Frequent Freezing in Win 7 desktop...

[Graham]

Okay, so I got my new PC

Asus P6X58D MB, i7-930 CPU (stock), ATI HD 5970 (stock), OCZ Gold Series 8-8-8-24 1600 MHz memory, Corsair 950W power supply, and anything else I need to list list let me know.

This week, I got accepted into the starcraft 2 beta, and upon installing the software, in the middle of the install it crashed my PC and it had to be rebooted. It was a full freeze, unable to move the mouse, no beeps, nothing, fans and LEDs all still lit within the case.

Upon rebooting, the computer acted a little sluggish, took awhile to get in, and several memory errors came up and certain web pages would not load. Yahoo.com would not load, facebook.com was fine, gmail.com fine, cnn.com took me to windows homepage (wtf???).

I decided to do a system restore, and upon finishing that, reboot, and come to the login screen. It took a full minute or more to load, and all I got was a BLACK SCREEN and was able to move the mouse. No sounds would play.

So, I looked up "windows 7 black screen," and got this result from microsoft's home page:

windows 7 black screen after login, no desktop show up

i went to the link provided for this "fix" from PrevX and it seemed to have fixed the issue, claiming to be a registry **** up.

Hence forth, I have been getting an abnormal amount of freezes while using the desktop/OS and during web browsing.

During gaming, IT NEVER FREEZES OR ERRORS. I thought it might be an overheating issue, but if I can play Crysis Warhead for hours without a problem, I have sincere doubts that is the issue.

I have my BIOS set up at default and nothing else has been modified. I'm not sure if I should retry and OS reinstall or if this is fixable... it's really hard to tell if it is hardware/software driven issues.

Does anyone have any idea how to further diagnose some issue I may have or has anyone had a problem like this? I have been building my own PCs for YEARS (this is my fifth build) and have never ever run into a problem like this. I'm pretty confident I know how to set up a PC, especially as it is getting easier and easier.

Anywho, any help would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks all.

 

[joelm3103]

Have you scanned for viruses, mal/spyware on your system? Reason I asked is because of the pages not loading or redirecting to other spots. Also you can try downloading CCleaner and clean your PC for junk and also your registry (make sure and keep backups if you find any errors).

Program of choice used throughout the forum for malware/spyware search is Malwarebytes. Update if the situation gets worst or better.

 

[Kharn]

Crappy install most likely, I have had it happen to me countless times, but I would also check your HDD I have seen bad sectors and failing controllers cause issues like this.

 

[Graham]

I have not had a chance to try this all out, but just give some updates.

Have you scanned for viruses, mal/spyware on your system? Reason I asked is because of the pages not loading or redirecting to other spots. Also you can try downloading CCleaner and clean your PC for junk and also your registry (make sure and keep backups if you find any errors).

Program of choice used throughout the forum for malware/spyware search is Malwarebytes. Update if the situation gets worst or better.

Ever since the PrevX fix all the web pages load fine and whatnot. The only issue at the moment is the random freezes during web browsing.

I have only been using Avast Home Ed. anti-virus, so maybe a malware issue is at play....

Crappy install most likely, I have had it happen to me countless times, but I would also check your HDD I have seen bad sectors and failing controllers cause issues like this.

I can certainly see this happening... I migrated my two old disk drives from my last PC with the intent of waiting for SSDs to be slightly cheaper, but I might just get a new hard disk for now since this is plausible...

And yeah, this may be a crappy install who knows.


I will try these things out first as a full OS reinstall is such a pain! Just got all my programs and whatnot back up and running good = (


Thanks guys!

 

[KSoD]

Okay here is the first thing. Starcraft 2 BETA. Beta software is not going to work on every system, it is not going to be flawless on every system and this is why they do such tests. To see what configurations have issues with running the Beta.

You need to get the log files to Blizzard so they can look at them. Remove the Beta and see if there is an update down the line. This is one of the big issues with running Beta software on machines that are for every day use. You dont know if it is a conflict with a program you already have installed or if it is just a problem with a driver or what. Since there is so much more on a daily use PC than a machine that is used just for beta testing.

Yes some people have no issues running the SC2 Beta, other will. This is the process of being a Beta tester. You shouldnt have gone into this thinking that you could just install the software and not run into any problems. The chance of that happening with Beta software is 1 in a million.

 

[Graham]

Okay here is the first thing. Starcraft 2 BETA. Beta software is not going to work on every system, it is not going to be flawless on every system and this is why they do such tests. To see what configurations have issues with running the Beta.

You need to get the log files to Blizzard so they can look at them. Remove the Beta and see if there is an update down the line. This is one of the big issues with running Beta software on machines that are for every day use. You dont know if it is a conflict with a program you already have installed or if it is just a problem with a driver or what. Since there is so much more on a daily use PC than a machine that is used just for beta testing.

Yes some people have no issues running the SC2 Beta, other will. This is the process of being a Beta tester. You shouldnt have gone into this thinking that you could just install the software and not run into any problems. The chance of that happening with Beta software is 1 in a million.

I've been beta testing games for years and have had issues with the games themselves, but never had an OS or other program malfunction (at least not that I have noticed).

Are you suggesting I need to reinstall the OS at this point because the beta has ruined some of the registries or whatever (not sure aobut the nomenclature here)????

I have not found a single finding on the beta forums declaring issues of this severity beyond the game...

 

[KSoD]

I am saying that since you do not have a specific setup for just Beta Testing games, that the combination of software that you are running with the game could have caused your issue. People around here have reported issues when they have combined the Steam Beta Client and the SC2 Beta.

This is the problem when you do it this way. There is no way to know for sure what caused it. I dont know what you have installed, so i cant even begin to guess where the problem maybe. But to straight up blame the OS is flat out wrong cause you have no proof of that. You do not know if there was a conflict with the OS or other software you are running due to the fact you are not using a clean install with only default programs. Only at that point could you blame the OS and know for a fact it was.

I have been Beta testing since before XP was released. I have done it both ways where i had a specific machine setup to test programs and using my daily machine. It was always the daily machine that ended up with problems cause there was conflict with other programs that were installed and not the OS itself.

My suggestion is to eliminate as many other possibilities. If you have the option to format, do so but install the SC2 Beta before anything else. Then run it and see if you have problems still. If you do then you have to dive deeper and see if there is a conflict with some of your drivers or hardware. Possibly even your chipset. But you cant blame the OS until you have exhausted every possible option. Considering that people on this site are running it on every OS from XP to Vista and Windows 7, it does work. We jsut have to find out why it isnt for you.

 

[Graham]

I am saying that since you do not have a specific setup for just Beta Testing games, that the combination of software that you are running with the game could have caused your issue. People around here have reported issues when they have combined the Steam Beta Client and the SC2 Beta.

This is the problem when you do it this way. There is no way to know for sure what caused it. I dont know what you have installed, so i cant even begin to guess where the problem maybe. But to straight up blame the OS is flat out wrong cause you have no proof of that. You do not know if there was a conflict with the OS or other software you are running due to the fact you are not using a clean install with only default programs. Only at that point could you blame the OS and know for a fact it was.

I have been Beta testing since before XP was released. I have done it both ways where i had a specific machine setup to test programs and using my daily machine. It was always the daily machine that ended up with problems cause there was conflict with other programs that were installed and not the OS itself.

My suggestion is to eliminate as many other possibilities. If you have the option to format, do so but install the SC2 Beta before anything else. Then run it and see if you have problems still. If you do then you have to dive deeper and see if there is a conflict with some of your drivers or hardware. Possibly even your chipset. But you cant blame the OS until you have exhausted every possible option. Considering that people on this site are running it on every OS from XP to Vista and Windows 7, it does work. We jsut have to find out why it isnt for you.

Well put... I will keep this in mind

Crappy install most likely, I have had it happen to me countless times, but I would also check your HDD I have seen bad sectors and failing controllers cause issues like this.

Any tool suggestions to check my disks? I keep reading that people should try the "chkdsk" tool but I can't seem to find a "disk cleanup" utiity like in XP....

 

[KSoD]

Start>run>chkdsk /r /f

Right click on the drive select Properties. There under Tools is error checking.

Both of these will get you the check disk utility that will have to be run after a restart of your machine.

 

[Graham]

Okay, so I ran CC Cleaner, chkdsk, and Malwarebytes.

The CCCleaner found like 8 or 9 registry issues, one with star craft 2 beta, the rest the microsoft.net framework, chkdsk reported no problems, and malwarebytes found 1 infected file in my windows XP system32 folder.

I don't know if any of those were causing the issue, but saturday and yesterday I had no freezing while using my system in any environment. I'm not going to close this just yet as it's not clear the issue has disappeared, but so far thank you all for your suggestions. I have noticed things running a tad smoother since I did the cleaning. I definitely should have looked into the modern tools rather relying on avast and spybot alone.

.... stay tuned (and thanks!)