Freeze After Idle, Not a Sleeping Issue

Hello and thank you in advance.

I had WHS2011 installed on a rig and everything was fine. I decided to turn it into a HTPC and installed Windows 7. It then started freezing on idle. As long as I used it it was fine but when I left it alone it froze up. I tried a few things but finally just wiped the HD and started anew. Immediately the same problem.

I turned off every sleep/hibernation setting to no avail. There are no warning flags in Device Manager. My video card has the latest drivers.

The strange thing is it runs fine in Safe Mode and for about six hours or so under Diagnostic Boot but then freezes.

I am at a loss

The system is a i3 CPU with 8 gigs of RAM, GeForce 460GT GPU and a couple of SATA hard drives (350gig and 1.5tb)

Thoughts?

Howdy,

Have you tried turning on Driver Verifier? Instructions are present in this thread. Note that in addition to not turning on Low Resource Simulation, also do not turn on IRP Logging and Force pending I/O requests. The former is useless when dealing with crashdumps and only causes slowdown, and the latter can cause false positives like Low Resource Simulation.

Hopefully if things go well, instead of freezing permanently, after a couple minutes of it being frozen it will BSOD, in which case you can then follow the instructions in this thread to post some necessary information.

In addition to this information, I must ask just to clarify, are you saying that it runs perfectly fine in Safe Mode, but in Diagnostic Boot it will only last until around 6 hours? Also, what kind of freeze are you experiencing? Can you still move the mouse cursor?

My apologies for not being more clear. I have no issues running in Safe Mode but when I set it to Diagnostic Boot it freezes after about 6 hours. With normal boot it freezes up after anywhere from 20mins to 6 hours.

When the computer is running in normal mode and it freezes everything stops. The mouse will not move and the clock stops (that is how I can tell how long the system was working before the freeze). Its not going to sleep (I have that turned off) and the lights and fans all remain just as active. Programs such as Teamviewer and Windows Live Mesh log out and connection can not be reestablished.

The only solution is a hard reboot.

I will try the Driver Verifyer when I get home from work today.

Hmm, it just froze, no BSOD

Can be a problem with your RAM chip/chips.

If you have more than 1 RAM chip try to take one out and let it run and see if it still crash and if it dosnt crash swap the other one and see what happens.

sorry for bad grammar.

These are usually hardware related:

• Monitor temperatures during the following tests.
  
  Use the following programs to monitor the temperatures.
  • Real Temp is a good CPU temperature monitor.
  • Speccy - System Information - Free Download will monitor all hardware temperatures.
  • HWiNFO, HWiNFO32 & HWiNFO64 - Hardware Information and Analysis Tools can be inaccurate for CPU temperatures, but is a good program for GPU temperature monitoring.
  
  
  • Use FurMark: VGA Stress Test, Graphics Card and GPU Stability Test, Burn-in Test, OpenGL Benchmark and GPU Temperature | oZone3D.Net to test the graphics card GPU. Then use the |MG| Video Memory Stress Test 1.7.116 Download to test your graphics card memory. Let the memory test run for at least seven passes; the more the better.
    
    
    
  • Run Hardware - Stress Test With Prime95 to determine any hardware problems. Run all three tests for a few hours each. If you get errors, stop the test and post back here.
  
  
  
• Run the boot version of Memtest86+ paying close attention to Parts 2 and 3 of the tutorial. Also, in case Memtest86+ misses anything and comes up with no errors, run the extended version of the Windows Memory Diagnostics Tool for at least five passes. These you may want to run overnight since they take a long time to complete (run them an hour before bed each of the next two nights and check before going to sleep that they are still running).
  
  If you swap any memory components, follow these steps for ESD safety:
  
  1. Shut down and turn off your computer.
  2. Unplug all power supplies to the computer (AC Power then battery for laptops, AC power for desktops)
  3. Hold down the power button for 30 seconds to close the circuit and ensure all power drains from components.
  4. Make sure you are grounded by using proper grounding techniques, i.e. work on an anti-static workbench, anti-static desk, or an anti-static pad. Hold something metallic while touching it to the anti-static surface, or use an anti-static wristband to attach to the anti-static material while working.
  
  Once these steps have been followed, it is safe to remove and replace components within your computer.
  
  
• Run Disk Check with both boxes checked for all HDDs and with Automatically fix file system errors checked for all SSDs. Post back your logs for the checks after finding them using Check Disk (chkdsk) - Read Event Viewer Log
  
  
• Use HD Diagnostic to determine your hard disk manufacturer and run more intensive tests using the manufacturer diagnostics also found within that link. If you have a Samsung hard disk, use the Seagate SeaTools to test the drive. Run all possible tests in the diagnostics to make sure the disk is not faulty.

Wow. I took out one of the 4 gig RAM sticks and its been running fine for nearly 24 hours. I guess problem is solved

Thank you everyone

Spoke too soon. Froze at 23hrs and change

Alright, proceed through the steps in my post and let us know the results of the diagnostics/tests.