Can this cause freezing?

[Deviantsteam]

I had one case like this back in my pc repair days where I built a computer for this guy and everything was working great , but whenever he would take it home after abou an hour of running the machine it would just die. It took me many many man hours and hardware diag to nail down the problem and it wasn't even hardware related. This guys had some shittly power running to his computer. A ups later had no issues at all .

[HEXiT]

go into bios and set hpet to enabled and 64. if you have a 64bit o.s. if not then set it to 32. you need to set this if your running vista,7 or 8.

not doing so will cause random lockups. chances are when you installed steam it tried to use high precision events and because its possibly set to 32(most motherboards either have hpet disabled or set to 32 by default) the system just crashed.

if you have eufi bios it should be in the settings of the ahci menu.

lol it does have an effect on stability and performance...

if its disabled then windows will randomly crash. so it does need to be on and does need to match your o.s bit rate.. you can ignore me all you want but it does need to be enabled. and set correctly.

with hpet enabled, applications that use timer functions gain a very slight performance benefit...

also look in your PC's Event Viewer for a HAL error like this:

'Initialization of the High Precision Event Timer failed due to a BIOS configuration problem' that tells you its not on and will lead to issues later.

anyways do what you will. but even if you fix your current issue your still gonna have random shut downs and lock up if you leave it disabled...

(setting it to 32 on a 64bit system should only be done if your have issues with it set to 64)...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High_Precision_Event_Timer read here for a more rounded explanation.

[GTX590]

It seems like an explorer problem. He can play wow all day full throttle, but if he opens up chrome/IE it freezes the PC.

[GTX590]

Any other ideas we can try?

[GTX590]

So I had him open up IE and/or Chrome with nothing open. He went to Twitch.tv and it froze the entire PC. He can play wow all day full throttle no issue, but it seems internet is just failing him. This is why I doubt it's a hardware issue. The first day he had the PC it was fine, he was streaming and shit, but after a bad steam install it's going terrible.

[mvitkun]

guide the customer through enabling integrated graphics.don't even have to remove the graphics card,just set the igp as the default display.

never know,it could solve the problem,and if it does you don't need to shell out more cash.

[GTX590]

It would confuse me on why that is the problem. it isn't until he opens up the internet he has issues. He played wow for 3 days now w/o issue. he tried chrome. He was streaming and it was working fine, then it eventually hard locked up.

[mgsstar]

It would confuse me on why that is the problem. it isn't until he opens up the internet he has issues. He played wow for 3 days now w/o issue. he tried chrome. He was streaming and it was working fine, then it eventually hard locked up.

Run "sfc /scannow" in cmd with admin rights and see if the system files are corrupted. Link for more info about this command: www.sevenforums.com/tutorials/1538-sfc-scannow-command-system-file-checker.html

[HEXiT]

ask him to just put hpet on and leave it. (it should be on thats not my advice its direct from microsoft) because legacy timers dont meet the modern requirements. im not just saying turn it on in the hope it fixes something. it is actually needed by windows to function properly and could be part of the reason steam didnt install properly as it does access variables controlled by hpet as do many other 3rd party apps.

i didnt know about it till 3 years ago found out about it because i was suffering random offs and lockups on my new i7 build. also sometimes i would hear a strange grinding repeating screeching noise through my headset (ask him if he heard anything from his audio when it crashed).

that aside has your mate cleaned out the registry with a good cleaner ccleaner is ok for day to day but something like windows 7 manager will go much deeper, so for this a better option. just remind him to create a restore point before he cleans.

a quick and dirty mem test. superpi 1.5 http://www.techpowerup.com/downloads/366/ on the 32m test will tell you pretty quickly if theres a mem issue. if the pc has 1 the app will lock up within a couple of iterations often just as the first 1 pops on the screen.

[GTX590]

He set it to 64 bit with no avail. It seems to be an explorer issue as Chrome is working just fine for now. It's weird that it only locks up when things associated with IE are opened. Just want to make sure it's not a hardware failure. I would presume that since it's gaming/chroming okay the hardware is fine.