Computer lockup issues - Help!

[Derjuin]

Starting this morning, I've had a series of strange lockups that have required me to manually restart (via power button) the computer. It's never done this before, and I've had this computer only for about a year or two.

The first occurred during a game of Warcraft 3. The game had been going for a few hours, but it was not at all graphics- or memory-intensive; there was no video lag I could notice. The sound skipped for a moment, as did the video, and then the screen went completely grey and everything stopped. This is the only time of the four lockups where the screen changed - every other occurrence has been a normal lockup, no screen change.

Edit: By grey, the entire screen changed to be one color. Like BSOD, but grey and without text.

The second occurred shortly after, when I attempted to play Borderlands. This time everything simply stopped. Alt-tab didn't work, same with ctrl-alt-del. Another forced restart. I figured it could possibly be some part overheating, so I checked out my temperature monitor program and ran a few experiments, running two copies of World of Warcraft at once, downloading a large file, etc. The heat levels increased as normal, but nothing slowed down in any serious way, nor did anything jump or continue to rise in temperature as if it were an overheat problem. The max temperature for each part was around 70 degrees C, when running two copies of WoW at once. Still, no errors occurred and the temperature was stable.

Nothing occurred for the next few hours, until I decided to close both instances of WoW and watched a few videos on youtube, then bam. Another lockup, out of nowhere it seemed. This happened about 30 minutes ago. I checked the event viewer Windows provides, and found no consistent errors between each crash - heck, for the last one, there WAS no error. The last event before "User profile service started successfully" (which I assume was an event that occurs right after you restart your computer) was nearly 6 hours ago.

Here are my computer specs, if they are necessary:

Processor: AMD Phenom II X2 545 processor 3.00 Ghz (2 of these? It's listed twice in Device Manager)
RAM: 2.00 GB
System: 32-bit OS Windows Vista
Video card: NVIDIA GeForce 9800 GT
Ask me if you need more; please point me in the right direction too, I'm not exactly the best at finding things.

All drivers are up-to-date, that I know of. I tried updating each today and it returned no updates.

TL;DR: My computer's locking up. It's not overheating and I'm not experiencing typical graphics errors that would make me think it's the graphics card (i've seen them before). There are no consistent errors in the Event Viewer, and half (2) of the lockups have no error at all. This happens both under stress and no stress. I'm not noticing typical power supply issues either.

Edit: I've also run virus and anti-malware scans, nothing returns as infected and both programs are current. I use MSE and MalwareBytes.

Does anyone have any kind of clue what this could be? :smallfrown:

[Eloel]

I've had a similar problem myself with my old laptop. The gfx card overheats (due to long usage and/or intensive usage), crashes. Multiple WoW and things don't strain the gfx card, so not a particularly good test.

I used to get it when playing Crysis (notorious for being graphic-intensive) at relatively high properties - it would run for a while, then crash in whichever way it pleases, be it grey screen, lockdown or colorful strips in screen.

You may wanna check into that.

[factotum]

Open the computer up and check the motherboard...see if any of the capacitors on it have swollen or leaked, indicating failure. Had a bunch of Dell machines a few years back that did that and they exhibited all sorts of weird issues. Failing that, possibly a dodgy power supply?

[Krazzman]

Factotum has a good starting point.

Along with Eloels advice I have to ask do you have other grafic errors? If yes this could possibly a driver problem. Mind vista is a ticking timebomb as a OS. If you can try saving your Savegames and...format it, then install the OS.

If you get a Bluescreen try to read the errorcode number. If it just freezes then it's probably the grafics engine or the interface for it that could be broken.

[Brother Oni]

The reason why your processor is listed twice is because it's a dual core. It should only have a single temperature value though.

I know you said that you don't think it's overheating, but 70C is very high for each component and excessively high for your motherboard, so while it's not the direct cause, I still think it's a contributing factor.
I suggest cleaning the inside of your computer, especially your heat sinks, and taking the opportunity to improve your airflow by tidying wires or installing case fans.

Further to the above answers, have you tried checking your RAM? If your RAM chips are going bad, it may cause issues.

Have you physically knocked your case recently? I've had issues where the motherboard was intermittently grounding out against the case due to loose components (I had a loose screw under the motherboard so my computer worked when the case was horizontal, but stopped when vertical).

[Derjuin]

I've had a similar problem myself with my old laptop. The gfx card overheats (due to long usage and/or intensive usage), crashes. Multiple WoW and things don't strain the gfx card, so not a particularly good test.

I used to get it when playing Crysis (notorious for being graphic-intensive) at relatively high properties - it would run for a while, then crash in whichever way it pleases, be it grey screen, lockdown or colorful strips in screen.

You may wanna check into that.

The problem is, the computer will crash whenever it feels like it, it seems. It will crash twice within an hour when just sitting around with music going while playing Warcraft, but will not crash for almost 6 hours with chats, music, downloads, and Borderlands running. :smallconfused:


Open the computer up and check the motherboard...see if any of the capacitors on it have swollen or leaked, indicating failure. Had a bunch of Dell machines a few years back that did that and they exhibited all sorts of weird issues. Failing that, possibly a dodgy power supply?

I didn't see anything bad on the motherboard; all the capacitors looked normal, no puffed up tops or leakage of any kind.


Factotum has a good starting point.

Along with Eloels advice I have to ask do you have other grafic errors? If yes this could possibly a driver problem. Mind vista is a ticking timebomb as a OS. If you can try saving your Savegames and...format it, then install the OS.

If you get a Bluescreen try to read the errorcode number. If it just freezes then it's probably the grafics engine or the interface for it that could be broken.

No graphics errors, and drivers are fully updated. There aren't any bluescreens - just freezes. The greyscreen happened only once, but it had no text on it. I've even checked error reporting through admin tools and it's not showing any errors at all, with the exception of a Java messup every so often.


The reason why your processor is listed twice is because it's a dual core. It should only have a single temperature value though.

I know you said that you don't think it's overheating, but 70C is very high for each component and excessively high for your motherboard, so while it's not the direct cause, I still think it's a contributing factor.
I suggest cleaning the inside of your computer, especially your heat sinks, and taking the opportunity to improve your airflow by tidying wires or installing case fans.

Further to the above answers, have you tried checking your RAM? If your RAM chips are going bad, it may cause issues.

Have you physically knocked your case recently? I've had issues where the motherboard was intermittently grounding out against the case due to loose components (I had a loose screw under the motherboard so my computer worked when the case was horizontal, but stopped when vertical).

Cleaned and checked RAM, everything's good. I'm still getting the crashes but they almost seem random, with the exception that they do not happen when a game is not being played.

I updated my drivers, uninstalled Java, and see no errors going off. It's not displaying typical behavior of overheat (last time it did that, it simply shut off - right now it's just freezing forever).

Sorry for taking forever to respond but I've been under a bit of stress and these lockups are making it worse. :smallannoyed::smallsigh:

[Brother Oni]

You say that your system only crashes under load - perhaps you have something new running in the background that's taking up system resource so that when the computer needs more to run the game, it becomes unstable?

Your RAM is fine (I assume you used Memtest or similar), but perhaps the voltage is a still bit off - what type of RAM do you have? If it's a performance brand, then maybe the previous issue is leading into under-voltage issues, and I've had RAM brownouts result in freezing rather than a reboot.

Have you checked your hard drive for bad sectors? If your windows drive is dying and system files are starting to become corrupt, that would result in strangeness.

I'm out of hardware ideas, so if all the above are fine, the only thing left is software.

Do you have an idea what (if anything) was modified before it started crashing? Perhaps there was an update you didn't notice or something updated automatically?

When you say drivers, have you done your BIOS drivers as well? I doubt they're at fault especially since you say you haven't added any hardware to your machine, but since the next step would be back up your data then reformat and reinstall the OS, it makes sense to try the easier fixes first.