Mysterious HARD FREEZES ever since I built my new computer. I can't take it anymore.

[Dankk]

Ok, seriously. I've had it UP TO HERE. I built my new gaming rig as of July of last year, so that means it's been exactly one year now. Everything has worked fine....

...but there is one thing. Well, a couple things, actually, but they all do the same thing. There are a few things that will freeze/crash.

In my case, these are hard freezes. The programs themselves do not just crash and give me an error message. No, this is when my whole system is brought to it's knees, stopping dead cold, forcing me to reach over to hard reset my machine.

Here is a comprehensive list of things that bring my computer to a dead halt:

Left 4 Dead (when getting to the main game menu)
Team Fortress 2 (when loading the server list)
Any Bittorrent client (when torrenting any sort of file)
Uploading attachments to Gmail
Uploading photos to Facebook

There are probably several more, but these are all of the things I have confirmed to make my computer go into a hard freeze.

...do you see a trend here? I think they all involve uploading or sending outbound information, which then causes my computer to crash. Furthermore, I use my computer on my wireless network with my comcast home internet connection, but when I brought my computer to a company LAN party last week, and started up TF2 on a different internet connection, it - shock and awe - didn't freeze on the server list.

But then again, if you look at a program like Bittorrent, or uploading things to my gmail account, they work just fine on my mom's computer. Does this have to do with dual-core freezing? I run bittorrent all the time on my other single-core CPU and everything's great, but on my dual core machine, everything goes to hell when I use bittorrent or upload things.

My specs are listed in my signature. I recently upgraded to Windows 7, but both Vista and Win 7 behave exactly the same with these crashes. So I don't think that makes a difference.

 

[jmagg]

I would suspect ram first. Try downloading a compressed file (.rar zip etc) and extract. With ram problems, this will usually cause an error.

 

[Pretty Cool]

Do you still have problems if you are not overclocking?

 

[SSWilson]

Originally posted by: LessThanDan
Furthermore, I use my computer on my wireless network with my comcast home internet connection, but when I brought my computer to a company LAN party last week, and started up TF2 on a different internet connection, it - shock and awe - didn't freeze on the server list.

Does this mean that you are using a wireless card in that box?

 

[Dankk]

Originally posted by: jmagg
I would suspect ram first. Try downloading a compressed file (.rar zip etc) and extract. With ram problems, this will usually cause an error.

I download and extract zip files all the time. Rars too. I've never had any problems with this. Would you suggest running something like MemTest86+?

Originally posted by: Pretty Cool
Do you still have problems if you are not overclocking?

I went into the bios, changed the CPU back to stock speed and the Asus AI tweaker back to auto, and I loaded up TF2 - same behavior when loading server list.

Originally posted by: SSWilson
Does this mean that you are using a wireless card in that box?

Yes. I can get a model number if you'd like, but it's a rosewill wireless adapter with one of those external antennas that look like a big chess pawn.

 

[Quiksilver]

What happens if you manually set all the cpu voltage, memory timings/voltage, and what not to stock settings/what the manufacture recommends? Basically leaving nothing to auto.

 

[SSWilson]

Originally posted by: LessThanDan

Originally posted by: SSWilson
Does this mean that you are using a wireless card in that box?

Yes. I can get a model number if you'd like, but it's a rosewill wireless adapter with one of those external antennas that look like a big chess pawn.

Sounds like a wireless problem. If you can, plug into the router with a network cable to troubleshoot and see if the problems remain. If that fixes the problem then make sure you have the latest driver for the card and firmware for the router.

 

[Dankk]

Originally posted by: SSWilson
Sounds like a wireless problem. If you can, plug into the router with a network cable to troubleshoot and see if the problems remain. If that fixes the problem then make sure you have the latest driver for the card and firmware for the router.

So I tried what you said. I hooked it up to a wired connection and disabled my wireless, and went on to Team Fortress 2. I loaded the server list, and... no crash! I repeatedly hit the "refresh list" button over and over (this would normally make my computer lock up pretty fast), and still no crashes!

So then I logged on to Gmail. Uploading email attachments was something that always froze my pc, 100% without fail, so I wanted to see if this would work too. I uploaded a 5mb attachment to a new message, and... success! Everything worked.

So the first thing I did was upgrade my WRT54G router to the latest firmware from Linksys. Although I suppose it's nice to keep up to date on firmware and such, this didn't seem to solve my problem back on the wireless connection. TF2 froze in it's regular spot.

This basically leaves everything to my wireless card's driver, or the card itself.

The thing is, when I upgraded to Windows 7 just last week, I made sure to download the latest Ralink drivers for my card. So I'm 99% sure that I already have the latest driver! It still allows my computer to hard freeze in the same spots it always has.

Here are a couple more things that crash my PC:
Google Chrome (Hence why I'm still a FireFox user)
Windows searching online and installing drivers for new devices

So... what's left to do? Should I try reinserting my wireless card or something? I'm probably going out on a limb here, but I don't know of anything else. I suppose I can also double-check on what driver I have, but like I said, I'm 99% sure it's up to date.

 

[SSWilson]

I don't really know, all my wireless experience is on notebooks of which I have several and have primarily been either Broadcom or Intel chipsets and they tend to work very well. I have read that desktop cards can sometimes be quite buggy. All I can suggest is that if you have the latest drivers then maybe try the card in a different PCI slot. If it still causes problems then you may have a bad card.

 

[tomatom]

Under DM < device manager > sometimes there si the

option to install the previous driver . Something to try .

Web site might have previous Vista drivers ...

 

[Buddyd]

It is the wireless card, I experienced similar problems using a gigabyte wireless card which is probably build off the same ralink chipset. I worked on trying to find a solution for over a month and ended up removing the card and buying a wireless bridge.

Best I could figure there is a problem in the 64bit code specifically with the uploading of data. One thing you'll notice is that you can still enable caps lock and num lock while your computer is frozen but nothing else on the system responds.

 

[Dankk]

I think I may have fixed it.

When I had my computer wired into the network, I had my wireless card driver uninstalled and everything, so I checked one more time to see if I could do a fresh install directly through the Windows device manager. Unfortunately, it came up with the error "Cannot find driver for device (look on manufacturer's website for latest driver)". Well, whatever. So I opened up my PC, popped the card out of it's PCI slot, and put it back into the slot just below it. I hooked everything up, booted up windows, and to my surprise, Windows automatically "Found new hardware; downloaded and installed driver for Ralink wireless network card." Uhh, what? Just earlier Windows couldn't get the driver on it's own, but I switch the PCI slot that the card is in and suddenly it can? Well, whatever. It appears to be fully operational, so hey-oh.

I have no idea what kind of driver Windows automatically found and installed for me, but it seems to have fixed the crashes! I went into TF2, madly refreshed the server list over and over, exited TF2, then opened it up again, repeated the same stress, and absolutely no freezing! Sweet. Same goes with Gmail.

Thanks for the advice everyone. And Buddyd, I was definitely thinking about a wireless bridge, but that would have only been my last resort.

I'll post again if anything goes wrong. But so far, so good. Thanks again.