Windows 7 64 Bit (Home Premium) - Random Freezes

[Riptr]

All,

As of late, I have been experiencing random freezes and lockups on my PC. These problems started when I upgraded my Home Premium install from 32 bit to 64 bit and I have eliminated all common causes for freezes: All drivers and system updates are up to date, Ran Memtest+ and have tested the disk (all OK) reformatted the disk and reinstalled Windows, cleaned the innards of the PC in case of temperature issues and checked the seating of the internal components.

I am completely stumped and I have no idea as to what is causing the freezes, I would be very grateful if any of you could render assistance.



Specifications:

CPU: AMD PHENOM II X2 560 (3.30GHz/6MB CACHE/AM3) - BLACK EDITION

PSU: 450W

RAM: 4GB SAMSUNG DDR3 DUAL-DDR3 1333MHz (2 X 2GB)

GPU: 2GB NVIDIA GEFORCE GTX460 - 2 DVI,HDMI,VGA - DirectX® 11, 3D Vision Ready

HDD: 500GB SERIAL ATA 3-Gb/s HARD DRIVE WITH 8MB CACHE (7,200rpm)

Motherboard: ASUS® M4A87TD/USB3: DUAL DDR3,SATA 6.0GB/s, USB 3.0

Sound: VIADeck Integrated.

Networking: Realtek Ethernet.

I have also attached the zipped reports from the diagnostic tool and various screenshots of Speedfan and CPU-Z readouts.

Thank you.

 

[TVeblen]

Hello Riptr. Welcome to the forum.

Very often freezing/lockups are caused by either bad drivers or malfunctioning hardware. Tracking down which it is, and what hardware is affected takes a little detective work.

You can start by reviewing your Event Viewer. Look for Critical or Error items that address hardware.
http://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials/226084-event-viewer-open-use-windows-7-a.html

You can also try disabling hardware in Device Manager to see if this stops the freezes. Then you will know the offending hardware.

I had something similar happen to me when I first started using Windows 7. I built a new box in February 2009 but ran XP 32 bit on it without any problems until W7 came out in October. When I installed 64 bit W7 I started getting crashing/freezing problems. Long story short, it turned out to be a defective video card. The card worked just fine in XP using the 32 bit driver, but the defect came to the fore when running the 64 bit driver. Replacing the card (RMA) solved the problem.

But first you need to try and isolate which component is the cause of the freezing. Let's see what you can find.

 

[gregrocker]

Did you give preferences to the drivers delivered by the Win7 installer and then enabling Automatically deliver drivers via Windows Update (Step 3) to run all rounds of Important and Optional Windows Updates to completion. Only then would I import any drivers still missing in Device Manager.

Compare the install you did to the perfect install compiled in Clean Reinstall - Factory OEM Windows 7 to see if it varied much, in which case I'd do it over.

Complete the other steps not done in Troubleshooting Steps for Windows 7