Random freezes with windows 7 - 64 bit

Wow... I'd been bugging the guy who built my latest machine for weeks on end when I eventually decided to give Google a chance only to find **this!**I have been having the exact same sort of a problem for nearly a month now and it all started roughly a week after I had some of my hardware upgraded and Windows 7 Enterprise installed. My hardware specification is not so different from those listed above (an ASUS MB, and Intel Quad CPU, an ATI Radeon HD 4800 GPU, 4 gigs of RAM and a 500 gig Samsung HDD) and the computer is still fairly "clean". The only left-over from my old configuration now is the 160 GB HDD that I use to store files on.

Anyway, the problem seems to be at its peak when I play World of Warcraft. Apparently, it does not matter whether the GPU has to deal with a lot of graphics or not, the framerate is always at 60 FPS. And it may sometimes run smoothly for hours or crash/freeze every 20 minutes (I think the record so far is 5 crashes within 10 minutes). The sreen then either goes blank or becomes garbled (as if the graphics card were fried, which it's not), sometimes an odd monitor message gets displayed that this is not the recommended resolution, all this against a backdrop of a continuously looping high-pitched sound (I think someone already mentioned this "screetch of death"). Once there was even a BSOD. Anywho, as far as the game itself is concerned, I have noticed that the freezes occur more often than not with the end-game content, like while I'm immersed in a latest-patch instance and such.

On top of that, the system occasionally locks up while I am using the mouse wheel to scroll up or down a voluminous webpage (does not have to be image, plain text is sufficient to bring this around). And in a few cases it just froze when it was idle, or refused to wake up from sleep.

I have tried most everything that has been mentioned above: put the system in High Performance mode (well, apparently it always was there), used Driver Genius to track down any drivers that might be outdated (there were 4, all of which were subsequently updated without solving the problem), tinkered with the Power Options a little, the list goes on. I even replaced the mouse, wrongly assuming that it might be it that was responsible (the webpage-scrolling freezes). Still, the problem persists... Funny, that, seeing that there are a lot of people who are affected by this, Microsoft does seem to be taking their time to come up with an all-in-one solution.

World of Warcraft has a known issue in that if your system exceeds 2GB (actually more like 1.8GB) of commit memory for the wow.exe process the whole thing will cause either system instability and crash WoW with a mapmem.cpp error or other *.cpp errors or even cause a BSOD in some cases. This is becuase WoW is still not capable to use more then 2GB of system memory even tho it can run on a system with more then 2, 3, 4 or more GB of system memory. The actual executable of WoW is incapable implicitly of using the VMM (Virtual Memory Manager) above its 2GB legacy-coded limit of the executable. This Blizzard technical support will NEVER expose when you call them. But I know better, as I have tracked the systemic failure that always occurs after u start approaching 1.82

• 1.87GB of "commit memory" being used by their executable.

Their answer is to limit your addons usage all the while denying that their virtual memory calls from their own executable are the root cause and they know it but will not reveal this problem. Hence all the mapmem.cpp errors that you can Google on the internet everyone is having. This will not be fixed until the next release of the next expantion at the end of 2010 so everyone who calls tech support will be gently told to limit their addons use to prevent this cataphtopic application failure and coding failure they have created.

Blizzard thinks they are slick in thier misdirection of the "true" cause of the problem yet deny the fact their VMM calls are coded still for Windows XP and not for Windows 7. Hence, this is why the mapmem.cpp error never occurs in XP system but only in Vista/Windows 7 systems that start approaching this 2GB limit they have of their poorly coded executable. Vista/Win7 use a more modern virtual call manager that can use up to and including 192MB of physical memory (in the case of Windows 7 64-bit). WoW is still (and will be for 1 more year) a 32-bit app that runs on a 64-bit OS but with one caveat. When you approach 2GB of "commit" memory (easily viewed in the Win7 Task Manager by showing the Commit Memory tab) limit of the executable, The game WILL crash, period. No hope for that until the Blizzard recodes their executable. In the mean time their bandaid is to tell you, the game player, to limit this potential threshhold by limiting the addons usage so their executable does not go near this barrier. Clever of them, but not good enough.

This is an aside from the Win 7 freezing issue tho this thread is about because as many have experienced they have had sudden freezing on many apps outside this game. The Win 7 Freezing issue IS an OS issue that can be triggered or further exasaserbated by apps but the core issue lies in how the OS functions and not piggyback apps who may seem to cause this problem.

Hello.

I am a noob at computing and whatnot, so if anyone could help with my situation, I would be delighted.

My computer was bought with Windows 7 Home Premium, and I have been having many problems involving my entire computer freezing, which results with me having to pull the plug on the power supply in order for it to restart/work (I can not shut it down/restart it any other way).

Only twice has a screen later popped up saying that something was wrong.

I am unable to install many games, such as Halo: Combat Evolved and Starcraft because the screen freezes just as I confirm that it is okay to auto-play the disk.

The screen freezes when I play Resident Evil 5 whenever I push the partner assist button (V) and other in-game buttons at the same time. I always know when it will happen because a distorted sound plays continuous for a few seconds just before the entire screen freezes. The sound only occurs when playing this game.

This also happens when I play Crisis, Crisis Warhead/Crisis Wars, Guild Wars, and other games.

I also tried to cast live video, involving a webcam and a microphone, but the same thing happened. I can cast perfectly with the webcam, but as soon as I include the microphone, it freezes everything.

I remember going to the Ease of Access Center once, and after selecting something after that step, the screen froze (I don't remember exactly what I selected, or if I just clicked on the Ease of Access Center link on the Control Panel, but something froze my computer.

I have also had times where the computer somewhat randomly froze while surfing the net, but I believe it has not occurred recently (maybe because I use Chrome now?).

This has been a pain pretty much since I started using the computer, and hopefully I will find someone to assist me before I go crazy.

My guess is that the problem is connected to some audio bug, or my Norton antivirus protection is causing the trouble, since it was installed in the store once I purchased it (from Future Shop).

I used to have Vista on my older laptop and thought it was a pain, but this is ridiculous!

Here's my system:

Gateway

FX6802

Intel(R) Core(TM) i7 CPU     920 @ 2.67GHz   2.67 GHz

12.0 GB

64-bit Operating System

NVIDIA GeForce GTX 260

Realtek High Definition Audio

Hopefully this helps both you and me. I must repeat that when my computer freezes, the whole system is frozen so that I have to physically pull the plug.

Should I try uninstalling Norton?

Thank-you and have a good day!

Wow... I'd been bugging the guy who built my latest machine for weeks on end when I eventually decided to give Google a chance only to find **this!**I have been having the exact same sort of a problem for nearly a month now and it all started roughly a week after I had some of my hardware upgraded and Windows 7 Enterprise installed. My hardware specification is not so different from those listed above (an ASUS MB, and Intel Quad CPU, an ATI Radeon HD 4800 GPU, 4 gigs of RAM and a 500 gig Samsung HDD) and the computer is still fairly "clean". The only left-over from my old configuration now is the 160 GB HDD that I use to store files on.

Anyway, the problem seems to be at its peak when I play World of Warcraft. Apparently, it does not matter whether the GPU has to deal with a lot of graphics or not, the framerate is always at 60 FPS. And it may sometimes run smoothly for hours or crash/freeze every 20 minutes (I think the record so far is 5 crashes within 10 minutes). The sreen then either goes blank or becomes garbled (as if the graphics card were fried, which it's not), sometimes an odd monitor message gets displayed that this is not the recommended resolution, all this against a backdrop of a continuously looping high-pitched sound (I think someone already mentioned this "screetch of death"). Once there was even a BSOD. Anywho, as far as the game itself is concerned, I have noticed that the freezes occur more often than not with the end-game content, like while I'm immersed in a latest-patch instance and such.

On top of that, the system occasionally locks up while I am using the mouse wheel to scroll up or down a voluminous webpage (does not have to be image, plain text is sufficient to bring this around). And in a few cases it just froze when it was idle, or refused to wake up from sleep.

I have tried most everything that has been mentioned above: put the system in High Performance mode (well, apparently it always was there), used Driver Genius to track down any drivers that might be outdated (there were 4, all of which were subsequently updated without solving the problem), tinkered with the Power Options a little, the list goes on. I even replaced the mouse, wrongly assuming that it might be it that was responsible (the webpage-scrolling freezes). Still, the problem persists... Funny, that, seeing that there are a lot of people who are affected by this, Microsoft does seem to be taking their time to come up with an all-in-one solution.

Not sure why you don't have that setting exactly, could be that not all hardware (motherboards?) support it.

I don't think this will fix everyone's issues, sounds like there are a bunch of things going on in this thread, but would explain why several people are having success changing the Power setting to "High Performance" because that has the minimum processor speed at full 100%. 

I can say that it worked for me after much troubleshooting with the bios, hardware and software settings and hopefully will solve the issue for someone else.

My system is:

OS:    Windows 7 Ultimate x64

MB:     Asus P5Q3 Deluxe/WiFi

GPU:   Sapphire HD 5850

PSU:   Enermax Infiniti EIN650AWT

CPU:   Intel Quad Q9550 LGA775

CPU-HS: COOLER MASTER GeminII S RR-CCH-PBU1-GP

RAM:   Mushkin 996657 DDR3 1600 2x2GB

HDD1:  Western Digital Raptor X WD1500AHFDRTL

HDD2:  Western Digital Caviar WD1001FALS 7200RPM 1TB

DVD:    Sony Optiarc AD-7241S-0B

• "In the default "Balanced/recommended" power setting, under the advanced settings, in process power management, the "Minimum processor state" default is set to 5%.  This setting seems to be too low for one of my harware components.  Presumably when the power went this low it was not enough to operate something and it froze and was unable to recover. I changed the minimum processor state up to 75% and my system has not froze."