SOLVED Windows 7 random freezes - Potential Solution

[donmc512]

Random freezes on Windows 7

I'm having a similiar problem with my PC freezing several times a day. Probably 15-20 but is totally random. I'm might be in IE, Office or Outlook. The screen grays out and everything freezes for about 45 seconds. It does not however require a reboot. After about 45 seconds it comes back and continues on. Any ideas?

 

[quix]

I'm having a similiar problem with my PC freezing several times a day. Probably 15-20 but is totally random. I'm might be in IE, Office or Outlook. The screen grays out and everything freezes for about 45 seconds. It does not however require a reboot. After about 45 seconds it comes back and continues on. Any ideas?

Nope. I've never experienced that one. Some people said setting up the ram voltages in the bios, and setting the power settings to high performance helped solve their problem. Have you tried that?

 

[MonsterKFX]

Now here is my question, why do we as users have to sit for hours and try and fix something that was caused by Microsoft not testing their software. One would think that a company that big can eliminate most of these problems before releasing their software. But they prefer to use us as their test subjects.

I think millions or even billions have been lost in manpower time trying to solve problems that could have been averted if Microsoft would just do a decent job for once.

 

[quix]

Now here is my question, why do we as users have to sit for hours and try and fix something that was caused by Microsoft not testing their software. One would think that a company that big can eliminate most of these problems before releasing their software. But they prefer to use us as their test subjects.

I think millions or even billions have been lost in manpower time trying to solve problems that could have been averted if Microsoft would just do a decent job for once.

Not all problems are foreseeable, and this one, judging by the difficulty of diagnosing it, and the variety of different solutions and results people are having, is possibly one of the hardest to pin down, let alone fix.
Also, this issue only began appearing in the RTM version... That's the final release, after beta testing had been completed.

 

[mxryder23]

random freezes

Hey everyone,
I have been searching everywhere for answers. I have a custom build PC, and had both 64 bit Vista Home Premium and Windows 7 64 bit Home Premium running with random freezes all the time. I thought it was hardware, then software, then had no clue. However, after many long hours of looking around on the internet, and endless amounts of hardware tests I finally found out what the problem was.
IF YOU BUILT YOUR OWN PC OR UPGRADED MEMORY THIS COULD BE YOUR SOLUTION!!!!

I have Mushkin memory running, and found out that the timings and volts for the memory were not correct in the BIOS. Once I changed the voltage and manually set the timings...BAM....everything running blazing fast with no freezing at all!

 

[quix]

Hey everyone,
I have been searching everywhere for answers. I have a custom build PC, and had both 64 bit Vista Home Premium and Windows 7 64 bit Home Premium running with random freezes all the time. I thought it was hardware, then software, then had no clue. However, after many long hours of looking around on the internet, and endless amounts of hardware tests I finally found out what the problem was.
IF YOU BUILT YOUR OWN PC OR UPGRADED MEMORY THIS COULD BE YOUR SOLUTION!!!!

I have Mushkin memory running, and found out that the timings and volts for the memory were not correct in the BIOS. Once I changed the voltage and manually set the timings...BAM....everything running blazing fast with no freezing at all!

That's one of the many solutions that worked for some of the people experiencing the issues, listed in the main Win 7 freezes thread, referred to in the first post of this thread. Freezing due to insufficient memory voltage, however, is not a Windows problem, and would cause freezing on pretty much any operating system that attempts to use the memory at its specified speed. Windows XP and Vista don't do that, so they don't really care about your memory voltage, so long as it is sufficient to start the machine (right up until you run memory intensive applications and get a BSOD).
Regardless, it's good to hear you've solved your freezing problem.

 

[goodgulf]

That's one of the many solutions that worked for some of the people experiencing the issues, listed in the main Win 7 freezes thread, referred to in the first post of this thread. Freezing due to insufficient memory voltage, however, is not a Windows problem, and would cause freezing on pretty much any operating system that attempts to use the memory at its specified speed. Windows XP and Vista don't do that, so they don't really care about your memory voltage, so long as it is sufficient to start the machine (right up until you run memory intensive applications and get a BSOD).
Regardless, it's good to hear you've solved your freezing problem.

My symptoms were random freezes, sometimes before or during login, sometimes after hours of operation. Occasionally the system would reboot.

Rising memory voltage solved my freezing problems too. I never had a BSOD. Nor were there any traces in Windows 7 logs.

Since this is a fast way to solve the problem you should give this a thought before you start playing with the drivers and services. Even if you do not have a custom build PC you assembled yourself. Other people make mistakes too.

 

[quix]

Occasionally the system would reboot.

I'm guessing this IS a BSOD.
If you were to look at C:\Windows\Minidump you would probably find .dmp files created on the dates of the reboots. If these files exist, then you had BSODs.

You are correct that this is a more technical and risky fix than simply raising your RAM voltage. However, the difference between this solution and the power settings and RAM voltage settings adjustments is that it actually fixes the cause of the windows 7 freezes, as opposed to fixing general hardware freezes.

I'm operating under the assumption that a solution to "windows 7 random freezes" means fixing what's causing windows to freeze, not the machine (because the machine would freeze anyway under any operating system once it brought the hardware to the point beyond which it cannot operate at current settings).


Now, if you want to go into a debate about the semantics and whether or not "windows 7 random freezes" includes ram-voltage related freezes or not, that's an entirely different story. My stance on the subject is that it's simply a misdiagnosis. If it isn't caused by windows 7 (and the ram-voltage freezes aren't), then it it's not a windows 7 freeze.

I apologize if this seems unnecessarily grumpy, but there's a reason the main windows 7 freezes thread is linked at the very beginning of the very first post in this thread. That reason is that this is a thread dedicated to the testing and verification of a specific solution, and filling it with comments about all the other solutions listed in the main thread (and let's face it, most of these comments are repetitive and contain no new information, they're just clatter) doesn't help in any way.
The facts are:
* So far I know of at least 10 machines who have had this problem and whose ownders tried this solution.
* These machines were all running under the correct hardware settings before the solution was attempted.
* All 10 machines (that I know of) have had 0 freezes since. Mine, for example, has been running freeze-free for months now since applying this solution.

True, 10 hardly makes a statistic, but on the other hand I know firsthand that the ram-voltage and power-settings fixes do not actually solve the problem with windows--as it kept on happening after both of those fixes were applied to all machines on which the services solution was attempted.


So, let's try and keep this thread about the services fix. This means we want information on what services you found to be the problem, whether disabling them stopped the freezes, whether deleting and replacing them with fresh ones from the repository followed by enabling them resulted in the freezes returning or not, and whether or not you found a new way to implement this solution, or perhaps, gods forbid, MS actually published an official fix for this that we can all use instead of mucking around in the internals of Windows.
Comments about ram-voltage, power settings, uninstalling a faulty card or drive, and other stuff that's simply not related to this particular solution, should go in other threads where they are more relevant.

 

[goodgulf]

I'm guessing this IS a BSOD.
If you were to look at C:\Windows\Minidump you would probably find .dmp files created on the dates of the reboots. If these files exist, then you had BSODs.

Unfortunately there were no .dmp files there. Would have made live a lot easier.

My intention was not to start a debate of any kind. There is obviously more than one cause for the freezes.

Maybe the thread title is misleading ... :beer:

 

[johncage]

how the hell does windows corrupt its own system file. this is ridiculous as hell.

 

[quix]

how the hell does windows corrupt its own system file. this is ridiculous as hell.

do you know what a .dll is?
It's a Dynamic Link Library.

This file contains process, machine and user specific information... When a system service is updated through windows update, the windows update process is supposed to take information from the original .dll and store it in the new .dll before replacing the old with the new.
Errors in this process can result in bad .dll's that can then result in system services being buggy (or running into an infinite loop at the system services level, which is why you'd experience the hard freezing problem).

It's a legitimate bug... It doesn't occur very often (for evidence: only a tiny fraction of the widnows 7 users experience these freezes), which makes it difficult to track the precise cause of the error and fix it, not to mention expensive.

 

[clifford_cooley]

windows update process is supposed to take information from the original .dll and store it in the new .dll before replacing the old with the new.

I think you are mistaken. If there is any modifying done, it is at Microsoft during development. You don't realize how many bugs would be created if DDL's could be modified during Windows Update. Furthermore specific information about the computer is not stored in DLL's.

 

[quix]

I think you are mistaken. If there is any modifying done, it is at Microsoft during development. You don't realize how many bugs would be created if DDL's could be modified during Windows Update. Furthermore specific information about the computer is not stored in DLL's.

OK then. Thanks for the correction.
I was projecting from the fact that replacing the .dll for the workstation service affected the network and workgroup/homegroup settings.

 

[djdinvt]

Widows 7 freezes

There has been discussion regarding setting the voltage higher for memory....how much higher? My freezes occur about every other day and are getting to be a real PITA!

Can someone reply to my email address of:

(e-mail address removed)

Thanks

 

[TrainableMan]

djdinvt, this is an old thread and you should probably start a new one to address your issue. Voltage is very hardware specific so you should list your motherboard, chip, RAM type and specs, also throw in as much other info about your machine as possible, GPU, size of your PSU etc. Generally you should use the core and rams required voltage unless you are overclocking so please indicate if you are doing that as well.

There is also a difference between a freeze and a BlueScreenOfDeath - if you are getting BSODs then post your dumps in the BSOD forum along with the information I mentioned.

Freezes (and BSODs) can also be caused by out-dated BIOS or drivers or by your anti-virus software. So make sure that stuff is up-to-date and also mention what AV you use. Microsoft Security Essentials (MSE) is generally recommended by this forum though some of us use others with minimal noticed performance impact but since you ARE having performance issues it is definitely something to consider replacing, at least temporarily.

 

[quix]

dito the above.

Version of windows you're running is also helpful, as well as where you got it (came installed with a new computer, came installed with used computer, you installed it yourself, etc..).

Also, we prefer to keep the dicussion and help within the forum, so that people who have similar problems in the future can easily find the solutions they need with out having to start new threads (or sometimes even post anything at all).

 

[vitoco]

Edit: Moved to a new thread.

 

[CptA]

I am posting this reply as a thanks to the community for the assistance they provided in helping me to solve my problems with this frustrating issue.

The thoughtful posts here were very helpful and caused me to look at new areas, and to re-check others.

Anyway, I recently built a new system and after a while it started to display the same seemingly random freezes without any BSODs as many of you have experienced.

My system would freeze at random times and with or without any load, the screen would continue to display whatever was last on-screen, but the mouse and keyboard were totally non-responsive regardless of the length of time I waited.

No BSODs were ever experienced.

The only way out of this situation was a reboot.

The same random freezes were experienced after booting into either WinXP or Win7, so I figured I had some kind of hardware or driver problem. But, I could never pin it down to any specific component.

I had just about given up figuring it out, but thought I'd check here before formatting and trying again.

What got me looking in the right direction were the posts here about memory timing and voltage settings.

After researching my memory's specs I noted that the system BIOS was reporting and auto-configuring the memory as PC3-10700 (DDR3-1333) instead of the correct PC3-12800 (DDR3-1600).

The BIOS was set to the default auto-configuration timing and latency settings, but it would not recognize the memory as DDR3-1600.

Digging further into the BIOS led me to a setting that by default was disabled, but needed to be enabled.

The setting that was giving me problems was buried at:

"MB Intelligent Tweaker (M.I.T.)"
"Advanced Frequency Settings"
"Extreme Memory Profile (X.M.P.)" "Disabled"

I changed the setting to:

"Extreme Memory Profile (X.M.P.)" "Profile1"

The bios now properly reports the memory as PC3-12800 (DDR3-1600).

After making this simple but hidden change, ALL my problems went away.

Here are the system specs for the machine that was giving me headaches:

Gigabyte GA-P67A-UD7-B3 motherboard
Intel Core i7-2600K CPU @ 3.40 GHz
8 GB Corsair CMX8GX3M2A1600C9 (XMS PC3-12800 - 1600 MHz)
Dual MSI N470GTX Twin Frozer II (GeForce GTX 470 in SLI configuration)
Creative Labs X-Fi Titanium Fatality
Dual WDC WD1002FAEX - 2x 1 GB HDDs (Dual-Boot configuration not in RAID)

Win7 Ultimate x64 (Drive 0 Partition C: NTFS)
WinXP Pro x86 (Drive 1 Partition D: FAT32)

My special thanks to everyone who has posted here, as it really helped me look in the right direction and fix this issue.

CptA