Computer Randomly freezes

My Desktop System is a Dell XPS-420 which came with windows vista 32bit.
My wife's system is a a Dell Inspiron 1530 Laptop which came with windows vista 64bit

I installed Windows 7 64bit on both machines and then the problem sarted. The computers would lock up at random times and the only way to recover would be a hard reset.

I was searching the forums and came across a microsoft hotfix that was supposed to fix the random freezes. I installed the hotfix on both machines but the systems still froze(locked up) from time to time.

At my wife's request I reinstalled her original operating system which was windows vista. She has had no lock ups or freezes since.

I was not willing to go back to vista on my desktop machine as I like windows 7 very much. So to trouble shoot the problem I ran msconfig and disabled all the non-microsoft services and startup items and rebooted my machine. After about 4 hours of waiting the system froze at the logon screen after the screen saver was active for a short time. So now I am left with only microsoft services running on my machine and the system froze.

Then I used msconfig to disable all the microsoft services. No freeze after about 2 hours of surfing the web. So I have enabled half of the disabled microsoft services and here I sit waiting for my system to freeze again. How long should I wait to see if my system is going to freeze as this lock up/freeze situation only occurs at entirely random times. I haven't locked up/frozen yet and it's been about 2 hours.

Please provide us with your Event Viewer administrative logs by following these steps:


Click Start Menu
Type eventvwr into Search programs and files (do not hit enter)
Right click eventvwr.exe and click Run as administrator
Expand Custom Views
Click Administrative Events
Right click Administrative Events
Save all Events in Custom View As...
Save them in a folder where you will remember which folder and save as Errors.evtx
Go to where you saved Errors.evtx
Right click Errors.evtx -> send to -> compressed (zipped) folder
Upload the .zip file here.

Here is the zip file

markmandyderek said:

Here is the zip file

Several different problems most of which point to a HD problem (HD 3)

There are:

Bad blocks
controller error (iastor.sys)

I would start by running a chkdsk for the HD
I would also run a system file check to verify the OS


Disk Check

SFC /SCANNOW Command - System File Checker

How to use the System File Checker tool to troubleshoot missing or corrupted system files on Windows Vista or on Windows 7

The HD3 as listed in Disk Management is my Western Digital My Book USB External Hard Drive. I ran chkdsk on this drive and it reported no problems with the disk.

I also ran sfc /scannow and it didn't find any problems.

See the attached jpg

markmandyderek said:

The HD3 as listed in Disk Management is my Western Digital My Book USB External Hard Drive. I ran chkdsk on this drive and it reported no problems with the disk.

I also ran sfc /scannow and it didn't find any problems.

See the attached jpg

Good news. The majority of the HD related errors were bad blocks so not critical but there were more than 100 controller errors.

If you want clear event viewer then wait say for a day and upload that. I will have a lot less to look through and will know when the freeze took place.

Here are the errors for the past 24 hrs. It should be noted that I had problems installing an updated video driver and pairing problems with my bluetooth mouse and keyboard which dirtied that admin logs

markmandyderek said:

Here are the errors for the past 24 hrs. It should be noted that I had problems installing an updated video driver and pairing problems with my bluetooth mouse and keyboard which dirtied that admin logs

Almost exclusively IDvault

That program (IDVault) is part of my constant guard protection suite offered by my cable/internet/phone company.

markmandyderek said:

That program (IDVault) is part of my constant guard protection suite offered by my cable/internet/phone company.

That doesnt make it work unfortunately.