Computer freezes

J

jman15

Member
For the last few months, after a couple hours my computer just freezes up. Mouse stops moving and what not. Usually if I am actively around my computer it takes like 10-14 hours before it freezes. However, if I leave it and let the screen saver come on, and then eventually the monitor shuts off to save power, it will freeze and the monitor won't come back on until I restart the computer.

Is this something I can fix or do I need to new hard drive for this issue to go away?
 
The problem is less likely a drive failing there. I keep two ide drives along with two satas going long hours daily by setting everything to never. That's means no standby mode used. Screen savers at this point are good for decoration only since the original burnin problem from text onscreen was solved a good number of years ago.

Monitoring your system temps as well as using the msconfig to reduce the amount of items loading up along with Windows may help there if some background item is causing this. Something overheating like the cpu or memory can also cause locks if it's not a software problem.
 
Thanks, I never have anything laoding in the background, I do the msconfig thing everytime I install something. My fan and power supply have been getting pretty loud, so maybe it is overheating. I never thought of that. I don't have a temp guage though. Is there some way to help these cool down aside from buying and installing new fans?
 
Water cooling, betterHSF , and thats pretty much it... go to BIOS and look at temperatures.. or : Speedfan, Motherboard Monitor, Pc Wizard.
 
Speedfan is good freeware without problems for the single core models. Some have seen glitches with dual cores on some occasions. You can download that free at http://www.filehippo.com/download_speedfan/?1695 The 4.32 is currently ok in XP but saw problems when tried on Vista. That is found on the home site at http://www.almico.com/sfdownload.php

For a stock hsf the idle temps should be down in the low to mid 40s and expect to climb up into the low to mid 50s when running a large app like Media Player with the screen saver running during playback or one of the more demanding games out. Usually multimedia will pounce more. For better cooling you have to look at the case as well as what you use the system for. If you plan to oc, game, or run large programs then a good 3rd party cpu cooler works with additional and even larger case fans. Water cooling starts getting into higher end builds for ocing and high end gaming setups.
 
theboy said:
Yeah running 4.32 on Vista Ultimate right now with CPU temps around 31C on stock HSF.
Click to expand...

If it starts acting up on you at least you know where to go for the 4.31 version. :P The 4.32 worked briefly here and then... :confused: So far the 4.31 version has shown itself good for both XP and Vista alike here.
 
theboy said:
PC Eye: What were some of the problems you were facing with Vista and 4.32?
Click to expand...

At times others have run smack into headaches with SpeedFan and switched to other programs like Everest to look at temps. You have to remember that it's still software. The run of 4.32 saw problems and was simply removed. I put the 4.31 version on and no problems.
 
The cpu temps should good under a load if the idle temps are that low. Suddenly unexpected lockups could also be a software problem if you have something scheduled to run at a certain time of day. Another thing to look at is softwares with auto notifications when updates are available.
 
Could the problem have been because I didn't have enough free space on my hard drive? I just went from having 3 gigs available to 35 and since then have had no freezes for the last 2 days.
 
"VIRTUAL MEMORY" says it all there! :eek: :P Didn't you see any "out of memory" or "out of drive space" messages come up? Sometimes disabling the creation of the paging file that uses drive space to supplement the memory installed will help when you have a high percentage of drive space used up. The virtual memory is simply drive space used when there isn't enough memory installed.

(Don't worry with video capturing and storing large files I've run into that on more then one occasion. That's why I now run two 500gb sata drives along with the two ides.)
 
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