plan on doing a fresh install and drivers and see if I still get freeze ups, then I'll start adding my third party apps and try to figure which one is the culprit.

Finished scanning my Hard Drives all good there, and I did a fresh install of Windows 7 Professional 64Bit.

I then did all the Windows updates, installed my video, audio and chipset drivers and everything was working great.

However, when I started installing my antivirus my system froze. I rebooted and it appeared the antivirus installed but when I tried to scan I got some errors related to the antivirus. I'm using The Shield Antivirus 2010 by the way. I uninstalled the antivirus and left my machine running all night.

When I woke up this morning my machine was in sleep and it came right out it with one click of the mouse. I'm hopeful that the antivirus was the issue with my freeze ups. I am going let the machine run for a few days without installing anything else and if I don't get any freeze ups then I'll switch to another antivirus.

What about ESET Smart Security 4, it got really good reviews two years in a row with Maximum PC? I was thinking of trying that one. MSE scored an 8 out of 10 and ESET scored 9 and also beat out Norton for TOP choice. I also like the advanced features that ESET has, but looks like MSE would be a good choice also.