Randomly Locking Up

[Mousti]

Hey guys, a few months ago I brought a brand new Asus G73 after being a Mac user for about 3 years. I'm very happy with it, however, after leaving the computer on standby accidentally for 2 weeks whilst away on holiday, my computer now frequently and randomly crashes.

Everything freezes, if there's any sound playing it will loop the last few milliseconds. I can't even move my mouse. Earlier in the same day I had been downloading a game off Steam, my internet was pretty slow and I put it down to windows updater, so, I closed it via taskmanager.

I put my crashes down to this and did a system restore to earlier that day. Every thing seemed to be working fine for a day or so. Then, suddenly they start happening again, I googled "Windows 7 randomly freezing" and found a blog that linked to a hotfix from Microsoft only 3 weeks old, I downloaded this and it didn't help. Unfortunately, after downloading the hotfix, it appears as if I've lost the System Restores before that date, so I can't restore to before I left the system on for 2 weeks. I run SystemCare Pro daily to help with possible registry problems and I have Norton 360 suite which I am running in the background now scanning for viruses as I type.

Has anyone got any help/advice for me?

 

[richc46]

The best advice, is stop that registry cleaning stuff. If not the cause of this problem it will cause them in the future.
Use Microsoft Security Essentials for your AV. No known problems with it as yet.

That being said.
Go to device mangager and check your sound and grapics card Make sure up to date and not yellow warning signs.

 

[Mousti]

I've checked in Device Manager and nothing seems to have the yellow warning sign apart from the only selection under "Storage controllers". It's called "AN1LVRB7 IDE Controller"

Windows cannot load the device driver for this hardware. The driver may be corrupted or missing. (Code 39)

I tried updating it, but no joy and it appears as if it's not digitally signed by anyone.

 

[richc46]

Right click on that controller thing and a dropdown will appear, right click on that and then properties, Then tell me everything that you see.

 

[Mousti]

Alright, will do that in a tick, just typing whilst I still can. Catalyst Control Centre (I have an ATi Graphics card) appears to be crashing whenever I login now. Never noticed it before, but there would usually be the ATi icon down in the task bar.

Now, windows is telling me "Catalyst Control Centre: Host application has stopped working" "A problem caused the program to stop working correctly. Windows will close the program and notify yu if a solution is available"

I've downloaded the latest version from ATi and installed it now.

Will check that storage driver now.

 

[Mousti]

AN1LVRB7 IDE Controller

Device Type : Storage controller

Manufacturer: Unknown

Location: On extended IO bus

Device Status: Windows cannot load the device driver for this hardware. The driver may be corrupted or missing. (Code 39).

Driver Provider: Unknown
Driver Date: Not available
Driver Version: Not available.
Digital Signer: Not digitally signed.

 

[richc46]

Nothing even on google about that. Look, Im sure everything is ok, but just run a virus scan and download and run malwarebytes.

Bottom line. I do not like your problem in conjuction with something I do not know and cant research.

 

[Mousti]

Ran Malwarebytes and it found over 20 problems, all starting with "Adware" 20 of which were in the registry keys and one in the registry data items. Also found 2 files which it seemed to have stemed from. All of which were deleted succesfully. Everything seems to be ok at the moment. Will report back later. Thanks a lot!

 

[richc46]

Glad to hear it. Listen to the meerkat and you will not go wrong.

 

[Mousti]

I'm sad to report it's started happening again. I'm really stumped as to what could be causing this.

 

[Mousti]

It's happening every few seconds now. Doesn't even appear to be a pattern to it..

 

[richc46]

AN1LVRB7 IDE Controller

Device Type : Storage controller

Manufacturer: Unknown

Location: On extended IO bus

Device Status: Windows cannot load the device driver for this hardware. The driver may be corrupted or missing. (Code 39).

Driver Provider: Unknown
Driver Date: Not available
Driver Version: Not available.
Digital Signer: Not digitally signed.

To be sure it is not the hard drive go to the website of your HD manufacturer and test Hard Drive, backup your stuff.

 

[Mousti]

How would I find out my manufacter of my HDD? I looked up the website I bought the computer from, but it doesn't give the make, nor does device manager. It should be noted, I'm speaking to you now from Safe Mode where everything seems stable enough.

 

[Mousti]

AN1LVRB7 IDE Controller

Device Type : Storage controller

Manufacturer: Unknown

Location: On extended IO bus

Device Status: Windows cannot load the device driver for this hardware. The driver may be corrupted or missing. (Code 39).

Driver Provider: Unknown
Driver Date: Not available
Driver Version: Not available.
Digital Signer: Not digitally signed.

Go to the website of your HD manufacturer and test Hard Drive, backup your stuff.

Actually, now that I'm in safe mode, that driver isn't showing up.

 

[richc46]

OK Good, works in safe mode

How to troubleshoot a problem by performing a clean boot in Windows Vista or in Windows 7

In safe mode, do the above.

Then boot in regular mode.
If it works, then follow the instructions of clean boot to find the cause of the problem

If it does not work in clean boot its a driver. The best way to correct that is, in safe mode, use system restore and go back a week before the problem began.

 

[Mousti]

I've tried that, and it's not seeming to crash anymore. I couldn't get it to crash when I did either half. How odd. I'll reboot in normal mode and see what happens. Could this be a case of it overheating? I use the laptop for gaming quite a lot and it frequently becomes hot. I've got it well ventilated, however.

 

[richc46]

Probably Not overheating.If it breaks again use clean boot then While it is working put a few of those process back, when it stops working thats the problem. Start with the anti virus, that is the usual culprit.
IT could be that one of those programs just needed to be reset.

If we cant get it to work with clean boot, we will check for overheating.

 

[Mousti]

Alright thanks, I'll give it a go tomorrow, it's 2am here and I need to catch up on some sleep!

 

[richc46]

Yes sleep first or you will not be working either. Have a good sleep, I think you see we are close to fixing this thing.

 

[Mousti]

Hey, sorry for the late reply. Things have been pretty good with the computer in the last while.

But it's started again. Has been for the last few days or so. So I tried the clean boot, on tried it with both halves and it still crashed. I couldn't turn Norton off from the driver list, so I'm not sure if that could be the problem.

As I'm talking the fans are quite loud at the moment.