Windows 7 Randomly Hanging

[Disruptor]

Two days after I finished my latest build, I randomly started experiencing issues where windows would hang for anywhere from a few seconds to the point where it would require a hard restart. I've been troubleshooting this for a week and none of what I've attempted seems to have had any effect for more than a day. Windows and all of my drivers are up to date, I flashed the BIOS to the latest version, I ran Prime95 for 12 hours with acceptable temps all around (under 60°C), I've run a number of benchmarks to stress the other components, I ran chkdsk in the console to check both of the hard drives for errors, which they both passed, I checked the event viewer and disabled my AVG 2013 Identity Protection as that was the only error in there besides one that has to do with NVIDIA's 320.18 drivers crashing, and the system will run for days in safe mode. I had it running the latest version of Ubuntu from CD to check if it was an issue with my copy of Windows and it still seems to be hanging on there as well, though that might just be because I was running it off a disk. The only test I haven't run that I probably should is Memtest, though I'm fairly certain that it isn't the RAM. As much as I dread the thought of needing to disassemble a brand new system, my main suspect right now is the motherboard, even though it posts and everything seems to be in working order, seeing as the other components don't seem to be the cause of the problem, but other than that the only thing I can think to do now is format my C: drive, reinstall windows, and hope that resolves the issue. On a side note, sometimes after it hangs the cursor will become an odd mix of yellow and pink and appear like I'm inside of a text box regardless of what I am doing. Also the components performance does not skyrocket during the hangs. But yeah, I digress, any advice would be welcome, especially if you've dealt with or know of a similar issue.

[Godlygamer23]

So..it hangs...but works for a few days on end with no issue...

[InfinateX]

You said it`s been what, 9 days since you installed Windows? You probably don`t have much on there, so it`d probably be best to just try formastting your drive before you replace any parts or try something more difficult.

[Disruptor]

It ran perfect for the first few days, then it started hanging. It ran well again for two more days after I flashed the BIOS to the latest version, and after that it started hanging again. I saw that a lot of people were having issues with AVG 2013 and hanging, but that it seemed to be confined to a process that was issued by the Identity Protection aspect of the suite, and so by disabling it one should resolve the issue. After I did that it continued to run well again from last night until about an hour or two ago. (Around 12-13 hours later).

[grayperview]

Are you running logitech setpoint by chance?

[Disruptor]

I wasn't running any Logitech software. However, after reformatting and reinstalling Windows, all seems to be good for now at least.

 

EDIT: And now it's back to hanging up again as of yesterday.

[Disruptor]

So I went into the Event Log today... and the NVIDIA Kernel Mode Driver (nvlddmkm.sys) was the cause of the hanging, and what kept making that crash was the card's clock speeds? I have no idea why because I used this card in my past rig and it ran superbly at the manufacturer factory overclock (900 MHz), however after I used Precision to underclock the card to 800 MHz, the system literally ceased to have an issue. Will report back if the system remains stable, and if so, it seems like a good time to upgrade to either a GTX 770 or 780.

[YoYo155]

It's probably 320.18 - http://linustechtips.com/main/topic/21326-heads-up/

 I tried to warn you guys.

[Disruptor]

I was using the 320 series of updates on my old rig as well though, and they were as stable as one could have hoped for. I'm still leaning more towards this being a hardware issue due to the underclocking seeming to fix the issue. Either way, it's stable for now (on the 320.49 drivers).

[YoYo155]

Every PC is different some have it (the drivers that is) worst than others you can't argue with the sheer number of affected

people due to this release.

 

Anyway good to know you're stable.