Windows 7 Random Lockups vs Perfect Vista x64 operation

Hi guys,

I'm not one to usually post asking for help, but I'm at my wits end of things to try after wasting a whole evening trying to figure it out yesterday.

I started testing windows 7 RTM on a couple of PCs at home to see if I could make the transition. Basically I have 3 PCs, one dev PC downstairs, wifes upstairs, and a home theatre PC that serves the house.

I have had no problems upgrading the downstairs and upstairs PC but I'm at my wits end on the media PC (which specs are in my profile)

The media PC has been running rock solid for about 2 years on vista x64, but I wanted to move it to Windows 7 based on my evaluation and the new WMC. Things looked good, however I keep this PC on all the time since it serves stuff to other PCs and does things like removing commercials over night etc. Anyways at about 8am in the morning it just halted, no blue screen, no activity just halted. Need to do a hard power off. Anyways here are the things I have done so far to troubleshoot. All have lead to a lockup at some point or another:

1) Upgraded the MB bios to latest
2) Turned off on board audio (use ATIs), turned off 1394, serial, parrellel, secondary SATA chipset
3) Took out 2 dimms (run at 2gB)
4) Thinking it could be heat (but had no temp evidence to support it), opened the case and put a fan on the components.
5) Upgraded the Intel Matrix Manager to latest release
6) Tried tweaking some voltages on memory

Its just the weirdest thing, but I'm use to seeing a bluescreen or an error like that and with this I have nothing to really go on.

All my attemps have sort of left me at a loss, not really sure what component to really concentrate on. I'm thinking memory but I'm not sure.

My system is in my profile but its basically a
Q6600
P35 Chipset with 4GB RAM(4x1GB)
4 500GB HDs (1 RAID 0, 1 RAID 5)
ATI HD 4800

Since I was running stable with vista x64 I can't really come up with why I'm not running stable with Windows 7. Could it really be hardware if I was running fine before?? Does Win7 access memory differently? It leads me to believe its drivers, but I'm not running really anything extravegent. If anyone has any suggestions or methods to try let me know.

Thanks

TM

TM

two things I noticed the raid (win 7 is finiky abt them), and what kind of errors are in event viewer app tab?

Ken

You mentioned that you played with the memory voltages but how bout adjusting the northbridge voltages up a bit. This worked for me and I was having the same problems as you had, stable in Vista but not in Win7. The same adjustment has worked for a few people so far. That's all I can think of for now.

Chev,

What is a good voltage on the NB, where you experiencing these kind of hard lockups or BSOD's?

Ken,

In the event viewer the only type of errors I get are errors like Windows search failed to start, because a file it was using was corrupted because of the last lockup. I can clear that up by running a chkdsk.

If I were to test random hardware components:

Aside from memory, PSU, what should I look at?

Just to update this thread if anyone has any ideas. I upped the NB voltage a bit and have been running stable under full load for about 4 hours doing various memtests and prime 95.

To note however the last two times the PC became unresponsive it has been under zero load with low temps (so I don't think heat or load is the problem). So I'll leave it idling over night and see what happens. Does the zero load as well as load halts point to anything in particular?

TommyboyCAN said:

If I were to test random hardware components:

Aside from memory, PSU, what should I look at?

Graphics card - is the fan not working perhaps? Or has the heatsink got knocked loose? Might be worth using a tool like speedfan to check what temps are.

arfster said:

Graphics card - is the fan not working perhaps? Or has the heatsink got knocked loose? Might be worth using a tool like speedfan to check what temps are.

Checked out my card last night actually. Temps were in the 50s but for fun I manually turned the fan speed up.

The thing that gets me is it locked up again just 20 minutes or so after stressing it last night. This was at an idle state, checking my real temp log, all the temps were nice and low (30s). Does the fact that it locks up at an idle state, point to anything else. I'm looking for helpful suggestions before I tear apart this rig and/or just go back to vista.

There seems to be power issues in Win7 across the board. Check your power plan settings and wiggle them around.