Computer randomly locking up

Hey

As of the past couple of weeks, I have been having intermittent issues with my pc randomly locking up. I can be doing anything about the computer when all of a sudden, I lose control, and everything locks up, however, if I happen to be on Skype at the time, I can still hear and talk to people for about 10 seconds or so before that also crashes. I also seem to still have control of the mouse, even after the computer crashes, the keyboard also stops responding, so I know the pc has totally crashed, yet after a reboot, it all goes back to normal.

In some cases, the mouse would start to glitch up, getting stuck as a hand, or as a yellow glitchy I cursor. In this instance, I would still be able to restart the pc correctly, and it would go back to normal, I would still have control of the pc, the mouse cursor would just become very glitchy.

At first I suspected that could be down to a driver error, so I ensured that all of my drivers were up to date, yet a few days later, it did it again.

At the time that it originally happened, my pc was starting to get a little sluggish, so I invested in a new SSD drive (Samsung 840 series) which I successfully installed and re-installed windows 7 onto, which helped the speed of the computer tenfold, however around 3 days into the new install, yet again, the pc randomly locked up.

I also suspected that the crashes could be down to the fact that I had played around with overclocking in the past, and that I hadn't changed some of my bios settings back to their default values, so I went into the bios and found that some of the settings hadnt changed back correctly (I am using an ASUS mobo, and found that I had left turbo mode on, with a CPU value of 3.7ghz on the clock, to which I quickly changed back to default, my pc is factory clocked to 3.3ghz)

This was 3 days ago that I changed those settings back, and earlier tonight, after the pc had been running for around 5 hours and I had been playing a game for an hour or so, as I was about to finish up for the night, it crashed once again.

I have been keeping an eye on temps, even before I had changed the mobo settings back, and nothing seemed out of the ordinary, the pc is idling at around 37-40c and when I play a game it jumps to around 50-55c, which I always thought was quite normal.

The crashes are not much of a bother, as after a reboot, everything seems to go back to normal, and thanks to the SSD, my boot time is about 30 seconds, but I would really like to know what is causing such intermittent crashes, with no blue screen or anything, and because the OS is such a clean install, it shouldn't be any system files clashing or a virus (I did run a malware bytes scan, and it came up clean, I also use avast as my main AV and that scan was also clean, just so I could rule a virus out)

Would it be worth resetting my bios settings to default, incase the crashing is todo with the changes that were done during the time when I was playing around with overclocking?

My pc specs are as follows and I plan on running a memtest in the morning, just in case my stick of RAM is going wrong, I will post those results after I have run said test, before I do though, if anyone has any idea's what could be causing it, it would be very much appreciated

Intel i5 2500k @ 3.3ghz
4GB Ram
250gb Samsung 840 SSD/ 500GB WD HDD
Asus P8Z68-V LX
Nvidia GeForce 550gtx

 

You haven't mentioned what brand/model your power supply is, or how old it is.

Could you fill in those blanks?

 

Ok first thought comes to mind have you or have you not checked your ram to see if it has gone bad.


If you have just two it should be easy to eliminate.When you start to remove ram sticks one at a time and reboot system leave it sit and see if it still crashes.And repeat to see if you find one.

Just a reminder the computer will not even start if there are no ram sticks in the slots.

 

sorry, my power supply is a CiT 750W Dual 12v ATX Power Supply, i have had it for just under 2 years (when i built this new spec)

and i only have 1 stick of 4GB RAM, which i plan to test this evening (i forgot i had work today >.<) i was going to use memtest86+ and let it run for about 30-40 mins (is that about right for a few passes?)

 

Memtest takes too long to find the bad ram stick this should only take a few minutes if you Remove all the Ram sticks and put one in at a time.And reboot system this will help locate the bad stick.If there is one.

 

I only have 1 stick of ram, I have a memtest running ATM, which I am going to let run for a few hours, to see if it can find anything,i will post back with whatever it finds, if anything

 

Just finished running the memtest, ran for 6 and a bit hours, 9 passes and no errors, so...I'm not sure where to go from here...

Thanks for the help so far, is much appreciated

 

sorry for posting consecutively, but i have a few new developments...

this morning, when i started my pc as i would normally, and started watching through my youtube vids, about 5 mins into said vid, once again, the pc seemingly crashed (which is by far, the fastest yet in which it has, usually it takes at least a couple hours), though i noticed i still had mouse control and the keyboard lights were responsive, and it was as if it was trying to load something, before the screen went black and i got a memory I/O error, on flash player and about 4 more applications before the pc just stopped doing anything...

i rebooted again, and proceeded to update a driver that my pc was prompting me too, before again, midway through said update, i noticed that my desktop background had changed in size ( only taking up the middle section of the screen) and that half of my icons had disappeared, and that i could only right click in certain sections of the screen before the menu appeared, and then the mouse disappeared, before re-appearing in the glitched state that i mentioned in my original post (cursor changes to a hand, and occasionally switches to a very yellow, glitchy looking I icon), so i quickly rebooted again, before the PC locked up (which it does after about 5 mins of this)

now on the 3rd boot, the pc has been up ok for about 15 mins so far, and this is now starting to move in a whole new direction, i feel that this crashing could well be a little more than what i had thought...

any thoughts or ideas on what is going on is much appreciated, as i really cant be doing without my pc for long periods of time...

 

Ok When you load desktop use this BlueScreenView 1.52 it will show you what is causing the crash no need to install just open folder and double click on the program.

 

Does it also show recent crashes, such as the ones that I had this morning? I shall run it when I get home from work

Would you like me to post what it shows here?

 

Yes it will show old ones and newer ones as long as the Crash reporter is active.

 

after loading up that program, it found nothing...

the computer isnt blue screening, it just randomly locks up, i will be using it as i would normally, and it just crashes, no response, nothing until i reboot...

the problem i have is the computer isn't creating dump files, its not giving me any indication as to what is causing the issue...T_T

 

Just a quick update, when I booted the pc last night, at first, it couldn't find my SSD at all, not even in my bios.

I then reseated all of the cables inside the case and then it found it and booted it as normal...

Also, when used the pc this morning, it was fine all morning, was running for an hour and a half with no issues....

It's frustrating, because I just don't know when it's going to freeze on me, I just want to find what is causing the crashes >.<

 

Crossed cables will do that.

 

Would that cause crashes?

 

another update

just now, all of a sudden, my mouse started glitching up again, so i took some pictures of what it is doing before i restarted the PC, just in-case it gives you guys any help as whats going on...

both were taken on the desktop with nothing running in the background

see links below (tried to attach, wouldnt upload)

http://imageshack.us/a/img823/4089/nr9e.jpg
http://imageshack.us/a/img594/7208/74gx.jpg