How to check what is causing PC freezing on the desktop

[It's Not Lupus]

What would like cause the Windows 7 desktop to suddenly freeze? What can I check? The desktop, mouse cursor, keyboard input would sometimes just freeze. It has happened twice in the past couple days. The only change I recall is installing the latest windows update.

 

[lehtv]

What PC is it i.e. what are the specs? Is anything overclocked or at non-standard settings?

With overclocked systems, a freeze could indicate an unstable OC.

With stock clocked systems I think a failing hard disk could be the culprit

 

[It's Not Lupus]

2500K @ 4.4
ASRock P67 Extreme6
eVGA GTX560Ti
GSkills 8GB RAM 1600MHz
Crucial M4 128GB
WD 1TB Black
Seasonic X660

I think the overclocked 2500K @ 4.4 GHz has been fine while a year or two. CPU is the only thing overclocked.

First freeze, only happened temporarily for a minute or two. Second one, I had to power down. That second, I noticed Firefox didn't save my session (tabs).

Both freezes happened when I had FireFox running and maybe Flash running as well. Could Flash cause a freeze?

Maybe this isn't general hardware issue but software one. I don't know.

 

[lehtv]

Reset your BIOS settings and see if the problem persists.

 

[mnewsham]

Firefox and the latest update of flash haven't been playing nicely, for me anyways it crashes after a few mins and I have to reload the page, haven't had a full freeze like you are describing however.

In the mean time I have switched back to chrome.