I’ve got the same problem. The screen freezes, mouse won’t do anything, nothing from the keyboard. I’ve also got no sound, even bought a new soundcard and no luck, what machine have you got? Mine’s a Dell Dimension 5150

Hi Doogal,
Mine is a custom built desktop with Asus mobo. I finally got the sound working by using a XP driver, which shouldn’t of worked. Once I uninstalled the wrong sound drivers that were supposed to work, the system no longer freezes.

Ron

I am having exactly the same symptoms with an HP Media Center PC, 2 gigs of RAM and Vista Home Premium pre-installed. There are no error messages at all. It just stops responding and all I can do is a hard reboot. I did get a period where it behaved itself. My Windows Live OneCare firewall had quit working. When I reinstalled OneCare, the freeze behavior returned. I have tried turning the firewall off again but no change.

Hi Jonathan,
Thanks for sharing your experience with us.
Regards, Ron

Yep having the same problem system just freezes at first i thought it was heat cos its a new custom pc but it dose it cold as well. I now have it working perfectly once i have tuned off UAC. and every time i try to turn it back on with in 3 mins of start up bang goes the pc freeze again, and an error in the system log of “Windows Servicing failed to complete the process of changing update …” and then some radom shite that changes everytime

can anybody confirm this on there system too??

I’ve been having this identical problem… random freezes. I tried new video drivers, registry hacks, etc. to no avail.

My system seems to be “cured” only after

a) reseating my memory - I read that static buildup can lead to freezes
b) disabling all but the essential msconfig startup items. This included ALL the nvidia related items.

I was at my wits end, but now all seems to be well.

Hi Joe,
Thanks for sharing your experience with us. It is appreciated.

yeah I’ve been having the exact same problem only it’s just got worse. Vista tried to install a patch recently and failed only half installing it before freezing and crashing, it then lost the wireless. I attempted system restore … that was yesterday morning… it’s still going over 24 hours later… I think it’s dead, but don’t want to end it.

I want to use the recovery disk but the warning on the back is making me hesitate… apparently if I use it it will erase my second hard drive as well as the one vista is installed on… The one where I backed everything up in case something like this happened. Not sure what to do now, but I know one thing, as soon as I get hold of a copy of XP it’s being installed on that laptop instead of Vista. I’ve had no freezes whatsoever with the XP computer or random crashes when nothing is running.

Hi Rebecca,
If you disconnect the second hard disk than the drive info should remain safe from being destroyed.

Okay so like I just bought this new pc and it’s running on vista and I wanna pull every strand off the top of my head. I left my pc running recording a show and when I tried to wake my system up after it being in sleep mode it gave me this crazy pixelated screen and the sounds was messed up also I don’t know what yo do!

Have you contacted the OEM for suggestions?

Sorry to say, my experience has been that this isn’t a Vista-only thing: I used to get it on a Dell under XP. The only solution back then was to format/reinstall (and do a full format, not “quick erase”).
That said, I have been doing some digging now that my Vista desktop is be-plagued with the freezing. I’ve disabled “Superfetch” because it’s bad for gaming (Google for that and you’ll see), I’ve made sure Firewall/Spyware/Antivirus are all taken care of, run diagnostics ’til I’m blue in the screen (kidding).
Two solutions I did see pop up: 1) If you’ve got SATA drives, be sure they’re plugged into the motherboard in order, e.g., 1, 2 instead of 1, 3. I imagine the SATA controller polls the ports in sequence, and if there’s a gap, it’s a holdup? Not sure. The other suggestion was to disable SATA ports you’re not using in the BIOS.
http://www.daniweb.com/forums/thread72275.html

The other is if you have a driver conflict, update or roll back the driver in question. But that’s kind of a typical tip you’ll find a lot of places. :-/

I have Vista Ultimate with SP1 final and now it has random freezes. Just like in the first post i didn’t do anything. I think i’ll go back to xp vista still sucks.

I previously had Vista on my HP M1170N (when it was first released) it worked fine then, but I preferred XP. Now I would like to use Vista … I did a clean install …. it froze everytime I touched the mouse to do anything. I called Microsoft…. after taking two days to give them my name….I attempted another re-install, but the third day, Microsoft called me back. Literally, after six hours on the phone, we were able to fix an issue with a corrupt Adminstrator file…. but everytime I add anything or spend more than five minutes doing something it freezes and I have to do a hard reboot.

I have read the following:
1) Alter the bios … unselecting EIST… whatever that means or how you do it was never explained.
2) That Nvidia is causing it and it should be uninstalled…..

Why is it that we cannot get answers from Microsoft or the OEMs on these issues?

I really need help….It would take weeks working through Microsoft.

Hello Laura,
Have you gone to the HP site and confirmed you have ALL of the latest drivers and BIOS update if applicable for your system?

In looking at your model it appears that XP Media Center was the original OS. My suspicion is that since your original install of Vista, and the recent install, that the drivers have changed.

NVidia seems to have issues with Vista so I would also make sure you have the latest drivers for your video as well. This will cause freezes.

Good luck.

I have exactly the same problem with the first post. Every thing freezes up and I have to turn-off the power more than 20 times day. I have vista ultimate installed on HP pavellion. I was thinking a hardware problem. But the safe mood is working well. The problem , reading many posts, I guess on the HP drivers and Vista(the painful OS). Any help please!

Hello Desalegn,
I’d go to the HP site and see if there are any updated drivers [I am fairly sure there should be] for your system & Vista.

Hi Ron
thanks for your fast reply
I updated everything, drivers, bios, and lots of intel softwares to help the processor and the card. But non of them work. My pc freezes immediately, specially when I surf the web.

Hello Desalegn,
I would take a look than at your anti-virus protection or any additional software that either came preinstalled, you installed later, such as security suites.

In particular Norton, McAfee and so forth. Let me know if you have any of these programs. Even 3rd party firewalls can slow or freeze a system. We usually refer to some preinstalled stuff as ‘crapware’ aka ‘crap’

Read this about crap remover:

http://www.lockergnome.com/blade/2007/02/19/new-pc-remove-most-of-the-junk-software-for-free/

This Dell user with a slow system until the crap was removed.

http://www.lockergnome.com/blade/2007/05/31/new-dell-system-reader-needs-help-system-running-slow/

[...] reader responded to an article from back in March 24, 2007 [here], and stated they were having issues with their HP system using Microsoft Windows Vista Ultimate [...]

I have the same random freezes on my vista system. When you google for vista screen freezes you get tons of results, but never an answer. Exept the usually advices like cleenup the system, check for viruses, check the processor temperature and so on.
For me I can say that I have all dricer and vista updates, the pc is in a cool room and the antivirus runs well. Everest shows no problems.
It is absolutely annoying to me, to see the silence of microsoft and the OEM’s to that problem. They act like it wouldn’t exist and left the people feel like they are a few exeptions.

Please. If anyone has a real solution, make a big post on it.

I have the same problem. Vista (Home Premium 32bit) will freeze randomly and I have to hard boot/power cycle. If I have music playing, it hangs and loops the last sound. I recently had XP Pro SP3 installed on this same pc and everything worked like a charm. I’ve checked the hardware and everything is good.

Freezing seems to occur most when running Firefox 3 and visiting Java or Flash heavy sites.

I’ve had the same results as Stephan - there are numerous reports of this issue on the web, but no real solutions. I’ve tried updating drivers, software, etc. I even installed Vista SP1.
No changes whatsoever.

System specs:

Intel Dual-Core Wolfdale E8400
Asus P5E3 WS Pro MB
OCZ Platinum 2GB DDR3 1333
ATI Radeon HD 3850
160GB WD SATAII Primary
750GB Samsung SATAII Secondary

Same thing is happening to me too!

I just built a gaming computer around Vista ultimate 64-bit. Every day i get AT LEAST 2 computer freezes. It just freezes like nothing, with the last sound played being looped over and over.

Is there any cure for this at all? yet?

790i mobo, dual SLI with 8800 GT’s Superclocked, 4 gigs of DDR3 ram, 750gig HDD.

Same issue as Joseph. Random freezes at desktop, sitting idle. Random freezes during playing games sometimes 5mins in sometimes 2hours-4hours in. Sound goes funky too looping over and over. Have to hard reset or power down to get comp out of it. Checked and troubleshot hardware and I don’t believe it’s an issue. Upgraded MB and video drivers. I can only blame vista now.

Cure in site?

790iultra nvivdia MB, Intel Quadro, dual sli 9600gt, 4gig DDR3 Ram, 120gigRaptor primary, 1TeraHDD secondary

Here are some suggestions on a site I found:

http://discuss.extremetech.com/forums/thread/1004374389.aspx

Have you installed SP1 yet?

Yes SP1 is installed

Hello Steve,
Take a look at the link above. If none of that works or doesn’t apply let me know.

Looked at the above link.

From the link I gathered this from the original post and replies:

I am unsure if I still have any programs running in the background once the system freezes. I am unable to alt tab out or close the program.

I do not use a wireless mouse, I do not have a modem, while it is frozen the screen and everything will freeze or it will just go black.

I do not have a dell. I built it from scratch so the dell fix does not apply. i have SP1 and Vista 32 installed. I have not tired to install 64, seemed like a lot of work for an unsure fix.

Previously I had switched out the RAM thinking it may be bad RAM but I still have the issue with my friends working and tested RAM. I don’t think it’s a videocard issue becasue I can run crysis on ultra high and It won’t lock up at all. I have had the freeze issue mostly while playing age of conan, and the warhammer beta. But the fact it happens on the destop also while there is nothing strenious going on made me question vista.

Temps are all within normal limits and I don’t believe that to be an issue.

As of right now I had left my computer on all night to DL a torrent and when I arrived home 12hours later it was still working properly. So the freezing is random as far as I can tell. But it happens more so ingame than desktop freezes.

Hi Steve,
It sounds like you have tried all of the standard fixes.

Only thing I can think of is a weak PS. What size ps is your?

1k watts

That should be enough.

You can try this. Before you play a game, disconnect any hardware you won’t be using. some of the RAM, the extra hard disk, anything to lighten the load. See what happens.

Next try disabling the sound. Play a game and see what happens.

Good luck. I wish I had your system in front of me to play with and test different things.

Later, Ron

I just tried it for kicks but I googled 790i freeze and I got a lot of hits. Turns out the nvidia board has a history of being on the unstable side.

A lot of people reporting my problem… so I know who is to blame now… forgive me vista

Guess I see what I can dig up.

I have an HP Media Center M1170n and also have lock ups with the Blue Screen/memory dump. I have also had an issue rebooting past the blue startup screen. I had to unplug a USB device and reboot so as to get back up running. This staarted just adding the USB cable modem. My Ethernet modem communication went down.

I’ve got the same problem as everybody here, but mainly happens when i play World of Warcraft. But also when i watch movies. Im running with a split screen:
Samsung SyncMaster 226cw as main and Samsung 40″ as second.

I’ve updated all drivers also BIOS.

Im running with Bullguard v8.0 and nothing ells as security. (Windows firewall disabled).

Spec:
Vista Home Premium 64Bit
Intel Quad CPU Q9300 2,50GHz
4 GB 1033 MHz Crossair
Geforece 9800GX2
Samsung 1Tbite Sata HDD
PSU 750Watt Thermaltake Key 3
Auzentech Prelude 7.1

I’ve noticed some problems with the Auzentech Prelude 7.1 in Vista. Sometimes the sound locks up, Mainly in World of warcraft.
But also when i just surf on the net listening to musik, but here the sound starts lagging.

Dont know if this helps anything, or any of you have any ideas to what i can do.

I have had the same problem. I run Vista 64bit and my game freezes after a while. I changed a power setting and it hasnt happened since. In Vista, the hard drives are set to sleep after 20 minutes. If you are running more than 1 drive, your other drives might turn off, which causes your game to freeze. Set drives to never turn off. Hope that helps.

Exactly the same problem with me. The “freeze” is more often when I surf with internet explorer.
I run Win Wista Home Premium 32bit with SP1. My mouse works fine but it doesn’t open websites, open programs and when you choose to restart it can take 10 even 15 minutes to restart.
My system is an AMD X2 6000 , M2N32 SLI, 2 x WD 80GB RAID 0, 2 x 8600GT @ SLI, 2 x 1GB GSKILL DDR2 800, CORSAIR 620HX,

Wow…. Same problem everywhere I go. Even if people have a fully updated driver system… or downgraded.

This is amazing…. should a lawsuit be taken to action?

Here is my story and symptoms, if it might help. When I build my machine I had Mushkin Ram installed instead of the corsair. I would get random freezes one in awhile with memory blue screens. I replaced the ram and magically the blue screen errors went away. Except for the freezing. The freezing happens seldom. I could go a week before it happens. When it does happen I an usually just chatting online, listening to itunes, and burning a DVD. The other night when it happened I was watching a movie off my HHD while backing up some files to a external HHD. My auto power save mode is off, I turn that on and off manually. I keep a external HHD connected to my UPS, and usually use my Card Reader rearly, which is never plugged in to the UPS. I had a hard lock playing bioshock only twice, but that was with my old mushkin ram. Command and Conquer 3 play well, not problems there. I also did have it lock up maybe twice when just using firefox. I user Nero7 to burn, and use ffdshow decoder.

After reading other forums on this problem I cam to some ideas…

I don’t think it is a heat issue. Everyone who says when there machine lock up that there temps are fine. Even people who have water cooling there 790i locks up. I don’t know though if people use the extra fan that connects to the Northbridge Heat Bar. I don’t. That could be worth a try connecting it.

Other people claim it is a vista problem, but this problem happens with users with XP. And people who have vista using a x48 don’t seem to have much of a problem here.

I read other forums too where people disable the sound all together and still get lock ups.

Its not just one manufacture, this problem happens to EVGA, XFI, MSI and Asus with 790i.. also with the 750i and 780i boards.

Its not a SLI probelm, people have turned off SLI and still get lock ups.

Post all over http://forums.slizone.com/ have come with no solution. Post linking to post, its everywhere.

I did find that EVGA support told a customer, and that was to reinstall the graphics drivers in safe mode, and to flash the bios and go back to the p03 driver. Not sure that would help in our case, maybe worth a shot. Reading on it didn’t seem to work for other people.

Anyway, I have come to thinking that tthe nForce 7 series is just a poor chipset. And if there was a driver that could fix it, Nvidia has not come up with any solution yet.

There is my two cents.

Win Vista 64 SP1
Intel QX9770
BIOS P06
EVGA 790i ultra motherboard
4 G Corsair XMS3 1600 SLI
EVGA Geforce 280
Vilociraptor 300 Gig
SilverStone 1000W

This post from the Blizz forums solved my problem, regarding frezz in world of warcraft:

http://forums.wow-europe.com/thread.html;jsessionid=890831A8028C7D254F3ED3D953DD263A.app06_05?topicId=1016061799&sid=1

Hi all, I’m having the same freeze problem. At first it was JUST when the system was idle. But it has since started happening sporatically during boot and infrequently while moving the mouse.

I have a new Q6600 system, with an eVGA 8600 GTS, running XP SP2.

I built the system about 2 months ago and had it on my desk without a case for 4-5 weeks running a 8600 GT with no problems AT ALL. I run two monitors on one card at 2048X1536, do a lot of graphics and video work. No games.

I was planning on building an identical system for my wife. (I’ve been building systems for a living since 286 days - due to health I had to quit a few years ago, tho). I got the parts for her, some cases & couldn’t get another 8600GT, so I bought the 8600 GTS. I put my system in a case and installed the GTS and the CD drivers that came with it.. I didn’t plug in one HD (RAID, no impact) and swapped the HD LED polarity. I ran it for several day that way with no problems.

I opened the box, plugged in the cables and put it back together. I had to unplug the monitors to do this. I plugged them back in and only had 2048X on one mon. 1940 x 1440 on the other mon. was the highest it would go. I tried to find some way to fix it, but couldn’t & got no help at the eVGa forum. I finally decided to install the newest drivers. I did this and in the process discovered the check box to ‘Enable modes not shown by adapter’ When I checked it I could configure the monitors to 2048X. I did this and moved on, happy to have solved the problem.

I worked 3-4 hrs on projects and other things, customizing, configuring, etc with no problems. I stopped for a couple hours rest & when I came back - freeze. Had to cold boot.

I couldn’t muck with it yet, so I wrote a plea on the eVGA forum for help and did what I had to do on the system with no problems. I stopped 3-4 hrs later. When I came back - freeze. Had to cold boot.

–sidebar of thought–
I’ve fought freezes like this for years. They used to THE prevalent problem in Windows. It has 80% of the time been related to vid drivers and frequently vid drivers VS mouse drivers. The only time I’ve seen no use freezes has been screen savers, power saving profiles and hybernation. Do to all the problems with those three, I NEVER use them. Keep in mind, I have built dozens of Win9x systems that were crash-proof, no problem systems that ran 24×365 for years, so I HAVE learned some things over the years. (I’ve built even more NT systems starting at 3.51.) Anyway, I’ve always been very strict about what vid cards I use, what ‘goofy’ and unknown apps are installed and only MS mice and Keytronics keyboards. KB’s and mice have more impact that you’d think. What I can’t understand is what the f*** is wrong with MS and their mouse drivers. I truly think after what I’ve read today, they are part of this problem. Some of the freezes during boot appeared to be when something was loading into the tool tray.

I have a cordless Intellimouse Explorer, one of the first versions. The only driver I have been able to get to work reliably with it or any other mouse for as long as I can remember is…. v. 4.1. When this driver came out I migrated from a somewhat stable, (if I rigidly controlled other things) v 3.x. Version 4.0 was a turd. Version 4.1 worked and was necessary for anything more than a 3 button, wheeled mouse, (if I remember correctly) When I built this new system, I decided to experiment with new mouse drivers on the first XP install. (I usually a trial install on a new MB/CPU config the first time and work out any kinks, then do a fresh install to leave on it.) I tried every version of mouse driver I could find AND none of them worked - it was around the 4th of July, so the explosions fit right in!

If you think about it, the vid card mouse interaction is very severe and prone to errors - I’ve always been amazed it EVER worked. Varialby speeds of movement, reacting pixels, clicks, wheels - there’s a lot of stuff happening and the vid driver has to keep up.

Anyway, those of you that are still fighting this freeze, don’t overlook the mouse. To find this issues if there’s no ‘magic bullet’ new driver is all about isolating HW, making logs of what you were doing, and systematic, disciplined testing. Think about all of the times since XP came out, (yes, it’s flaky like 9x used to be), you’ve had a unique program crash, or Explorer crashed, etc. Did you look at the tool tray? I have for years and found 90% of the time, the mouse icon is GONE.
–end of sidebar–

Again I got no help from the eVGA forum. I finally decided to clean up some services that are unnecessary and clean out some apps that I don’t ‘know’. While I was doing this, I had a couple of freezes for the first time. I also had a couple of freezes while re-booting. I got a freeze in Firefox v 2.12 for the first time, but what was different was nothing else was frozen. I started to save things, close things and I found that the eVGA Precision was froze, but not the MB temp/fan control panel I also had open. (I was thinking possibly temp) So I uninstalled Precision and went after some other unknown apps. I didn’t find any resolution. If I let the system sit, it WILL freeze.

An hour or two ago I cleaned out the newest eVGA driver and went back to the CD version. It has worked fine in XP, but I have had a BIOS level freeze for the first time, with some color pixel artifacts on the black BIOS screen - a hint there. I’ve only shut it down once & haven’t tried a ‘no use’ test as I wanted to Google the issue and that brings me to you guys. There has been more intelligent discussion in this blog than I found on ANY of the 40-50 sites I read before here. (The Lunix - Ubuntu boys were screaming from the problem a year or two ago)

I don’t have a magic bullet, but I thought I’d put some of my experience and thoughts out there for you guys to kick around. I’ve had a head injury and don’t sort things out as well as I used to - that’s why I had to quit the biz. ‘Cause of that I’m hoping a collaboration here might find an insight to the problem.

If it continues for me, which I think it will, I’m going to dump the GTS and revert to the GT and see if the prob goes away. If so, the eVGA gets the card back.

Does anybody around here know what the GT, GTS, SSC designations mean or where I can go to figure it out? It’s another of those damn acronym-identifying systems the manufacturer doesn’t up-front define. Do they think we’re mind-readers?

Later,

GeoD

Hello GeoD,
Thank you for sharing your plight with us. It is very much appreciated.

Sorry I can’t help with the acronyms. But I hear you about trying to ID those manufacturer secret codes.

All the best,
Ron

I had a similar problem with a custom built machine. The screen would freeze and I would lose control of my mouse and keyboard. I would be forced to hard-reboot.

After 3 weeks I noticed audiodg.exe was creating a huge amount of handles without releasing them (in the hundreds of thousands). While your problems might not be caused by audiodg.exe — it could be caused by another process. I recommend you do the following:

Press CTRL + ALT + DELETE to bring up task manager. Then switch to the performance tab and verify that the number of handles are not increasing rapidly. Mine would increase at about 3-10 handles per second when audio was playing.

If you find the number of handles increasing — click on the processes tab. Click show processes from all users. Then go to View -> Select columns. Select “Handles” to be displayed — and any other columns you think could be useful. For me, this was how I identified audiodg.exe to be my problem. If you find that this is your problem also, go here for a solution:

http://schroeder-dev.com/node/1

If you find that another process is your problem — search around on google. There will almost definitely be a solution for it. Post your results back here!

i have a similar problem, my computer, server 2k8 will freeze at the bios every time i boot it.
it’ll show the motherboard brand, intel, gateway, ect. but then is freezes and i can’t do anything.