System freezes in Windows 7 and on POST

[brazenwolfy]

Hi all,

In the past few months my computer has become prone to random freezes during Windows login screen, during normal usage, or while the computer is in sleep mode (it would power up randomly in the middle of the night and freeze). At this point, if I reboot my system, it will randomly freeze on the POST screen. It would take a few reboots to get back to loading Windows. The freeze on the POST screen is what makes me believe this may be a motherboard issue.

I really don't know how to troubleshoot this. If I look in the reliability history in Windows 7, the only issue it recognizes is that I didn't shut down Windows properly. Is there any way to better troubleshoot this? So far I was able to run memtest overnight with no errors and have run chkdsk on all harddrives attached to my system.

Here's my specs:
Motherboard: Gigabyte X58A-UD3R Rev.02 (BIOS version FH)
CPU: Intel(R) Core(TM) i7 CPU 950 @ 3.07GHz (Bloomfield)
Memory: 12GB (6x2GB) OCZ3G1600LV2G
HDD: WDC 1TB
GPU: evga Nvidia GTX 470
OS: Windows 7 (64-bit)
PSU: Cooler Master Silent Pro Gold 800 Watts Modular Power Supply

Can post any other information or the CPU-ID report somewhere if needed.

Thanks,
BW

 

[Bubbaleone]

I'd suggest using the tools available in the Windows RE (Recovery Environment) to diagnose and repair your system. The following is a very well done tutorial on that procedure:

How to use the Windows 7 System Recovery Environment Command Prompt

 

[mikeymikec]

I don't strongly suspect the PSU, but it's a possibility. Do you have a spare to try (even if it is a cheapo one)?

Does the computer typically have problems cold starting, or only say after half an hour after booting?

Prime95 for half an hour? May be worth a try, to see if it fails under load.

I would probably reseat the RAM as a "it can't hurt to try" option, as freezing during POST could be a lot of things, including that.

Temps? Though when it comes out of (presumably) S3 sleep mode, the temps ought to be pretty cool, but still.

Have you checked the hard disk check results? Are there any disk errors in the 'system' event log?

The initial stages of troubleshooting for a weird problem tend to be a case of fishing for possibilities.

 

[denis280]

or you could do a sfc /scannow