PC Hanging Issue

[Fox-Shot]

I hate to return just to ask about computer problem, but this place has helped me many times.

 

My computer has started to hang at mostly random times. It's typically with a decent load but I'm not for sure, there isn't any time of day to it, I'm just usually changing a tab or alt+tabbing into a game when it happens. The audio still mostly works, but skips and stutters. The mouse also still works, but absolutely nothing else responds. I have to hard reset the PC and sometimes when It turns back on it will run check disk. I have ran checkdisk, seatools, and memory diagnostics and they don't report any problems. It's not to big of a deal if I have to reinstall Windows or get a new hard drive but I want to be sure that there isn't any other way, especially since it doesn't sound like the hard drive isn't the cause. Outside of the freezes that only happen randomly every few days, I have no performance loss anywhere and temps seem fine. No data is lost or corrupted other than anything that wasn't saved when the system hangs. I also haven't installed anything strange recently, the only program that could be a cause is a VNC that I just uninstalled to see if it was the cause, the only other things are two games I just bought, both running on Unreal Engine 3. Anyone know what could cause these hangs?

 

Specs in case it matters:

Windows 7 64 Bit

Intel i5 2500k (No OC, stock heatsink)

8GB G.Skill RAM

EVGA GTX 660 Ti 2GB

OCZ 650w PSU

Seagate Barracuda 7200RPM 1TB

Seagate Barracuda 7200RPM 80GB (Just put this one in so I could back up my stuff in case one of the hangs completely ruins the OS.)

 

Thanks ahead of time.

 

UPDATE: The freeze that made me finally make an ask thread (BF4 loading with battlescreen on my other monitor ready to go) seems to just be a glitch in BF4, which doesn't surprise me. I have had two other freezes outside of this that make me worry, but generally it's always in a situation with an alt+tab or a lot of tabs open in chrome, or maybe a lot of ram usage (Tabs in chrome while playing/hosting a super modded (and 3GB allocated)  Minecraft server)

[CrypticQuery]

I'm not quite sure if it will help, but I had a slew of similar issues that were caused by my graphics card's  driver.  I have a 550Ti; with newer drivers installed my PC would freeze every few seconds for a few seconds at a time, hang when shutting down, and corrupt the icons/cursor/pointer.  Evidently, everything after the 314.22 driver completely broke the stability of the card. 

[Fox-Shot]

I've got a 660 Ti here, up to 334.89, but 600 and up uses Kepler instead of Fermi, so the support is still there, the install date of the driver also doesn't match when the problem started. So far I haven't had it freeze since, so I think I've just had bad luck with bugs in the programs that caused the freezing.

[CrypticQuery]

Ah, gotcha. Intermittent problems are the worst; I hope that it doesn't pop back up anytime soon then.

[Fox-Shot]

Just had it happen again. I have it set so that when I just press the power button, my PC goes into Hibernate, fascinatingly, this manages to work, but when I came back from the Hibernation and started to enter my password, I only typed the first letter before my keyboard quit (Razer Deathstalker), my mouse still worked and the computer hadn't completely froze, I could use my mouse and click stuff, but nothing happened (The button would get pressed like normal, but it ultimately did nothing) when I clicked things. I unplugged my keyboard and it wouldn't even turn the LEDs in the keys on when I plugged it back in. I also noticed that the likelihood of a freezing happen grows the longer I leave my PC on for multiple days. Not sure what the cause could be, maybe the Razer Software, but it really hasn't caused enough lasting issues for me to truly get worried about it.

[CrypticQuery]

That's certainly odd. Have you tried posting your issues on other technical forums [e.g. Tom's Hardware]?

[Fox-Shot]

That's certainly odd. Have you tried posting your issues on other technical forums [e.g. Tom's Hardware]?

Not really, simply because of how odd and random the problem is the only surefire way to fix it is either a reformat or new hardware. This problem has a bazillion possible causes. And like I said, it's been such a randomly occurring thing that only ever happens in ways that make me think it's a bug or hiccup.

[LazerMaster5]

Have you updated any of your drivers recently?

[Fox-Shot]

Have you updated any of your drivers recently?

Nope, no drivers were installed when the issue started, and nothing has an update yet.

 

EDIT: It happened again today and just to be safe I uninstalled Razer's Program. I never used it anyways. Out of curiosity I tried using the notification icon for Avast to open it and my entire computer froze for just a second. I have a feeling it might be Avast causing issues (A lot of their more recent updates have gotten a bit more invasive, as well as trying harder to sell me the full version). Anyone have some other good choices for a free antivirus?

[CrypticQuery]

I can't render assistance with alternatives to Avast!, though it is noteworthy that Avast! was slowing down FireFox terribly for me when I used their web-security plugin. Certain sites [e.g. Google Images, SF-O], would take a ridiculous amount of time to load, and would oftentimes load with errors.

[Fox-Shot]

Bleh it just happened while I was playing Far Cry 3, it seems just as prone to happen under load as it is without. No idea what it could be, maybe even the PSU? Even going to try something as simple as stopping Skype from staying open on my other screen just to see if there's some sort of memory leak when keeping it open. Honestly sort of tempted just to get Windows 8 as a sort of excuse to get a clean install on this hard drive, can't really justify reinstalling Windows 7 until I'm absolutely sure it's something related to corrupted data. This freeze also happened after I've installed several Windows Updates so it isn't anything a recent update would fix.

[Fox-Shot]

Sorry to double post, but I just had something that may help significantly in diagnosing the issue. I haven't had the typical freeze ever since I uninstalled all of the Razer programs, though just now after I woke my computer up from sleep, my keyboard would not work. The backlighting on the keys was off but the num lock light was one, pressing numlock or any other key did not do anything. I unplugged my keyboard and plugged it back in, which caused a blue screen. First time I've ever been happy to blue screen. I assume it's something about this keyboard/the drivers (the wire isn't frayed, but definitely bent in a few odd directions at the base on the keyboard). That being said, while I could fix the drivers, I'll gladly take any recommendations for the best gaming keyboard for your buck. Any help would be brilliant.

[CrypticQuery]

Congrats on potentially solving your issue; there's nothing more satisfying that a successful troubleshooting session, that's for sure.

 

I'm sure that DZ will be along shortly to recommend a plethora of mechanical keyboards.

[Fox-Shot]

Funny enough, the Wal-Mart near me just started selling Black Widow Ultimates, obviously though, I'm not buying another Razer keyboard. That being said, I love the chiclet keys on my Deathstalker, so small flat keys would be nice to consider.

 

EDIT: Aaaand it just happened again. It's been quite a while though, so like I said it's just so inconsistent and rarely causes a big enough problem to justify a clean install, especially with my backup drive only being 80GB. As dumb as it sounds, my internet is just too slow to have to redownload all of the games I'd lose in the reinstall. I had the "keyboard doesn't work on wake-up" issue again earlier, but just put it back to sleep with my mouse, unplugged the keyboard, woke my PC up, and plugged it back in to prevent a blue screen. So I can't really tell for sure if it's the keyboard or some other thing in the background causing it. (Though I'd love for an excuse to buy new stuff. )

[Fox-Shot]

Well I got to a point where I reinstalled Windows 7, and haven't had a freeze yet, but I did have a notification that I should check for volume errors. At worst I have to buy a hard-drive and reinstall Windows again. I assume the hard drive's gone bad, but I'll run a checkdisk through to see if there's maybe just some bad sector that survived the reformat.