Temporary freezing during games!

[Scynthe]

Heyo,

I've been having a problem I haven't been able to track down the cause of, or the solution to. Whenever I play a game, after a random amount of time my audio cuts out, and then the computer and game becomes unresponsive. I can't ctrlaltdel or anything during this time. After a minute or two the computer becomes responsive again. I haven't been able to track down any specific cause for this to be happening.

At first i thought since the audio was cutting out a second or two before the freeze that is was an audio card driver issue. I had a Soundblaster Audigy 2 ZS installed as well as the onboard audio. I physically removed the Soundblaster card and attempted to see if the issue persisted which it did. I then disabled and uninstalled (in device manager) the onboard audio and tested without any audio devices and the problem still persists. I've tried video card drivers as well, with no luck. I'm currently running a memory test and everything looks ok there.

I then started thinking that maybe my GPU was overheating. I ran a stability test using furmark and everything seemed fine, GPU temps didn't reach over 80degrees. Also while running the stability test the problem did not occur.

I'm running out of ideas so any help is appreciated!

PC Specs:
Core2Duo E6600
EVGA 680i mobo
EVGA 8800GTS 640mb
Patriot Viper RAM 4gb

Thanks in advance!

 

[Hungrytoheal]

Have you tried older drivers? I had extremely poor performance on my 9500GT until I used old drivers.

Uninstall your video drivers and reboot Windows 7.
Windows will start and hopefully install its own video drivers.
Try those.

 

[Scynthe]

Yeah I've tried a few older versions of drivers all with no luck. I even reformatted again and it's still happening. I ran Furmark to check temps while under load and everything appears within normal operating temperatures. I'm not experiencing any artifacts on screen during the feezes, and as I said after a minute or two everything will work again. It's devesating in Online games tho as i timeout from the servers.

I am completely stumped as to what could be happening. I'm thinking about digging out my vista disc and testing under vista to see if I have the same issues...

 

[Hungrytoheal]

Okay well maybe you should try that because it may be a problem with your hardware if the problem persists. Your PSU looks powerful enough, maybe there is a problem with your graphics card hardware. If you have access to another card, try that. Also, is it happening in all your games or just a select few? Which ones?

 

[Fumz]

Is this a particular game, or every game? What are they as the resolution for each may be different?

Also, what, if any, anti virus are you running and are all these punkbuster enabled games?

 

[Scynthe]

It was doing it in atleast 2 games. Neither are punkbuster and i havent reinstalled my anti iris yet. Today tho it froze up when installing windows live messenger. It's the first time it's happened out of a game. Now I'm also getting total locks and not just temporary freezing. My CPU is overclocked (has been for years). I'm going to back down the CPU and see if that helps any. Again there is mo heat issue as my temps are nice and low. CPU was at 34 degrees when it froze

As a side note. I've been running the same games on my laptop which also runs windows7 without any issues. Same nvidia drivers too. I'm starting to think it's hardware related. I'm still really confused tho as I've tried stress tests and it's never failed during one...

 

[Fumz]

Overclocks can degrade. What was once a stable OC years ago can today be temperamental and unstable. That's just the way it goes sometimes.

I assume you've run memtest for at least 8 hours and dual primed/orthos in Windows already?

 

[Scynthe]

I only ran Memtest for an hour or two :S Will running it for longer make much difference? And yeah I used Orthos and everything seemed fine. I've downclocked my CPU now, but haven't had a chance to see if its still crashing in games yet. I'll test it later tonight and hopefully it will have solved the problem

 

[Scynthe]

Update: I ran memtest for 24 hours and had no errors. Even with the downclocking it's still happening.

 

[Fumz]

This is a pickle...

First thing I'd do is start clean by removing all your sound drivers with Driver Sweeper: Guru3D - Driver Sweeper If you haven't used it before, dl it and install it, and then use it in safe mode (tap the F8 key at reboot). Select all sound drivers with a checkmark and have DS remove them.

Reboot to the bios and disable onboard audio. Reboot to Windows and install the latest DirectX; the June redist that covers all DX versions 9, 10 and 11: Download details: DirectX Redist (June 2010)

Then install your Creative Drivers and see if the problem persists. Hopefully, with everything clean and only 1 set of sound drivers, you won't lock up.

 

[Scynthe]

Sadly I've actually already done what you suggested and with no luck x.x I think I may have tracked down the issue though! I was digging around in event viewer and noticed some errors were popping up with my nforce network controllers. I dug further and saw that these errors were popping up alot and from memory seemed to roughly coincide with each freeze. The error wAs something along "encountered invalid network address". I did a google search and noticed that someone was having the sAme issue and same error in one of the gAmes that is freezing on me.

I'm going to pick up a cheap Ethernet card today and try using it instead of the one in my Mobo and with any luck that'll do the trick.

 

[Scynthe]

Update: I installed the new Ethernet card and it's still freezing. I'm assuming now the error was a result of the freezing as opposed to the cause as the new card shows no errors. I reformatted again back to vista to test and it's still doing it. I'm so frustrated I'm wanting to toss it out the window...

 

[Fumz]

If you're back on Vista, then my memory of that OS is too hazy to help. I was going to ask if you've tried the multi-media class scheduler reg edit... but... I guess that can wait till you reinstall 7.