Help with random hard lockups

[Varroa]

Hey Everybody, long story so bear (sp?) with me. A couple weeks back my computer started to randomly shut off. I turned out that my water cooling pump was dieing and my cpu was overheating (>100c). I fixed that problem (OCZ ven II) and temperatures are back to normal. Now my machine suffers from random hard locks (no mouse movement, screen frozen). They were only happening once a week but now they are happening once a day. Here is what I have tried so far to fix/solve this:

:ran memtest for a couple hours
:ran prime95
:turn off overclocking (reset bios to defaults).
:Did a WHS system restore to a time before my PC overheating to eliminate file corruption
:re-installed sound card drivers.

Does anybody have any other ideas? Could my CPU be damaged?

[Waldie]

I can't say I can help you, but I can say that I've started having this happen to me as well. And not because of overheating.

A couple weeks ago my housemate went on my computer to check his email, and while he was on it my computer started locking up every few minutes. It had never done this before, and I was bothered by it for a day or two until it just disappeared one time when I restarted (I had tried restarting before to no effect). Now just today the problem's back, and every couple minutes the entire CPU locks up, freezing the mouse and screen for five to ten seconds. This even caused a restart once by itself, and a BSOD (my first ever on this build which is 11 months old). I've had Task manager and Resource Monitor open for the past couple hours, and when these instances occur, they cause the CPU activity to become 0% while it is happening.

This is different from the first time these happened. When it was happening a couple weeks ago, after a freeze and resume Resource Monitor showed a spike in CPU activity, with almost the whole spike accounted for by the image System Interrupts. I'm a little worried at the progression here, and that these frequent occurrences are stopping my CPU completely, without any discernible reason.

I'll reiterate what Varroa said: Anybody have any ideas or experience with this issue?

[_dangtx_]

instability of some kind occurs at certain times. finding out what brings it out might be interesting .i cant say swap components that you dont have. to have a working cpu now, and same one 1hr later(temps being in check) i dont know.

[Waldie]

This is really starting to become a problem, it seems as though my computer's rapidly getting worse. Since my post under an hour ago, I've gotten another BSOD, and the computer seems frozen more often than it's not. It'll freeze doing pretty much anything, from nothing to moving the mouse to watching a video to typing. My Windows 7 installation disc I burned for my brother is at his house, I'm getting him to bring it in the morning, and I'll try to just start from a clean slate, and completely wipe everything and reinstall Windows. I did an in-place upgrade from RC to RTM, so hopefully the problem is conflicting files and not something more serious, like hardware problems. Luckily I snagged a My Passport from NCIX when it was on sale for boxing day, so I have most of my files backed up.

I'm going to turn my computer off now and not touch it until morning, and see where it's at. Here's hoping.

[ZZLEE]

New Nividia drivers ? Old ones 196.75 are defective ? New ones are at nividia

[_dangtx_]

could you give linux mint a try as well? see if it bork out with that one as well.

[Varroa]

Well I booted into linux (ubuntu live) for the evening and no lockups occurred. I even ran Prime95 for a 1/2 hour to see what happens and nothing. So, I decided to do a WHS restore to an even earlier point, then the one I had already chosen, to see if maybe I had chosen a point that was not before my original overheating problems. So far so good and I will keep everybody updated on my progress. I was able to run Prime95 for about 5 hours last night so I know it is stable.

[Waldie]

Well, this morning I turned on my computer and so far no obvious problems... this sort of thing really annoys me. If it's a persistent thing that I can find a solution for then no problem, but coming and going...

My computer is running much slower than it should be though, there are no actual freezes so far, but the mouse will be a bit choppy moving it around the screen. Not due to CPU usage though, it's staying at a steady zero to five percent as I'm browsing.

As for drivers, I actually updated my Nvidia drivers last night, near the start of my troubles in case that was the problem. I guess I'll just keep a general look out, I've now completely backed up all my files as well, so if it starts to mess up again then I won't hesitate to re-install Windows 7. I'll post in this thread if anything new happens or it starts freezing again. A little mouse choppiness here and there I can deal with, but I can't deal with my computer completely freezing for ten seconds out of every minute.

[Varroa]

Well, C drive (60GB OCZ Vertex) just died on me last night. Doesn't even show up in the bios. Now I know what was causing my problems.

Hurray for Windows Home Server! Now I am back up and running with a spare SSD!

I would start with a fresh install and don't install with an overclocked rig. If your cpu was under duress multiple times due to bad cooling you could be suffereing corrupted files and they don't always get fixed running system repair tools. Generally a failing hdd symptoms are slow boot up times, clicking noises, stalled loading, unable to transfer files, etc. You could always turn S.M.A.R.T. on in in the bios and see how the bios responds to the HDDs.

Like i say.. you need to rule out a corrupted OS before you start digging into failing Hardware. Sucks to format/install but you could always buy another HDD on the cheap to test the theory. I'd suggest backing up anything important sooner rather than too later.