random computer freeze

Hey MG,

I've looked around the forum for resolutions but nothing seems to work, so I'm hoping someone will be able to help diagnose&solve my problem!

Around four days ago, my computer suddenly froze. By froze I mean the screen just sits idle, the mouse does noymove and does not react to the keyboard. It doesn't sound like the harddrive stops working though. I restarted my computer and everything worked fine for a couple minutes and then it froze again. The freezing seems to happen randomly, there is no one application that triggers a freeze-up.

If this info helps at all, I recently uninstalled Comodo Antivirus to be replaced by Avira Antivir. I also removed my external sound card, and began using the internal sound card. I did make sure to remove the old drivers, and replace with drivers from the manufacturers website.

has anyone else has experienced this, and what you did to resolve it?

 

I have been able to recreate the freeze-up. Every time I open a pdf file in Foxit viewer, then scroll around a bit my computer will freeze. On reboot, the desktop displays the "active desktop error" message.

 

It could be caused by several things, the leading causes being bad RAM, or a dying hard drive, or a corrupt operating system or driver. Try booting in Safe Mode and see if it still happens. If not, then it's almost definitely a driver. If so, then it's one of the other things I mentioned. Run an extended memory diagnostic. I like a bootable one like this http://www.majorgeeks.com/Microsoft_Windows_Memory_Diagnostic_d3955.html When you run it, it will create a bootable floppy disk, or an .ISO image that you'd burn to a CD. Boot to it and press T to run the diagnostic in extended mode. Run at least 3-4 passes; it will take time so be patient. Also, visit your hard drive maker's web site. Download and run their diagnostic tool; again, the bootable ones are best, and be sure to run the in-depth extended tests. I have seen a PC just freeze up a random spots for no obvious reason, and in that scenario, it was a bad hard drive. Right when the PC would freeze, the hard drive LED would light up and stay solid until the PC was powered down or until you hit the reset button. A new hard drive solved the problem.

Try to uninstall both FireFox and Adobe Reader and reboot. Run CCleaner on both the hard drive and registry. Reboot again. Then re-install FireFox and Adobe Reader.
CCleaner (it's free) http://www.majorgeeks.com/CCleaner_Slim_No_Toolbar_d4191.html
FireFox http://www.majorgeeks.com/Mozilla_Firefox_d2248.html
Adobe Reader http://www.majorgeeks.com/Adobe_Reader_d3852.html
You might want to consider using an alternative to Adobe Reader. There's several apps that work great:
Universal Viewer http://www.majorgeeks.com/download5422.html
Adobe Reader Lite http://www.majorgeeks.com/Adobe_Reader_Lite_d5915.html
CoolPDF http://www.majorgeeks.com/Cool_PDF_Reader_d5310.html
Foxit Reader http://www.majorgeeks.com/Foxit_Reader_d4763.html

 

I restarted in Safe mode, then removed my manually installed sound driver and allowed windows to install one automatically.
I also removed the overclock on my CPU, but the overclock has been there for over one year without any problems.

So far so good. If the problem comes up again, I'll try what you said but/if until then, thanks for the help!