Random freezes with windows 7 - 64 bit

Like I have already stated, this appears to be a Windows 7 64-bit issue.  It has nothing to do with changing voltages or wired or wireless cards, drivers or anything else like that. When my system freezes I am unable to access the Task Manager and am forced to press the restart button. I use a Gigabyte motherboard not Asus.  It is not infection either - I have tested this on a cleanly installed system and still get same problems. I also use an NVIDIA graphics card so sadly this has nothing to do with ATi either.

What I have experienced is something extremely unusual - system kept freezing at random (remember this is on a clean system), however I always install all drivers and have uTorrent installed from the beginning. Sometimes Windows would say that my graphics driver had stopped responding - so I uninstalled that and then allowed Windows to install the one from the updates website, but still same problems.

The last time my system froze, I shut down uTorrent - and now I have had no problems for quite a few hours.  I looked on the web and found similar issues but even with BitTorrent and other programs of the like. Unusual problem I know but so far this seems to be the solution for me.

However, I regret to inform you all that I have also had this same problem on a number of customers systems and they didn't even have uTorrent, BitTorrent, etc.  They did however all have Windows 7 64-bit. I am beginning to think this is an incredibly unstable O/s and there is not only one solution to this issue except to reinstall with Windows 7 32-bit which is what I am going to do (and extremely annoyed since I have 8GB of RAM which I will no longer be able to use!).

With regrets that means my previous solutions have not worked - or at least they seemed to work for about a day! - however that does not mean they won't work on some systems.

Gotta laugh... just read this thread in its entirety. Even Mike the Microlimp Engineer gave up on this one.. hasnt posted in this thread since Nov 10th..

I see a lot of similarities and a lot of differences in this thread, and mine is different but the same...

I am getting random freezing, but its not the whole computer freezing. I just lose the ability to input..

If I am playing all in a music folder, Media Player will happily go through every track, until it runs out of tracks.. If I set it to repeat I am sure it would play indefinitely. Once it runs out of tracks though, I cant click on my music folders to add more...

I can be playing an online game and all is working just fine within the java applet.. but then go to the taskbar to open a second window to check the weather, and I find the taskbar is not LEFT clickable. Try to close Firefox and therefore the game by clicking the X, and I cant close the window.. the X is no longer clickable. Click back within the applet and I can still play the game! Bizarre though, I can sometimes close the window by right clicking on the taskbar and then left clicking the close window option on the right click menu.. but often I cant left click the option either! The right click works just fine, every time.

This often happens within 30 seconds of a restart too... I get just one click on the taskbar then my mouse stops functioning.. so I open a window in Firefox but cant click on anything...

I am at a loss to find a cause. I note that AVG has been blamed.. havent tried anything else on this brand new i7 yet but I have AVG 9.

I note that Firefox has been blamed. I use Firefox, but I get the same problem with IE.

I've tried various mouses too, including wireless and wired.

Within an hour of getting this machine built, I was overclocking. A friend was heckling me coz he thought his silly AMD junkbox would be quicker! Behold the awesome i7.. successfully got it up to 3.9GHz from its native 2.8GHz with no apparent problems, but the next day the freezing started. OK, maybe as its been suggested also in this thread, its the RAM timings, messed up by the overclocking?

I have reset the RAM timings according to the Asus list, no good.

I have a fix though.. not to solve my problem, but to fix it without restarting. (to restart, I usually have to kill it with the power button as I cant left click the shutdown option!).

I am wondering if the problem is related to explorer.exe    My recovery method, and it works every time, is to ctrl/alt/del to task manager (where the left click DOES work.. because its not affected by explorer??) and kill and restart explorer.exe

For the guys who have been carrying on about the RAM timings.. heres a thought. Lets just say you are right. Windows is intended for the masses, and the most common and heavy user of personal computers (as opposed to those in a business envronment) just happens to be the middle aged housewife, reaching out to the world in the only way she can. How much do you suppose she knows about RAM timings? If it doesnt happen with XP but it does with 7, because 7 is in some way more sensitive to correct RAM timings.... then 7 needs to be made less sensitive. It should be able to compensate for a myriad of potential 'hardware problems' - particularly when its something that can be fixed by adjusting settings - you arent saying the RAM is faulty, just that it has the wrong settings...   Ergo, its 7's fault. This is supposed to be an idiot proof OS for the masses.. if it cant do that then it becomes irrelevant and Linux or Apple will rule the world...

I love 7.. I hope they fix it real soon.

Windows 7 Professional x64

i7 930 2.8GHz

Asus P6T

6G DDR3 1600 Kingston Hyper-X (triple channel)

9800GT silent pipe (fanless) x2 - SLI linked  * these things are huge but they run at less than 50C and this is the quietest PC I have ever owned*

150GB WD 10000rpm Raptor   System drive

1TB WD 7200rpm Data drive

3DMARK06   32112 o/c @ 3.935 GHz  plenty in reserve :)

I think your issue is something entirely different. I consider a freeze something a little unrecoverable, nonetheless uninstall avg and try again...as I reported it is most likely the cause, (anti virus software). I would love to hear if that solves your issue.

ALSO MAKE SURE YOU HAVE YOUR MOTHERBOARD SET TO S1...it worked for me.

MainFrame,

I think it's more than Windows 7 64bit.   I'm running 32bit and I've read all of this thread.    32bit hasn't been mentioned too much but I get the same random lockups, doesn't seem to matter what the program is.   I've had it with Firefox, IE, uTorrent, using explorer looking at folders, Adobe, Quicken, you name it.   Only freeze i haven't had is using Media Player, I'm sure it won't be long.   This has been going on daily for me since I built my machine in late Nov09.   When it gets to be 5-6 times a day, I have found rolling back to a reset point reduces the freezes, but they seem to keep getting worse after a few weeks.   Very frustrating, no BSoD, just frozen.    I've have noticed my fans kick into high gear when it happens.

I've seen lots of talk about Asus on here but I'm running Gigabyte.    Since there are so many different hardware combos, to me this is a Win7 problem.

I have not tried any of the fixes talked about yet.   This thread started 5 months ago so I was really hoping someone had a solution by now.  Going to try a few things with power settings and the hotfixes and see how it goes.  

Btw, I had this problem regardless of using Norton, then Zone Alarm, then AVG (which I now like most)

Win7 32bit

AMD Phenom II X4 955 8mb

Gigabyte GA-MA790FXT-UD5P

Mushkin 4GB HP3-10666 (2X2gb)

eVGA GeForce GTX260 896mb

Seagate 1TB SATA 7200.12

Yes, mine freezes sometimes, but only when using my wireless internet.  I've got no chance to see an error code because it requires a hard restart every time it dies.   I've noticed a lot of the problems are coming from ASUS boards.  Mine is as well, a P5K-Pro.  

Other specs:

Video - Nvidia 8800 GT

OS - Windows 7 (64x)

Ram - 4 gb DDR2

I am using Windows 7 Home Premium 32 bit.

My motherboard is an Asus A7V8X motherboard, this board was made when Windows ME and Windows 2000 was the main event.

I have not had one screen of death or system freez since I installed Windows 7 in December 2009.

I might add I am using an Athlon XP 2400+ clocked at 2000 Mhz and 3 Gigabytes of 3200 DDR RAM.

All my settings are set to default settings and my video card is an Nvidia Geforce 6200 AGP.