Computer randomly freezes, followed by cursor freeze, followed by nothing until reset

Re: Computer randomly freezes, followed by cursor freeze, followed by nothing until r

Repair install is easy and straightforward as long as you have the original cd from microsoft. I have done it once on XP and it worked out fine. Took about an hour or two at most.

Formating your hard drive and reinstalling everything is the real nightmare. Might as well buy a new computer, especially if you have not saved your important data offline first. I had to do this once and to get everything back to normal it took me a year. Not exaggerating, since i don't have like 8 hours a day to spend on the pc.

 

Re: Computer randomly freezes, followed by cursor freeze, followed by nothing until r

Quite right Nikos.

I'm going to backup my absolutely 'essential' files onto an external HDD over the weekend, and after the wedding I'll revisit this thread and follow through the suggestions from tweaking.com to running the repair disk.

I just haven't got the time to focus on repairing the PC at the moment when I could potentially lose a lot of documents about the wedding etc, but yes, I will try to repair rather than reformat. I cannot give in!

 

Re: Computer randomly freezes, followed by cursor freeze, followed by nothing until r

I'm going to give repairing a go. I've ran all the scans, backed up my most crucial files (on an external HDD) and will go ahead and make backup points and disk images.

But, my C:/ is a 120GB SSD and I moved My Documents/Musics/Pictures/Videos over to the D:/. My C:/ only has 30GB free and My Documents are approx 40GB - there's nothing I can uninstall.

What would you suggest?

What happens if I repair with my documents etc on another hard drive? Do they just get re-built as empty C:/ folders which I can then re-re-direct to D:/ and populate with my backups?

 

Re: Computer randomly freezes, followed by cursor freeze, followed by nothing until r

Sounds like a plan. The disk images will contain your documents, by the way.

Not sure what you can do here, other than maybe come up with a larger drive maybe? Again, I know it's intimidating performing this fix, but your files should be in the image backup you make. Also, the repair process should leave your files and programs intact, anyway. Good you are taking all the precautions, though.

If you have cloud storage, could you store some of your files there?

Actually, I don't think the folders will even be destroyed. The repair installation is more akin to reinstalling Windows files in the Windows folder like .dlls and so on which can become corrupt. I believe your files will actually still be in the folders. That's how it worked in XP the times I ran it there. Haven't used it in 7, yet, so maybe someone can add some info on that. The process is quite different than the XP repair I will say...

 

Re: Computer randomly freezes, followed by cursor freeze, followed by nothing until r

Heskey...

Just watched the video on running the repair again. That's a great video, so I recommend watching it very carefully a few times. Some things stood out with me in the video:

1. You will need the product key for your PC to complete the repair installation. Look over the recommendations for coming up with that, but, hopefully, it will be on your PC case somewhere...or on the packaging for your installation disk.
2. If your installation disk does not contain SP1, you will need to remove SP1 from the PC before starting the repair.
3. You must run the repair from inside of Windows.
4. The kind of installation you want to choose is the upgrade installation.
5. Looks like the system will naturally (as part of the process) reboot three or four times during the process. Don't hit any keys on the keyboard during that time so that the reboots will happen uninterrupted. Likely it wouldn't hurt anything if you had to reboot after making a choice, but, anyway, the boots are normal and no intervention is needed to start the Windows installation DVD or whatever.

This looks like a very smooth process. With all your precautions, you should be good...:major

 

Re: Computer randomly freezes, followed by cursor freeze, followed by nothing until r

Thanks. I'm just going to work now so will get to this when I get home this evening.

CD Key is inside my box so no worries there. One thing though; hoe can I find out if my install disc has SP1 already on it, and if not, how do I remove it? I've read through the documentation included in the box but it's just generic "How To Get Started" bumf - nothing technical that says anything other than Windows 7 Home Premium 64-bit

 

Re: Computer randomly freezes, followed by cursor freeze, followed by nothing until r

Heskey...

Might be an easier way, but I'm not sure what:

http://www.sevenforums.com/software/363590-possible-see-if-my-windows-7-disc-has-sp1.html

The 2nd to last post should work. Good luck...

 

Re: Computer randomly freezes, followed by cursor freeze, followed by nothing until r

Well, I finally got through all the scans, created a registry backup and system restore point, and ran a Tweaking.com repair.

My PC survived, and everything seems in-tact. I guess I won't know if it worked until I experience any more problems; in which case, it'll be the Repair Installation.

I've attached the logs that it generated inside the .zip

 

Re: Computer randomly freezes, followed by cursor freeze, followed by nothing until r

Heskey...

Maybe Tweaking will fix the problem. Looks like it ran and performed all the requested fixes.

If you find you will need to run the repair, post back with any questions. I found the video on the repair really clear, and the explanation of the details good, so that looks like it would be a good template for the operation...

 

Re: Computer randomly freezes, followed by cursor freeze, followed by nothing until r

Hi guys,

So I guess tweaking.com didn't work.

I went to a meeting last night and when I came back, my PC did as described in the first post (something it hasn't been doing in a while); I went to open a new browser window, and an error message popped up saying my PC didn't have enough memory to execute the operation. I went to close the error box and nothing was responding to the mouse click. 5 seconds later the cursor locked up, and about 10 seconds later my monitor went to "No Signal".

Before considering the repair install, when I'm back later today I'm going to purge my PC of graphics drivers (old and new), and re-install the latest, because one of the problems was with the monitor blinking off and telling me about some 'kernal' issue with the GPU. I wonder if the 'memory' is the V-RAM?

Can you recommend a good program for seeking out and uninstalling/removing old GPU drivers and their download locations? If anything, it should free up a few GB!

 

Re: Computer randomly freezes, followed by cursor freeze, followed by nothing until r

Done, with Display Driver Uninstaller from guru3D - it detected leftovers of my old Radeon GPU drivers. Uninstalled everything and reinstalling (Nvidia GPU)

 

Re: Computer randomly freezes, followed by cursor freeze, followed by nothing until r

Heskey...

Thanks for the information. I started to post, but I didn't know where to start with removing old drivers. So you were actually able to find something to remove the remnants of the old Radeon drivers? Sounds like a cool program.

I will take a look. Looks like Display Driver Uninstaller is already here at MGs for download I see. There are so many great programs available here. Really appreciate you posting back the positive results with this one...

Maybe this will resolve some/all of your issues...

 

Re: Computer randomly freezes, followed by cursor freeze, followed by nothing until r

For anyone following this thread experiencing similar problems, I must say that so far I've experienced no problems with my PC since removal all catalogued versions of graphics drivers and reinstalled the latest driver from scratch.

It could well have been that GPU drivers were tripping up over one another after a time, or a certain string caused two drivers to overlap and cause a hang?

I am guessing of course - all I can say is that since doing this, my PC has been fine so far. I will post back if there are any issues.