Computer randomly freezing.

[poliogorilla]

Hi. I've been having this problem ever since i first built the computer a couple of weeks ago and me being not very tech savvy, i have basically ran out of ideas. When i first built the computer i booted it all up using the hard drive out of my old pc. That's when i first started to notice the freezes and i presumed that it was just a failing hard drive (even though it worked fine in my other pc), I guess i just wanted peace of mind. Anyway, i got my brand new ssd yesterday and installed windows. Installed the motherboard drivers and the graphics drivers of the disc and everything was running fine, i thought the problem had gone away but it hadn't. My pc had froze while installing a game. No black screen, it just locks up completely unable to do anything unless i hard reset. Now it freezes pretty much within 5 minutes of me entering windows through the log in screen.
I've done a bit of troubleshooting but i can't think of anything else i can do of the top of my head.

Things i have done:
:I thought it might be the GPU so i took it out and swapped it for my old HD 5550-the freezing continued.
:I ran furmark and prime95 to check temps. The gpu didn't get above 70 and my cpu didn't get above 58 on max load.
: I swapped the RAM round in the channels, freezing continued. I tried running it from individual sticks and swapping them around but no.
:i ran windows memory diagnostic tool and found no errors. I'm going to run memtest overnight to see if i can pick up any ram errors.

Things i have't done:
Updated bios. Only wanted to do this on a last resort as i heard it can be tricky.
ran memtest
plus a whole lot more i'm guessing.

I have a funny inkling it might be the motherboard. I got a post screen but no beep and i thought the m5a97 had a built in speaker, plus this thing feels like junk. It bends so much plugging things in even with light pressure. Anyways i'm no computer wizard.

Any help would be much appreciated as this was my little project over Christmas and it's not gone to plan at all so far! i'm on my last whim here. Thanks.


Spec: AMD FX 6300
Asus M5a97 r20
Asus HD radeon 7850 2gb
Corsair 1600 4gb x2
Seasonic m11 620 w
sandisk ssd 128
wdc 1tb

 

[badger906]

I stop reading after I got "I installed the drivers off the disc".

boot into safe mode and download all the latest most up to date drivers for everything.
chipset drivers youll have to use asus website, gpu ones from Ati.

dont bother with the bios for now. as hopefully doing the above will fix it.

im goimg to point the finger mainly at the gpu drivers bundled with the card. the ones on the disc for my 6950 would cause it to blue screen quite frequently. updating them solved it.

 

[TVeblen]

Just to keep things straight:

The freezing occurs over 2 installations of Windows: one on the old hard drive, one on the SSD.

• Both installations were clean installs?
• Is the old hard drive still connected (with OS on SSD)?

You've installed 2 different ATI graphics cards and their drivers.

• Did you completely uninstall the previous card before installing the replacement card?
• Are you using the same driver package for both cards?

While tracking down the problem, be sure to simplify the system. Only the bare minimum parts installed. That includes any wireless mice and keyboards.

Have you tried Safe Mode yet?

Have you made any changes to your BIOS settings?

Good advice from badger. It is best to use the most current drivers for the motherboard and devices. The ones on the CD can be quite old.

Note: Asus has been shipping boards without a built in speaker for a while now. They rely on the LED codes. For old timers like me you've got to buy a piezo speaker if you want to hear the beep codes.

 

[poliogorilla]

Both installations were clean installs yes. The hard drive i first used is now back in my old pc working fine. I'm using the same driver package for both cards but it has started to freeze on the log in screen mainly, even using my old card the 5500hd. Which has made me think it might not be the card after all?. Safe mode works just fine, no freezes at all on safe mode as of yet.

I installed all the new drivers of the websites, all the ones i could anyway. I was unable to install the chipset driver and the new graphics driver in safe mode. It kept coming up with an error message saying 'cannot load detection driver' so i'm guessing you can't download them in safe mode? which creates a pickle seeing as i cannot log in to windows at all.

I updated the BIOS last night to the latest one, i also reset the CMOS by reseating the battery. I also ran memtest last night for 6 hours and it found no errors on my ram. At the moment i'm swinging towards the motherboard being faulty but if it was faulty would it allow me to access safe mode without freezes?. I'm not sure. Feedback is much appreciated guys, i'm all out of ideas. My next move is probably RMA the board.

 

[TVeblen]

When the system runs in Safe Mode but not in Standard Mode it indicates a hardware problem or Driver problem (you knew that).

So now we need to isolate what component or driver is causing the crash.

Yes, you can't install graphic drivers in Safe Mode.
Not being able to install chipset drivers raises an eyebrow. You may be right about a bad motherboard.

A couple of ideas, starting with the motherboard:

• Go into the BIOS settings and disable all the onboard devices you can: LAN, Sound, etc.
• Obviously: uninstall (from Windows in Safe Mode) any add-on cards and remove those too.
• Then restart and see if it can go into Windows

For the Video card:

• In Safe Mode
• Go to Control Panel > Programs > and Uninstall all Graphics Software, then Driver
• If not available in Programs, then go to Device Manager and Uninstall the Graphics there.
• Restart the computer (leave card installed)
• Windows will load without the AMD driver. If it was the AMD driver causing the problem then Windows will run in Standard Mode and install a Generic Driver. You will be ask to restart - do it.

If it crashes on the generic Windows driver then you might be looking at a bad video card.