Random freezes on Atom/Ion HTPC

[tlewis]

Machine freezes randomly and usually requires a hard-reboot.

Most freezes happen on resume from standby; sometimes it will recover within a few minutes, other times it will not recover after one hour and needs to be rebooted.

Once in a while the video driver will crash and auto-recover, but this does not coincide with the freezing. No BSOD, no critical system events before crash.

Memtest passes, Furmark and Prime95 pass.

I think it's the nVidia Ion driver, but according to nvidia's website I'm running the most up-to-date driver, which is the driver that shipped with the pc.

Shuttle XS35GT
Atom D510
Ion2
2gb ram
80gb ssd
using VGA output to 24" monitor
Fanless system with good heat dissipation; freezes not due to overheating, since they occur usually when the machine is "cold."

Windows 7 HP 32bit OEM
Less than one year old machine, os install less than one year old.
Ran sfc /scannow and no problems.

Any ideas? Thanks for any help!

Thomas

 

[Dave76]

Cold boot issues are usually caused by RAM, do you have any other RAM you can install for testing?

 

[tlewis]

I do have some other ram; I'll swap it out and see what happens.

 

[Dave76]

Let us know if different RAM helps.

 

[tlewis]

thanks for the ram tip... so far no new freezes. I replaced CL6 stick with CL5, if that might make any difference.

I also re-installed the nvidia driver, and that fixed the incorrect driver warning in device manager for hd audio device.

If it freezes again I'll post back with more info.

 

[Dave76]

You're welcome.
Thanks for the update.

As long as the RAM is compatible, CL5 is fine.

Let us know if you get any more freezes.