freeze - P35/Core2 PC freezing on idle

05
2014-04
  • Johnny

    So i put together an older PC, for Photoshop usage and stuff. And the PC tends to freeze on idle.

    Here are the stats:

    • ASUS P5K Mainboard, rev.1 (P35 chipset)
    • CPU Core2 E6750
    • RAM 3 sticks of Corsair XMS2 DHX (3x 2GB 800MHz)
    • GPU Radeon 5570

    It doesn't matter whether I'm running the PC on stock settings or overclocked - the end behavior is still the same: the PC is left alone, idling, or being used in some low-performance tasks, such as web browsing, YouTube, Photoshop ... and then, after some two days of running stable, the PC suddenly freezes. After hard restart from the freeze, the PC freezes again, in about five minutes. And then again, and again. By changing some power/clock related settings in the BIOS (such as the FSB or voltage), the PC "resets" into its two-day crashfree state again (and after the tow days expire, here we go again).

    My diagnostics would suggest that the culprit is the mainboard, as the other components seem to be some tough cookies.

    • The CPU can take 3.5GHz overclock, remaining stable in Prime95.
    • The RAM can take 1050MHz overclock.
    • The GPU can stand the MSI Afterburner tests (the rotating fur cubes, etc.)
    • The PSU holds the overclocked system under exhaustive benchmarks ...

    But, as I said, the freezing happens on idle, be it overclocked or non-overclocked default settings in BIOS.

    So I've removed one of the RAM sticks now, leaving the PC in 2x2GB dual channel (whether this works, that remains to be seen). Could this be it? Could this be the cause? Or shall I look elsewhere?

    Note: when running with three sticks of RAM, I did try overvolting the MCH/northbridge/the memory controller. To no avail.

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    Related Question

    troubleshooting - Vista freezes when idle. How to find a source of the problem?
  • groblus

    I'm using Dell xps 1530 laptop and everything worked fine until last week. Compleatly out of the blue Vista started to freeze. But it doesn't freeze while it's used but only if it's idle. Really nothing special happed last week (or perhaps two weeks ago) only a couple of automatic window updates, so it difficult for me to find the source of the problem.
    Vista freezes after computer goes to sleep so I turned that off, screensaver doesn't seem to affect the issue and freezeing still occures. THe freeze itself is strange because mouse cursor is not freezed, and I am allowed to change screens for a couple of seconds but after that (when I realize that the software is no responding) the only solution is to hard reset. Is there any way to pin the source of the problem? I know that it will be difficult for you to find the cause of freezing but perhaps a copule of guides where to start serching for it will allow me to solve it by myself.


    • Related Answers
  • harrymc

    Maybe you could restore your system to its state before the problem began ?

  • David Pearce

    A good source of diagnostics problems is always in the system logs, which are available in the Event Viewer.

    To launch the event viewer, just type "Event Viewer" into the each box in the Start menu, and double-click "Event Viewer" in the list of results.

    Here, the "System Events" and "Application (Program) Events" logs would be where I would look first. Just browse down the list, and take a look if there are any errors occurring around the time that your computer crashes.

  • Revolter

    Make sure you do not have scheduled tasks, disable screen savers and power saver modes.