Gaming Windows 7 randomly freezing after installing SP1

[Originality]

Interesting, I'll remember that for the next time I see someone experiencing random freezes - add to the list of possible causes.

 

[Bunie]

I've been having issues with my PC after I installed Service Pack 1 on my Windows 7 Ultimate 32-bit PC. It randomly freezes when using the CPU intensively (like it doesn't happen instantly, I was able to run Minecraft for 2 hours before freezing). I thought it might've had something to do with my overclock, so I reverted my clocks to normal, and tried again, and no luck.

Tried looking for a fix, and all I could find was a freezing fix that was supposedly integrated into SP1, so it'd refuse to install.

If needed, here are my specs:

Spoiler

[titleC specs]CPU: Athlon 64 3200+ S754 Newcastle 2.2GHz @ 2.42GHz (reverting the clock did nothing. CPU is running at normal temps)
RAM: 2GB DDR400 clocked at DDR333 running at DDR346 (due to overclock)
GPU: ATI Sapphire Radeon HD 4650 1GB DDR2 AGP (overclocked, but reverting didn't make a difference)
Audio: Creative SoundBlaster Live! Value (not officially supported for W7, but I haven't had any problems until now)
PSU: Generic 450W ('tis old. But I haven't had much issues with it apart from limiting my overclock)

Can someone help? Thanks.

EDIT: It freezes when I'm browsing the internet also.

Have you tried installing a program such as speed fan (Temperature monitor) and seeing how things go there? and (i may have already said this?) i wouldn't overclock ram. Sudden freezing could be A lot of things. your OS could even be damaged, ram could have become physically damaged from heat or contact, same with CPU or GPU, or bad drivers, "Random freezing" doesn't give much to go on. freezing as in screen becomes a solid image? Does the cursor still move around the screen? Give detail!

i would love to help you but the only detail you've really given is it suddenly freezing. =/

 

[YayMii]

Have you tried installing a program such as speed fan (Temperature monitor) and seeing how things go there?I have CoreTemp running at all times, and currently it's reporting that my CPU is running 10°C cooler than normally. My CPU heatsink is kind of overkill too, since it's designed for Core i7 and AM3 CPUs and I'm using it on a 7-year-old s754 CPU (since it includes clamps for my socket). The heatsink is a Zalman CNPS10X Performa, and it just barely fits in my PC case. There's no reason why the CPU would overheat.
On the GPU side, I'm using my overclocking software to monitor the temperatures. It's only going between 30-50°C, which is healthy for my GPU.

and (i may have already said this?) i wouldn't overclock ram.You already said not to. But it's literally impossible to overclock my CPU without overclocking my RAM, since they're both linked to the FSB. Besides, memtest86+ reports no errors.
The computer crashes even with both CPU and RAM at stock clocks. And technically the RAM isn't overclocked anyway, because I set it at a lower frequency before overclocking it (DDR400 RAM running at a slower DDR333, and overclocked to DDR346).
QUOTE(Bunie @ Mar 13 2011, 03:03 AM)

Sudden freezing could be A lot of things. your OS could even be damaged, ram could have become physically damaged from heat or contact, same with CPU or GPU, or bad drivers, "Random freezing" doesn't give much to go on. freezing as in screen becomes a solid image? Does the cursor still move around the screen? Give detail!

i would love to help you but the only detail you've really given is it suddenly freezing. =/

The whole computer freezes up. The mouse doesn't move, the whole screen becomes frozen, the sound makes that 'stuttering' sound (if there were any sound playing when it froze), the hard drive LED on the case turns off, the num-lock key doesn't respond, etc. There are no errors when rebooting the system either.

 

[murkurie]

It's possible to uninstall SP1 as long as you haven't ran disk cleanup and removed the backup files

The easiest way to uninstall SP1 is using Programs and Features.

1.

Click the Start button Picture of the Start button, click Control Panel, click Programs, and then click Programs and Features.
2.

Click View installed updates.
3.

Click Service Pack for Microsoft Windows (KB 976932), and then click Uninstall.

If you don't see Service Pack for Microsoft Windows (KB 976932) in the list of installed updates, your computer likely came with SP1 already installed, and you can't uninstall the service pack. If the service pack is listed but grayed out, you can't uninstall the service pack.

 

[Bunie]

The whole computer freezes up. The mouse doesn't move, the whole screen becomes frozen, the sound makes that 'stuttering' sound (if there were any sound playing when it froze), the hard drive LED on the case turns off, the num-lock key doesn't respond, etc. There are no errors when rebooting the system either.

I had this problem a long while back with XP! It was Nvidia GeForce 6200. certain shaders occasionally made it just lock up with repeating sound and sit there.

So your issue is likely either a bad driver or something is wrong physically. is your graphics card integrated? If not, try removing it. i know it may suck to do so, but do it temporarily for debugging purposes. see if it still locks up, Removing anything else you can as well, see if the problem still occurs, and re-insert them 1-by-1 until it does re-occur.

EDIT: or you can try completely uninstalling your graphics card (Settings included), and reinstall fresh. Though that likely wont fix it, and its possible the issue lies elsewhere. you said it locked up while browsing the web, most (all?) browsers now use GPU Acceleration. so, never know. try my first suggestion if possible.

 

[YayMii]

I had this problem a long while back with XP! It was Nvidia GeForce 6200. certain shaders occasionally made it just lock up with repeating sound and sit there.

So your issue is likely either a bad driver or something is wrong physically. is your graphics card integrated? If not, try removing it. i know it may suck to do so, but do it temporarily for debugging purposes. see if it still locks up, Removing anything else you can as well, see if the problem still occurs, and re-insert them 1-by-1 until it does re-occur.

EDIT: or you can try completely uninstalling your graphics card (Settings included), and reinstall fresh. Though that likely wont fix it, and its possible the issue lies elsewhere. you said it locked up while browsing the web, most (all?) browsers now use GPU Acceleration. so, never know. try my first suggestion if possible.

I have a ATI (Sapphire) Radeon HD 4650 1GB DDR2 AGP. It's being bottlenecked by almost everything in this PC (it's 5 years newer than my CPU, it's on AGP rather than PCI-e, it's has DDR2 VRAM and I'm using DDR1 RAM, etc.) but that's not the issue. And recently, it'd take hours and hours until it froze.
I don't have an onboard GPU, so removing it isn't an option. I've reinstalled the GPU drivers at least twice recently. I'm planning to reinstall again, using modded optimized drivers since this PC is dated and has limited framerates in games.

I think the audio card might be an issue though. I'm using unofficial drivers for my Creative SoundBlaster Live Value card (which dates back to 1998), since this old thing isn't officially supported by Vista or Windows 7. I'm using the Daniel_K SBlive Vista Support Pack 2.0, if that matters. I'm not going to buy another card since I don't plan on investing more on this PC (I'm getting a new PC/laptop somewhat soon). My motherboard also has built-in AC97 audio. I don't want to have to switch to that, but should I try it anyway?

EDIT: I'm starting to doubt my internet browser. I don't think the problem has anything to do with my hardware. I doubt it has anything to do with my CPU or my GPU, at least.
I've tried using the Microsoft VGA drivers, the ATI drivers, some modded graphics drivers, and they all crash after watching YouTube videos for some time. Why can I play Burnout Paradise for 2 hours with no issues but not be able to play YouTube videos for at least 30 minutes?

EDIT2: This just popped up in my Windows Update: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2505438 Could this be the cause of my problems?

 

[8BitWalugi]

Hmm... When yours freezes, do your speakers let out a constant buzzing sound? I might have the same problem.

 

[Bunie]

EDIT2: This just popped up in my Windows Update: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2505438 Could this be the cause of my problems?

Nah i don't think so, thats for slow performance, not "no" performance lol.

Complete freezing is still likely caused by a driver failing, could be a sound driver. the freezing could be a sign that the PC is waiting on somthing (a driver has suddenly stopped responding). normally in these scenarios, if you leave it frozen for 2 minutes, a blue-screen will occur, the PC will restart, and windows will have an error log to report. sometimes when you report these error logs, windows will have a solution.

unfortunately, you say it only does it after several hours. does the PC's performance change over time? like, does it get slower?

if it really did begin after installing SP1, i suggest reinstalling Windows 7, and then reinstalling SP1 as soon as that's complete (Before driver install).
you can use "Windows Easy Transfer" to keep your settings, and back up all your files to some other location.

if you can't or don't want to reinstall Windows 7, then continue debugging i guess

Have you ran Chkdsk or sigverif?

chkdsk Will scan your HDD for damages
sigverif will check your system files for valid signatures

sigverif may report a few files to you, such as drivers, this is normal, not all drivers are signed, especially with older hardware. Though if a newer piece of hardware shows, you may want to consider reinstalling whatever device it belongs to.

if you do have a bunch of files showing up beyond drivers,
you may be able to repair your system using the "SFC /scannow" command.

Just more ideas, hard to help when the problem can't be reproduced.

 

[YayMii]

1. It doesn't BSOD, even after leaving it for an hour. It stays frozen.
2. The performance stays the same until it freezes.
3. I've ran Chkdsk, didn't fix the problem.
4. I've reinstalled practically all of the drivers installed on my PC at least twice in the past week. I even used Driver Sweeper to further clean up the driver remnants after uninstallation.
5. I don't want to reinstall.

 

[Hatchetball]

Even with 2GB RAM you may want to consider at least 3GB for W7 in the future, even if it's only x86 3GB really lets the OS run smoothly.
Random freezes, BSOD's in the past... hmm.
I'd run ComboFix on it myself, pretty handy tool, I'm sure you're aware of what it does.
Doesn't sounds like hardware at all, other than the lack of RAM, so you may want to look at what it's running while you are trying to upgrade to SP1.
Also, unz has a point, it could be that button cell. It's not very common but they do tend to cause a fair amount of instability. Highly uncommon, I run a computer shop and I've only had that happen once, but it did fix the issue for my customer.

May want to look into the registry as well. I had a similar problem happen to me last week when installing SP1. It froze during installation (fresh reformat) - to the point where I had to hard reset my laptop. Well I boot back up and it's saying it has to install updates... It hung on that for 30 minutes before I just said screw it and reformatted the drive again.

Is it a legit OS you have installed or is it hacked, pirated/cracked?
RC, OEM, or other?
It helps to know lol

 

[YayMii]

Even with 2GB RAM you may want to consider at least 3GB for W7 in the future, even if it's only x86 3GB really lets the OS run smoothly.Like I said, I'm not planning to invest any more money into this PC. Besides, with the exception of the problem at hand, the computer runs very smoothly.

BSOD's in the past...That has nothing to do with the problem. Catalyst 11.x is a defective line of drivers (so far) and causes BSODs for AGP users. Since my card is AGP, there's nothing I can do about it except for rolling back to 10.12.

I'd run ComboFix on it myself, pretty handy tool, I'm sure you're aware of what it does.I have never heard of that program. I looked it up, and it's a spyware remover? Whatever, I'll give it a try.

Doesn't sounds like hardware at all, other than the lack of RAM, so you may want to look at what it's running while you are trying to upgrade to SP1.I had absolutely no issues installing SP1...

Also, unz has a point, it could be that button cell. It's not very common but they do tend to cause a fair amount of instability. Highly uncommon, I run a computer shop and I've only had that happen once, but it did fix the issue for my customer.

I replaced the battery recently. And the other OSes I have installed have no issues whatsoever.
QUOTE(Hatchetball @ Mar 15 2011, 12:11 PM)

May want to look into the registry as well. I had a similar problem happen to me last week when installing SP1. It froze during installation (fresh reformat) - to the point where I had to hard reset my laptop. Well I boot back up and it's saying it has to install updates... It hung on that for 30 minutes before I just said screw it and reformatted the drive again.

I don't know what I'd look for in the registry to fix this. Any suggestions?
And again, the problem didn't happen during installation.
QUOTE(Hatchetball @ Mar 15 2011, 12:11 PM)

Is it a legit OS you have installed or is it hacked, pirated/cracked?
RC, OEM, or other?
It helps to know lol

Pirated OS, but it shouldn't matter, since it's been running flawlessly until I installed SP1.
I installed via a burned copy that had slipstreamed updates up to December 2010.

EDIT: Okay, now it isn't freezing indefinitely. Right now, it only becomes unresponsive for 5+ minutes. But it's the whole PC that becomes unresponsive, so it's impossible to do anything when it happens. It's still at normal temps when it happens.

 

[Hatchetball]

Ah I see.
I've had something somewhat similar happen to me recently when I installed SP1, now that I think about it. I was running W7 Enterprise, pirated (Bill Gates is rich enough...) and I cracked it with Chew-WGA 0.9. When I upgraded to SP1 a few weeks later I started have issues with my OS somewhat. Some freezing issues, no BSOD, it would just freeze and hang. Immediately after installing SP1 -during the restart- explorer.exe hung for about 10 minutes. So I held down the power and restarted my laptop. This time it did it again, I left up until it responded. (1 hour and 20-ish minutes) Not sure as to what caused it to hang at first.

After thinkin about it for a few I uninstalled Chew-WGA, restarted perfectly, reinstalled Chew-WGA, thinking it was a possible anti-piracy issue in the SP1. It runs fine now- or at least the freezing stopped and it has been running decently.

It could possibly be a piracy fix in the SP1 upgrade? I can't exactly confirm that, but it seems like that's what it was to me as uninstalling/reinstalling my WGA crack fixed the issues for my computer.
ComboFix - It does work for Spyware, it also fixes a good amount of registy errors, and a few other things. It's not something I'd say run daily- it's rather powerful. Also I wouldn't run it with ANY applications open, I've never seen it do anything negative to my programs while they were up, but it's always that "just in case" thing.
Honestly I would not know what to look for in the registy, if there is a error causing the issue, ComboFix should find and fix the error.

I hope that helps at least some.

 

[YayMii]

I used Daz's 7loader for activation. I tried looking for it seems that there's a new version available for it. Maybe I should un-activate and re-activate using the new version.

 

[tagzard]

I had the same problem follow yamii

 

[raulpica]

Well, I know that this one's a cheap suggestion, but I'll still say it.

Try to get ahold of another AGP card (one of your friends should at least have an old one or something, rite? Otherwise you should be able to get a used one for peanuts around), and see how the system fares with that one.

Also, try to watch your GPU temperatures. It might be overheating.

It's a pretty old card, so I wouldn't be shocked if the VRAM is failing or something, so it's worth a shot to try with another card.

 

[YayMii]

Well, I know that this one's a cheap suggestion, but I'll still say it.

Try to get ahold of another AGP card (one of your friends should at least have an old one or something, rite? Otherwise you should be able to get a used one for peanuts around), and see how the system fares with that one.

Also, try to watch your GPU temperatures. It might be overheating.

It's a pretty old card, so I wouldn't be shocked if the VRAM is failing or something, so it's worth a shot to try with another card.

It's not overheating. It's running at 40-50°C, which is normal for my GPU.
And I really really doubt that it's failing. I bought it 3 months ago, brand new. It's also currently the 3rd best AGP card available on the market (second to the 4670 and 3850), so it's not that old.

EDIT: Okay, now it's making a high-pitched noise when freezing.
EDIT2: I may have possibly found my problem. I ran ComboFix, and it deleted my theme service. I recall installing a patched UXtheme file, so the crashes/freezes might've been caused by that. I'm pretty sure that they make a new UXtheme patch whenever a new build of Windows is released, so the file I had probably had incompatibilities with SP1. Does anyone know how I can restore the SP1 UXtheme files so I can get themes back in working order?
EDIT3: Nope, still freezes. I still want the original UXtheme files for SP1 x86 though (if it's possible).

 

[raulpica]

It's not overheating. It's running at 40-50°C, which is normal for my GPU.
And I really really doubt that it's failing. I bought it 3 months ago, brand new. It's also currently the 3rd best AGP card available on the market (second to the 4670 and 3850), so it's not that old.

EDIT: Okay, now it's making a high-pitched noise when freezing.
EDIT2: I may have possibly found my problem. I ran ComboFix, and it deleted my theme service. I recall installing a patched UXtheme file, so the crashes/freezes might've been caused by that. I'm pretty sure that they make a new UXtheme patch whenever a new build of Windows is released, so the file I had probably had incompatibilities with SP1. Does anyone know how I can restore the SP1 UXtheme files so I can get themes back in working order?
EDIT3: Nope, still freezes. I still want the original UXtheme files for SP1 x86 though (if it's possible).

Oh didn't know they were still producing AGP cards, since AGP is freakin' obsolete

Guess that we can safely exclude the GPU.

Well, what about giving a look in the Minidump dir in C:\Windows? Maybe there's a clue in one of the minidumps in there.

 

[YayMii]

Oh didn't know they were still producing AGP cards, since AGP is freakin' obsolete

Guess that we can safely exclude the GPU.Well, they did stop making AGP cards. Mine was like one of the last batch of AGP cards, and it was probably sitting in the store for possibly 2 years without people buying it, since nobody cares about AGP anymore.
But that's not the problem anyway since the PC still runs fine with other OSes (although I haven't tried/don't want to reinstall Windows 7).
QUOTE(raulpica @ Mar 16 2011, 05:36 PM) Well, what about giving a look in the Minidump dir in C:\Windows? Maybe there's a clue in one of the minidumps in there.

I'm currently unable to check right now, but I'll look for clues tomorrow.

 

[YayMii]

Sorry for teh doublepost, but:
raulpica, how are you supposed to check a minidump for clues?

 

[Coto]

Perhaps a faulty SPU (Supply Power Unit) or can´t take too much power drainage. This lead to stability issues.