pc crashes when idle

[luka1222]

hi guys have a problem that hopefully someone can help me with. my pc will crash and start makeing a high pitch noise from inside(not the speakers) when the pc is left idle. it usually happens after between 1 to 5 hours. never happens when iim using it. when it does the screen will be black in power saving mode by then i guess and ive noticed the mouse led i off. nothing works to get out of it, i have to hold the power button and force it to turn off.
this started happening when i recently updated from xp to windows 7. i have an old p5k se asus motherboard that doesnt nessesarilly have win7 drivers so i thought it was this. but i have tryed as hard as i can to find uptodate drivers and this dont work. however im still unsore if the drivers i have are really up to date. also tryed resetting bios by taking out battery(just in case).
well thats it im stuck hope someone can help!!!1

 

[Mark Phelps]

With a black screen, it's impossible to see what was there last before the PC crashes.

First thing I would do is go into power saving mode and set the screen timeout to NEVER. That will leave the screen on -- so when it starts making the noise, you can see what's on screen (if anything).

Also, if it's going into sleep or hibernation, and you can't get it out, then turn those off as well. A hard-reset (pressing the power button) is never a good thing. Better to have to turn the machine off properly than having to resort to hard-reset to get it back working.