ok. i've posted about this a couple times already, but i still have the problem. i just built a new computer a couple weeks ago.

the problem is that my computer will freeze up after 30-45 minutes of idling. as best as i can tell it is not overheating (temps are good. cpu: 35 deg C/96 deg F. system: 42 deg C/107 deg F. gpu: 42 deg C/107 deg F) I have my temp monitor (program came with the motherboard cd) set to give an alert if something is too high.
here's a pic of the monitoring tool:


the computer has never locked up with me using it. i have been on it for hours without it locking up, but as soon as i leave it idle for 30 minutes or so, it locks up. this is even the case if it is doing something like playing music, or i even downloaded a mouse movement recorder that i let run in repeat just to see if it made a difference. it didnt.

it's possible that i hooked something up wrong, and i've heard that my motherboard is extremely picky when it comes to the other HW you use, but i can't think of anything that would cause it to lock up in idle but not when i'm using it.

i am open to suggestions, and i will paypal $20 to the first person that succeeds in helping me fix this problem.

thank you.

here are the parts:

video card
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16814130249

case
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16811129152

cpu
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16819103622

speakers
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16836121118

RAM
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16820231036

mobo
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16813136152

psu
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16817104155

mouse
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16826104191

HDD
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16822152025

DVD RW
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16827106256

sound card
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16829102188

keyboard
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16823126179

4/22/2006 11:55:35 AM

Disable all power saving options.

4/22/2006 12:07:08 PM

yeah i got an IM a few minutes ago that said to:

turn off sys restore
disable power saving/hibernate options
then if that doesnt work,
start removing unnecessary HW

also suggested the possibility of bad RAM

Quote :

"___________(12:02:56 PM): update all drivers, turn off stuff like system restore and any power save / hibernation options ______________(12:03:27 PM): finally resort to unplugging various non critical hardware and see if it still freezes _____________(12:03:46 PM): could be bad ram or a bad circuit anywhere"

so, currently tryin this

-----------------------
damn, i already had powersave disabled, so that wasn't it

[Edited on April 22, 2006 at 12:15 PM. Reason : ]

4/22/2006 12:10:58 PM

Do you have a screen saver set to start? Diff than power save.

4/22/2006 12:51:03 PM

go into the BIOS and turn off "stop on all errors"

4/22/2006 1:11:03 PM

I can tell you that your software isn't reporting correct temperatures. There's no way that your CPU temp is 35 when your system temp is 42. It sounds like a ram problem to me. Are you using the nVidia firewall?

4/22/2006 1:24:06 PM

no screen saver

and apparantly i am using the nvidia firewall, although i didn't know about until you asked that

should i disable it, or modify settings in it? i think i'm using the windows firewall as well.

and why can't the cpu temp be lower than the system temp? there's a heatsink and fan directly on top of the cpu... if you know of better free software i can get to check the temps, let me know. the temps shown in the BIOS were ~40 C for the CPU and ~47 C for the chipset.


also, i went into the BIOS and couldn't find the "Stop on all errors" setting


nvm about the temp software, i found another program on my comp, SmartGuardian:


[Edited on April 22, 2006 at 2:46 PM. Reason : ]

4/22/2006 2:20:14 PM

Considering the difference in the size and quality of the heatsink/fan combo that's usually on a cup and say the chipset, that's not so unreasonable. I'm sure some people thought "system" temperature was reffering to the case internal air temperature (that's what I thought it may have meant by system temperature, as calling your chipset the "system" is a bit of a misnomer.) Without peltier, phase change, or water cooling it would be impossible for your cpu to be cooler than your internal case temperature. In the case of a fan/air cooled system, the air in the case is your coolant and you can't lower something below the temperature of your coolant with convective heat transfer like that.

[Edited on April 22, 2006 at 6:25 PM. Reason : ]

4/22/2006 6:25:17 PM

Your windows is fucked up, reformat, you have bad sectors, get a new power source, too.

4/22/2006 7:50:43 PM

^^^^ my cpu is at 29 and system at 53. case temp 38. ASUS P5N32-SLI Deluxe, passive chip cooling.

4/22/2006 9:31:53 PM

Shit, I've got a Zalman CNPS 9500 that idles my cpu @ 28. My case never comes below 35

4/23/2006 1:45:16 AM

See, I'd argue that it's a physical impossibility for the air that's being used to cool your cpu to be hotter than your cpu. The case tempertaure must be reflecting the local air temperature at some bizzarely hot spot far enough from the cpu that it doesn't matter. Or it's actually reporting "system" temperature, which might just likely refer to the northbridge or something.

4/23/2006 12:58:51 PM

ok who cares. the point of this thread is to figure out how to fix my comp.

4/23/2006 5:17:46 PM

the point of the thread is to make $20

4/23/2006 7:12:25 PM

ok that works

4/23/2006 8:18:18 PM

If you're using the nVidia firewall, uninstall it completely. It leads to a plethora of computer fuckups. On my computer, if I have the nVidia firewall installed, it BSoDs and soon and it tries to access the internet. I didn't have that proble with the old chipset drives, but I can't get it to function with any of the newer drivers. Charybdisjim gave a good explination of my comment about your temps.

4/24/2006 1:28:50 PM

alright i'll uninstall nVidia firewall completely when i get back to my apartment and see if that helps anything.

any other suggestions?

i find it especially weird that i can sit at the computer and use it for hours, but leaving it idle for 20-45 minutes will cause it to freeze 100% of the time.

i've never had it freeze while i was sitting there using it.

4/24/2006 4:55:13 PM

uninstalled nvidia firewall

comp still freezes

4/24/2006 11:59:31 PM

/format c:

4/25/2006 12:56:08 AM

did make sure standby AND hibernation are turned off?
they are a lot alike in most ways except one saves your system state at the time but you do have to click on a seperate tab to turn it off
my computer has NEVER recovered fully from any hibernation

4/25/2006 1:21:59 AM

yeah hibernation is off too

4/25/2006 1:42:27 AM

Is this a fresh install of windoze?

4/25/2006 2:39:11 AM

check to make sure your "virtual memory" is set at a reasonable amount....

the 30-45 minutes thing has me baffled

try using a different mouse.. ive gotten some VERY quirky logitech drivers before

4/25/2006 2:53:00 AM

virtual memory is at 2 gb, i can raise it but i really doubt that's the problem.

and are you implying that it may just be the mouse that stops working? it is definitely the entire pc.

4/25/2006 11:38:19 AM

not implying anything

you said it happens after 30 minutes of idle time even if the cursor is moving but the mouse is still

so maybe something is going haywire when your mouse doesn't recieve signal for that long?

im not saying go out and buy another $70 mouse.
WHO KNOWS

4/25/2006 1:44:33 PM

format c:

4/25/2006 2:26:41 PM

im not going to just randomly format and reinstall EVERYTHING if i'm not positive that will fix it. do you know how pissed i'd be if i went to all that trouble to re-install everything again just to have the same problem?

i still think it's something HW related, possibly the motherboard, but i really have no idea what it would be...

i'll try using a different mouse tonight... i really like my mouse though, hopefully that's not the problem

4/25/2006 2:58:45 PM

I think at this point, if you're reasonably sure it's not a software problem, you need to start isolating hardware. See if you can pin it down to a specific component.

4/25/2006 3:20:27 PM

well i'm not sure of anything, but i suspect HW because it's my first build and i wouldn't be surprised if i fucked something up, or if something i ordered is fucked up.

i'm not really sure what i could isolate though. pretty much all the internal HW is required, outside of the sound card. i already checked each stick of RAM solo, so unless there's a problem with both of them it probably isn't that. (i found out that my mobo doesn't officially support my RAM)

could that be what's causing the problem?

4/25/2006 3:35:36 PM

Official support doesn't mean a damn thing.

4/25/2006 3:48:57 PM

i would find someone with an old HDD and install your OS on that

one way to see if it's hardware

if it still doesn't crash, add software piecewise till something happens

shoot. maybe it's your HDD

it's the long way but it'd work

4/25/2006 4:24:32 PM

Go into your BIOS and there should be an option to change to fail/safe settings or something to that matter. Activate and if you do not see a problem turn on and adjust settings as you please until you see the problem again. Might help you diagnoise the issue. Be careful if you are running any sort of stripe raid setups with your hdds as you might lose data.

4/25/2006 5:59:05 PM

^didnt work

i'll try a different mouse tonight, but i really hope that isn't the problem. or maybe if it is that i can get some better drivers to fix it.

4/26/2006 3:07:23 PM

i recently built a system with the same motherboard, and same hard drive (except 2 of them).
use this http://www.samsung.com/Products/HardDiskDrive/utilities/hutil.htm to test the hard drive. you'll need to create a boot disc floppy and throw those 2 files on there then run them (instructions on the site). should tell you if the hard drive is alright at least.

4/26/2006 5:02:11 PM

no floppy drive

is there an easy way to make a bootable CD instead?

[Edited on April 26, 2006 at 5:29 PM. Reason : ]

4/26/2006 5:29:15 PM

you don't need to pay me if this fixes it; besides, you won't like this.

a LOT of people once they have problems with nVidia firewall will continue to have them. The only real solution once this happens is to reformat the hard drive and reinstall windows. Then, install the updated nForce drivers making sure not to install nVidia firewall software/drivers. But I can't guarentee that this is your problem.

But, yes that board is picky about hardware. Try running this Prime95 as well to check your memory: http://www.mersenne.org/freesoft.htm Go to Options -> Torture Test -> Blend.

4/26/2006 6:01:58 PM

bttt

4/29/2006 5:41:40 PM

^^ran that test for 24 hours straight with no errors and no lockups (yeah, comp ran for 24 hours no lockups)

restarted, let comp sit, locked up after 30 minutes. so whatever is causing it to lock up didnt happen while prime95 was doin a torture test...

weird

5/1/2006 12:34:18 AM

I know you've already said you don't want to, but the fact is, one of the simplest things to do, and 9 times out of 10 works, is to simply backup important stuff, reformat and start from scratch.

Then you can much more easily pinpoint the problem because you can install drivers one at a time and see how they affect your system.

If it hangs right after a clean install, you can be fairly sure it's hardware, not software issues, then the first thing i'd try is changing some of the critical components, like memory for starters, then maybe the processor/mobo and see if either of those components have any effect on the situation.

5/1/2006 1:01:11 AM

I have the answers...but it'll cost ya a lil more than 20$

5/1/2006 1:15:28 AM

^^ he is right... I know you're tempted to be stubborn and do a non-destructive fix of some sort, but when you're stumped, and when google+the wolf web+message boards for the manufacturers you bought from are to no avail... just give it up and do a post mortem.

5/1/2006 6:18:50 AM

my first guess would be hard drive... download something and check the SMART parameters for the drive, could be bad sectors you don't frequently access that the drive is stumbling on during its idle scan and/or virus scanning software stumbling on same bad sectors

[Edited on May 1, 2006 at 7:34 AM. Reason : *]

5/1/2006 7:31:44 AM

Did you make sure you dont have a virus, or spyware isht that is causing a memory leak?
I had the same thing happen, back in the day, and it was malware...not saying it's the answer, but Id run norton either from the site, or DL it, and run it locally, making sure to have the latest def's, ditto with spy sweeper, spybot, and adaware, just to be sure. also, check your task manager for suspicious apps running in the background. also, check your startup config and look for suspicious entries there.
I suggest d/c'ing from the internet once you have updated your spyware and antivirus progs, before you scan. then scan, clean, reboot, till you dont find anything. Root through your registry and double check the startup values, for malware there. you could also turn off* system restore, on your box.
hope this helps!
XSMP

5/1/2006 3:27:53 PM

Just a side note: if you use Symantec AV from the school, I uninstalled it and put AVG on a friend's computer the other day and it found 35 more viruses that Symantec had never seen. So you should probably use something other Symantec.

5/1/2006 3:39:12 PM

^fuck

that's what i'm using.

i like free software, what can i say?

5/1/2006 3:47:06 PM

just steal the corp version lol, i've been virus free for 3 years+. thanks symantec.

5/1/2006 4:07:33 PM

^lol virus free? whatd you run to check to make sure that youre virus free? im guessing symantec ...so you really dont know if youre virus free.

5/1/2006 4:38:48 PM

or you could just not click on every damn thing that pops up

5/2/2006 1:09:32 AM

AVG is free. get it here http://free.grisoft.com/doc/2/lng/us/tpl/v5

5/2/2006 10:40:21 AM

^thanks, i'll run that tonight

and i'll get spybot and all that other stuff too. i doubt it will fix my problem though, i've had this problem from the beginning.

5/2/2006 11:19:40 AM