Computer Freezing.. anyone help?

[Solecord]

So I removed my nvidia display drivers in safe mode and reinstalled the latest ones from the nvidia site and so far everything seems to be working fine.... *crosses fingers*

[Grim]

I know I never removed a previous version when upgrading, I simply installed the new driver.

I also found another article that said moving your RAM from slots 1/2 to 1/3 can resolve this...

http://www.drivercleaner.net/ (Third party software.)

(Uninstalling Source)
When an NVIDIA display driver update is performed, the new driver will remove the previous drivers during the installation processor. Sometimes it is not successful in removing the older display drivers which can lead to display issues later on as a result of conflicting drivers. As a basic practice, it is recommended that you first uninstall the older display drivers before updating to a newer version. To uninstall your current NVIDIA Forceware display driver from your system, please follow these steps:

1) Open the Microsoft Windows Control Panel
2) Double-click the Add/Remove Programs icon
3) Depending on which driver version you are using, your graphics drivers may appear in differently in the list of programs installed.

-For older NVIDIA display drivers, it will be listed as "NVIDIA Windows Display Drivers". Click "Change/Remove" or "Add/Remove " button to remove the drivers from your system.

-For newer display drivers, it will be listed as "NVIDIA Drivers". Click "Change/Remove" or "Add/Remove" button to remove the drivers from your system. If your PC features other Windows components, then Windows will list the other NVIDIA components installed as shown in the picture below:


See Source link.




Choose "Remove only the following" and then click "NVIDIA Display Driver" and finally click on the "Remove" button.


4) Confirm with Windows that you wish to continue with the uninstall

Note: A prompt appears asking whether you want to delete all of the saved nView profiles. If you click Yes, all of the nView software and all of your saved
profiles will be deleted. If you click No, the nView software is removed, but the profile files are saved in the Windows\nView directory on your hard disk. If you take advantage of the nView profiles, you may wish to keep your custom nView profiles.

Once the driver files have uninstalled, Windows will request that you restart your computer to complete the uninstallation.

[Polarite]

Driver Installation Hints

* "Download Accelerator" utilities should be disabled when downloading any drivers.

* Do not run virus protection software in the background while installing the drivers. This prevents the driver from configuring itself properly.

* Before installing new drivers make sure you uninstall all NVIDIA display drivers from the Windows Control Panel. Browse to the Start Menu > Windows Control Panel > Add/Remove Programs and search for "NVIDIA Windows Display Drivers" or "NVIDIA Display Drivers" and select remove.

If the new drivers give you the same problems then try the bios update.
Bios update can fix alot of problems.

[foq]

Hard drives heat up pretty quick, espically if they are Raptors. Imagine your drive config is like this. Drive A and C should be fine, but drive B has:
A: hot drives directly on top and below of it
B: no way to cool down being sandwiched by the drives

If your drive config is like this, try to space them out. If they are spaced out, you should be OK.

[Solecord]

also, if those 3 drives are stacked togeather, it wouldn't suprize me if the middle one is gaying you.

What's that supposed to mean?

[foq]

WEll uninstall all nvidia drivers and reinstall. DO NOT INSTALL NVIDIA FIREWALL!!

also, if those 3 drives are stacked togeather, it wouldn't suprize me if the middle one is gaying you.

[Solecord]

Ok I think I found my problem. Instead of rebooting when my PC froze up I just left it on... eventually it got a BSOD and the error log points to an issue with "nv4_disp.dll" - "nv4_disp went into an infinite loop"

Googling that it appears the graphics driver can be in conflict if the previous version was not properly removed. I know I never removed a previous version when upgrading, I simply installed the new driver.

I also found another article that said moving your RAM from slots 1/2 to 1/3 can resolve this...

[Solecord]

Temps are not an issue. My GPU runs at around 60 C when playing Quake, a bit warmer when playing newer games. Idle it's at 55 C or so. CPU is a steady 30 C. I haven't checked RAM

[spooker]

i'm guessing you haven't been praying to the right gods. did you try krishna? i've heard he often comes through in a pinch. just keep trying them all until your problem is fixed without any effort on your part. it may take a while tho....

but seriously, Because it gets slowly worse over time and then goes away means it's most likely an overheating issue. if playing a game slows it down over time, i would guess it has to do with components used heavily by games. In order of likeliness:
1) GPU
2) ram
3) processor
4) i guess it could be anything, but it's not likely to be the hard drive, on this very superficial analysis, because games tend to load everything into ram and only access the hard drive intermittently

[Solecord]

Ok here's the latest. I loaded up the Task Manager and kept it on top of other windows. I then loaded Quake (the task manager stayed on top). After about 10 minutes of playing the game started running so slow... the audio would repeat a RL shot and nothing would happen on the screen. It was as if the comp was frozen, but it was slowly responding... the task manager showed nothing out of the ordinary during this entire process. After about 5 minutes I lagged out of the game and another 5 minutes I was able to bring up the game menu and exit. Then everything on the computer started running fine again. However when I reloaded the game it ran super slow again.

I'm going to reformat just to see if that makes a difference. If not I'll take out the RAID drives and see if my 3rd drive runs ok. If so I suppose I can say it's one of the two RAID drives then right?

[Canadian*Sniper]

Like I mentioned before in AOL chat, you'd know if it was a raid 0 problem because you wouldn't be able to boot into windows at all. That is if windows is installed on the raid hard drives.

[Solecord]

My problem is I don't know how to eliminate things, like how to be sure it's not a memory issue, graphics card issue, sound card issue, harddrive issue, etc. and that is what I was asking... how to eliminate certain issues to narrow down what the cause could be.

I can say after having my PC off for most of the day yesterday and then turning it back on last night, so far it has been running fine (about 12 hours or so). I haven't tried loading a game yet but for other normal, everyday tasks it's been running fine.

For the harddrive, if it were a harddrive issue a format wouldn't solve the problem right? The drive would still be bad... Unfortunately I'm also not too familiar with RAID (I knew I shouldn't have gotten the RAID). My setup has 3 harddrives, 2 are set up with RAID 0 and the 3'rd is a standalone. I was thinking of taking out the 2 RAID setup and installing the OS on the 3rd just to see if it is the harddrives (as the OS is currently installed on the RAID).

[Grim]

If you press CTRL-ALT-DELETE and go to the processes tab, there is a column that says CPU %.

The next time you have this problem, do this and find out the offending process.

This is an excellent way to determine what the hog is.

If you look at the one you posted, the "System Idle Process" specifically, Click on the CPU column so you can see the total resources that are being used. In other words the "99" should be on top.

When the slowing arises, do as Baker suggested. See what resource(s) are being used at that time.

As far as the power supply, these are all good suggestions. I'll add my 2 cents.

We have the same board. This unit has a monitor for all the power usage in the bios. So far, the only error I've had was an undervoltage for my CPU which completely stops the machine from booting. I do a hard off/on and that clears it. You can always check the current operating power consumption while your in it. Anything in the red??

Don't be afraid of the bios. If you accidentally change something and your not sure, just "exit without saving".

There was mention of hard drive issues. This is what I'm leaning towards. I'm not familiar with raid so I can't go there. I do know that a hard drive error will cause issues like you mentioned to escalate and eventually make it to where you have to re-install the OS. Depending on how bad the drive gets will determine if you can sucessfully install it or not. Again, I'm just guessing it to be the drive. Try a spare drive and see if the problem is still there.

Everytime you access your browser(s), you're writing to your drive in one form or another. The long loading of your army game has a well known issue with long loading times associated with version 2.7. None-the-less, you shouldn't be getting crappy performance.

Take things one step at a time and try process of elimination. This is also what Phenom stated.

[foq]

wmiprvse.exe has something to do with Windows Media Player I believe.

[Canadian*Sniper]

msmpeng.exe isn't in my process list but I do have wmiprvse.exe. No problems