[Dannybiel]

So i recently upgraded my computer with a new motherboard, cpu, and ram.
The motherboard i got was a asrock z77 extreme 6, processor is intel i5-2500k, and ram is 16gb of gskill ripjaw x.
Everything was fine as far as assembling the computer, installing all software for mobo,video card, and installing fresh copy of windows 7.
Well everything was running great until later that night my computer decided to randomly freeze. It freezes at completely random times but mostly while playing games, a few times it froze while i was just listening to a pandora widget. I have gotten a bsod screen once but the rest of the times it just freezes with the audio making a stuttering sound. I tried updating my video card drivers, flashing most recent asrock mobo bios, swapping out ram for a different brand, updating keyboard and mouse drivers, and reseating my cpu, reapplying thermal paste and seating the stock cpu cooler. I ran prime95 and my computer did not freeze after a few hours of torture test never reaching more than 80*. Tried running memtest for a few hours and ram passed. I know the video card and psu are good because i used them in my previous computer. I dont know what to do as i am a bit of a newbie when it comes to building computers. I put this rig together mainly to learn to overclock and for gaming. I dont know what to do or what steps i should take to resolve this problem and would greatly appreciate any help provided. thanks in advance.

ps the parts used in this pc are in my cig.

 

[Dannybiel]

Oh also i dont know if this makes a difference at all but for some reason the time in my windows bar is wrong whenever i turn my pc on. it alway resets to 1:12am. I have to manually update it when i turn my comp on as it resets every time i restart.

 

[Dannybiel]

Anyone have any advice on what I can do to troubleshoot this? Im completely lost on the next steps I should take to figure this problem out.

 

[KhaoticKomputing]

80c is a little warmer than I would like to see but shouldn't be the cause of the problem. Are you overclocked? just for giggle's what cooler and case are you using?

First thing I would do is:
1. Click windows Orb
2. Type 'Event Viewer' into search bar and press Enter/return
3. Start scanning though Error's and warning's.

There are going to be some stupid one's like "unexpected shutdown was unexpected" but there should also be some warning/error's around the time of the freeze.
Just to be sure your crashing is a freeze and sound loop requiring a hard boot, correct?

 

[Crazy_Clocker]

Hi,

You talked about the time not being correct in windows

, try resetting and replacing the bios battery. It's a long shot but it may work.
Also it could be the hard drive so try swapping that out.

Regards, and good luck,
CC

 

[Dannybiel]

The cooler im using is the stock one that came with the cpu and the case is a corsair carbide 500r. I tried looking through the event log and there were about 30 errors/warnings, ill try to post them when I go home on my lunch break. And yes the crash is the sound and video looping which requires a reset, but one time i got the bsod stating I had a hardware malfunction and do I have the latest bios updated on my mobo.

 

[KhaoticKomputing]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Dannybiel

The cooler im using is the stock one that came with the cpu and the case is a corsair carbide 500r. I tried looking through the event log and there were about 30 errors/warnings, ill try to post them when I go home on my lunch break. And yes the crash is the sound and video looping which requires a reset, but one time i got the bsod stating I had a hardware malfunction and do I have the latest bios updated on my mobo.

Do you have anything overclocked? If just back to stock settings. Also check the RAM settings in the BIOS. Also changing the battery like Crazy_Clocker mentioned is a good idea, but that won't cause a hardware BSOD, or random freezing, might fix the clock bit though

 

[Dannybiel]

Nothing is overclocked its all stock settings. I did check the ram and manually set the timings to the stock 9-9-9-24 @1600mhz.

 

[Dannybiel]

Ok so I replaced the battery on my motherboard and it fixed the clock issue. This motherboard is only 2 weeks old so it seems strange that the battery would die so quickly. Also as far as the freezing goes im running western digitals diagnostic program to make sure its not the hard drive malfunctioning. Could I have screwed up the windows install somehow? The only thing I can think of that would affect windows is after doing a fresh install I had an extra harddrive from a store bought hp pc. I wanted to use that harddrive along with my new harddrive but alparently there is a hidden partition on there with windows recovery software that would cause my computer to crash right away when both harddrives were connected. Could that somehow have caused issues with my windows install?

 

[tordogs]

I had some funny stuff going on when I built my current system a few months back. Unexplained crashes and restarts. Found this suggestion in the Microsoft information. Ran the scannow thing and it found several corrupted files and restored them. System has worked OK ever since. I either messed up something during the install or Windows messed itself up during the install. Maybe it will help you out.
Do be sure and run the CMD prompt elevated to Administrator. Having found this "trick" I run the scan once in a while just to make sure something hasn't gotten corrupted again.

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/929833

 

[Dannybiel]

Alrite thanks ill give it a shot when I get home from work.

 

[KhaoticKomputing]

correction, you just got the mobo 2 weeks ago, That battery was though a lot before you got a hold of it once you count in the manufacture date. Its very common place for them to show up dead. There is a possibility of a bad windows install, it happen's. in a new build it could literally be anything. In a perfect world all the hardware shows up in working order. In the real world DOA's happen, even from the best company's. Its ok, nothing that can't be narrowed down with a little patience.

 

[Dannybiel]

Ok so I just ran system file checker a couple times and it said it fixed an error the first time second time there were no errors so hopefully that fixed the problem. Thanks so much for the help so far. Saved me a lot of time sending parts back for rma.

 

[Dannybiel]

Well that didn't fix the problem, it froze on me again. I stared up a game, left to make some coffee and when I came back my comp was frozen.

Is there anything I can do to help narrowing down the problem easier?

 

[tordogs]

Glad that Windows found and corrected a corrupt file. Maybe that is all it took to throw the machine into a fit. You mentioned the audio would lock up during the freezes--supposing the MB has onboard sound? Did you update the drivers for that? Not sure what AsRock uses for onboard. Wait and see if fixing the corrupted file helped and if not then try updating the audio drivers. I have found that sometimes it takes 2-3 days for everything to settle down and work well together. People start pulling this and that and trying all kinds of things but often it is just a case of all the drivers, parts, pieces and Windows learning to play well together. I did have some tedious times with Creative drivers, AMD drivers but my thought is the corrupted files were behind most of my problems. You can also check your HD with CHKDSK in Windows to see if it finds any problems. Hoping it is just a case of all the new parts learning to work with the old ones and fixing the corrupt file.

 

[KhaoticKomputing]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Dannybiel

Well that didn't fix the problem, it froze on me again. I stared up a game, left to make some coffee and when I came back my comp was frozen.
Is there anything I can do to help narrowing down the problem easier?

Have you looked at the event viewer? What GPU are you using BTW?

 

[Padishah]

set your memory to either auto or and xmp profile instead of manualy setting it memory can be tricky

 

[tordogs]

Uh, oh. Just saw your post. Sounds like there is still a problem. As I mentioned, try updating the onboard audio drivers, run CHKDSK through Windows, maybe just let the thing crash and restart a few times to see if Windows can work itself out. You pulled, cleaned, sorted just about everything else the first time around. Make sure all connections are tight, all that good stuff. Perhaps smarter people will offer some additional tests.

 

[Dannybiel]

I updated all the drivers I could on asrocks website so I don't think its the motherboard drivers.

For the ram timing, when I go into the bios the only thing I can set for the ram is either auto or manually set the timing. Should I just leave it on auto? I have it set to 9-9-9-24. The ram is gskill ripjaw x.

 

[Padishah]

try setting it to auto