Windows 7 Screen Freeze

Computer Screen-Lock

I recently decided to resurrect an old computer that's been hanging around in my room. I wiped it clean, installed Windows 7, and replaced nearly all of the old parts.

However, now my computer freezes quite often. I don't get a BSoD, but rather an image lock which forces me to restart my computer. It seems to happen mostly when I'm transferring files between hard drives or not running any programs, and never freezing when I'm playing a game or watching a movie. It even freezes during safe mode.

I've been trying to fix this for a week or so now and I'm at my wit's end. As much as I would like to think that it's a software problem, I have a suspicion that it's a hardware problem.

 

An old system running Win 7 seems pretty suggestive of a system "struggling & bottlenecking".

How much RAM?

Video Card?

Does this PC meet Win 7 minimum standards?

You don't get "candy" without the money to pay (the hardware to support a very nice "visual" environment).

 

2 x 2gb kingston hyperx 2000MHz
ATI Radeon 5770 Graphics Card
TA890FXE Motherboard
AMD Phenom II x6 1055

All of those are new parts. I'm using two Western Digital hard drives that aren't THAT old (5 years max) and they seemed to pass all drive checks.

I bought a new 2TB hard drive and tried installing Windows 7 on that with no other drives plugged in, but the install failed after the second restart.

 

I recently tried installing Win7 Ult 64 from an ISO onto a new RAID0. Tried 2 times and about 45mins into the install I got a BSOD. I still had my old HDD w XP 64 and decided to reburn the Image. Third time I got it working with a "better" copy.

OS can very easily become corrupted during a burning session. Are you burning an image? If so I would consider another copy and to write it at the slowest possible speeds and see if that helps.

 

Sadly, I don't think that's the case as it's a genuine disk. And the install failed on a new drive.

I tried booting from a knoppix disk, but it won't boot if ANY drive is connected to the system. Left knoppix running overnight and it still ended up freezing. Tried using HDclone, but the process freezes VERY quickly.

I swapped out my new graphics card with my old, stable one but that didn't help. Ran Memtest+ overnight and it came back clean. Scanned all of my drives and they come back clean too.

I'm beginning to suspect it's the motherboard. I ordered one of those cheap processor/motherboard bundles from Frys. I found out recently (after the return period expired, of course) that they actually gave me the wrong board AND it had been used. Just a thought.

 

Well if it's the wrong item AND it's used when you paid for new, take it back and complain until you get what you paid for or a refund.

In this economy most retailers don't want ill will created as word of mouth DOES have an effect.

Sam