Random freezes with windows 7 - 64 bit

i noticed that it freezes when im watching movies !!! the last 4 times it froze was while watching movies . with different media players each time .

keep an eye on the the process task called audiodg.exe and how much memory its using. If your system reports more then normal "COMMIT" memory usage of over 200mb for this process, let us know!

I'm glad I found this thread, because I'm having similar problems with my PC.  I feel that my problem is sound-related though.  I've currently switched back to XP x64 because I never had problems with lock-ups until I switched to Win 7 64-bit.  My PC is running fine now.  It's pretty frustrating to go through all kinds of tests only to switch back to an older OS as a final solution.  I hope Microsoft is watching these forums so that they can find a solution.

The problem's not limited to ASUS boards, by the way:

OS Name    Microsoft(R) Windows(R) XP Professional x64 Edition

Version    5.2.3790 Service Pack 2 Build 3790

Other OS Description     Not Available

OS Manufacturer    Microsoft Corporation

System Name    KING

System Manufacturer    Gigabyte Technology Co., Ltd.System Model    G31M-S2L

System Type    x64-based PC

Processor    EM64T Family 6 Model 15 Stepping 6 GenuineIntel ~2400 Mhz

Processor    EM64T Family 6 Model 15 Stepping 6 GenuineIntel ~2400 Mhz

BIOS Version/Date    Award Software International, Inc. F10f, 6/1/2009

SMBIOS Version    2.4

keep an eye on the audiodg.exe task process. It has been known to exceed 1GB of commit memory use and I use 2 memory task utilities to keep this task process within its normal tolerances of 40-140mb use. If it exceeds this, its leaking memory. I use memclean and Minimem utils to control its memory use and reallocate its memory hogging. Until Microsoft fixes this ____. Audiodg.exe has had a problem based on many forums posts from the early Vista days. Its a go-between file between teh OS sound system and your sound card drivers to prevent your system fromo crashing in the event of a sound card driver failure.

I did some digging on audiodg.exe, and this could be the likely problem.  It doesn't look like I can just disable the file either.  I'm a bit tired of reinstalling OS's right now, so I think I'll stick with XP for the time being.  Thanks for the help.

if u kill the audiodg.exe process you will loose your system sound since its imperative this process is running for sound to work correctly on your computer. Btw, Vista AND Windows 7 have an issue with this file from plenty of Microsoft MSDN, forum and blog posts I have found. Its not just Windows 7. This file has been a cancer in the OS and how it provides interoperability for over 3+ years now.

How many ppl have had problems, system reboots, and catastrophic failures since this file was created for Vista I wonder??? It's gotta be at least 100,000 ppl world-wide I think.

Hi again :)

@passionfly1: You are right, on my system it was also a problem with the audiodg.exe. After aprox. 16 hours without errors, win7 freezes (i'am on the edge of reason) again from time to time, after killing audiodg.exe the freezes stops immediately. On the the second graph (Ressourcemonitor, HDD) the queue-length going from 1.00 to 0.01 units. Before i killed the exe (and the 16 hours after installing the new gfx-driver) the length was always at a minimum value of 1.00. Now i have disabled all System Sound Effects (ControlPanel->Sound->*(device)->Propoerties->System Sound Effects->Disable all system sound effects) and it works fine with a mimium of hdd queue-length and max. activity. I don't understand why it works 16 hours and then my pc decide to annoying me again (by a identical using profile before and after these 16h) but this is not so important i think now it finally works. Many thanks for pointing me the right direction!!!  

(Sound: AnalogDevices - SoundMax Integrated Digital Audio HD, Driver: 6.10.2.6585)

this is what I posted in this forum here in a reply to a possible solution. You may find it very helpful. Not sure how to link to the specific post in the whole thread so here is the part. His solution and my solution. Both (in theory and practice) should do the trick to stop this audiodg.exe from going apenuts:

Problem solved (this time for real it seems, no crashes for several days!)

Problem

Windows spontaneously reboots but gets stuck at the first stages of booting (unsure exactly where). In order to start the computer I have to switch off the main power supply at the PSU for a few seconds and then turn the computer on.

This happens more frequently when gaming then otherwise, but oddly never while being active. That is, reboots only happen if I'm in a game but I don't touch the controls for a while (around 30s).

System

Windows 7, 64-bit

Athlon II X4 620

2GB DDR3 1333Mhz

Did not work

• Slowing ram down to 800Mhz
• Updating drivers
• Disabling power saving options in windows and / or switching off cool 'n' quiet support in bios.
• Probably a bunch of stuff I forgot and that never made sense anyway.

Seems to be working

After a whole lot of googling I've found several prople claiming it's a problem with audio drivers. Apparently some have successfully solved the problem by upgrading the drivers. At least one who had several audio devices had disabled all but one. I disabled ATI HDMI output and Realtek digital output and kept Realtek high definition audio(for headphones) and my Logitech USB speakers (which have a build in sound card of sorts). So far it seems to be working.

My reply:

this is what I am starting to think too its the audiodg.exe (the go-between file between the OS and your sound card drivers to ensure system stability is actually causing MAJOR system instability) I have many posts in these forums about this file and either disabling (like you did) many audio drivers/features to prevent this file from triggering or leaving them enabled like I have done and actually controlling the audiodg.exe memory use with clever light-weight processes/task memory utilities. The thing to note is that the faster your RAM chips run at (hence my previous recommendations at lowering your memory speed to 800mhz), the more likely this weird instability is likely to trigger.

I use Minimem 1.3 (freeware), Cleanmem 1.4.0.2 (freeware) and Smartram (by IOBit, freeware) to manage this file specifically (and the OS as well) and prevent it from allocating more memory then it is reasonably supposed to use. I have seen on my system in games this file hogging up to 1GB of system commit memory. By either not releasing it once used or leaking it (not sure which). These 3 small utilities keep this process in check. Cleanmem runs as a scheduled task actually at 5 min intervals reallocating back to the system memory that is not being relinquished back. This is a very clever utility and you should look into it at how it maintains clean memory usage in the system as a whole, not just audiodg.exe. It uses Microsoft's own internal calls to keep memory misallocation from happening on your system. Its a very cleverly done lil app.

Here are some good links to read about it and corroborating articles:

http://www.pcwintech.com/cleanmem

additional info:

http://smallvoid.com/article/winnt-system-cache.html

and

http://blogs.msdn.com/ntdebugging/archive/2007/11/27/too-much-cache.aspx

and

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/bb897561.aspx

and

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms682606(VS.85).aspx

and

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms686234(VS.85).aspx

i cant find the audiodg.exe process . is it any chance that i dont have this process on my windows 7 32 bit prof ?