New computer constantly freezing?

[JG89]

New computer constantly freezing??

Hey guys, I have a problem here. I recently bought a brand new computer with Windows 7 Home Premium on it. It has an AMD Athlon dual core 2.0 ghz processor, and the computer initially came with 2 gigs of DDR-2 RAM.

Now, when I got the computer, I threw in a 2 gig stick of DDR-2 RAM and I also installed an nvidia GeForce 210 video card to run dual monitors.

Now, my problem is that my computer will randomly freeze throughout the day for no apparent reason. Since I have had the computer, I haven't installed anything on it but the essentials, i.e. mozilla firefox, flash player, windows office

However, during each computer freeze, there has only been one program that has been running, and it has been firefox.

Is it possible that the 2 gig stick is interfering with things, or the video card? I checked the minimum requirements with the power supply and it should work fine. Is it also possible that firefox is causing the lock ups?

All help would be greatly appreciated!

 

[jhae2.718]

How is your RAM installed? Did you update the drivers for the new graphics card?

 

[dachikid]

Try pulling the video card out and running with only the ram upgrade. Or try pulling the ram and running with only the video card upgrade. Lastly, try pulling both and how do things run? By process of elimination you'll at least know what the root cause of the issue is and can further troubleshoot. Good luck!

 

[JG89]

How is your RAM installed? Did you update the drivers for the new graphics card?

The drivers are updated on the graphics card. For the RAM, I just popped open the computer, put the RAM in the slot, closed the computer and turned it back on.

 

[jhae2.718]

For DDR-2 RAM, the memory should be "paired". So, you should have two sticks of the same type paired together in the slots. (My guess would be that your PC originally came with 2 GB in a 2 x 1GB configuration.)

Not sure if that would cause the freezing, though.

Edit: seems like that is just to take advantage of dual channel performance, see this: http://www.crucial.com/kb/answer.aspx?qid=3629

 

[SteamKing]

I notice you have an nVidia graphics card installed. Check the drivers for this card. I had an older win XP box with an nVidia card. Worked OK until I installed some new drivers about a month ago (270.61). All kind of problems with the machine randomly freezing up after the new drivers put in. Checked w/google to see if others had problems w/these drivers. Many similar reports of problems. Removed new drivers and went back to a previous release which was stable. No more freezes.

 

[JG89]

For DDR-2 RAM, the memory should be "paired". So, you should have two sticks of the same type paired together in the slots. (My guess would be that your PC originally came with 2 GB in a 2 x 1GB configuration.)

Not sure if that would cause the freezing, though.

Edit: seems like that is just to take advantage of dual channel performance, see this: http://www.crucial.com/kb/answer.aspx?qid=3629

I found your post kind of confusing, but please bear with me. So my computer originally came with two slots total for RAM. One slot was already taken up with a 2 gig DDR-2 stick. So I put in another 2 gig DDR-2 stick in the other slot, but it was from a different company.

Are you saying that the 2-gig stick that I put in should be from the same company (if I want to take advantage of the dual channel performance?). BTW, how do I check if my computer does have dual channel performance?

 

[JG89]

I notice you have an nVidia graphics card installed. Check the drivers for this card. I had an older win XP box with an nVidia card. Worked OK until I installed some new drivers about a month ago (270.61). All kind of problems with the machine randomly freezing up after the new drivers put in. Checked w/google to see if others had problems w/these drivers. Many similar reports of problems. Removed new drivers and went back to a previous release which was stable. No more freezes.

Thanks a lot for this suggestion. I'll look into it. I googled it, and most people had their computer freezing up at the start up. Do you think your solution will still be applicable even though my freezing is random while I am using the computer?

 

[jhae2.718]

I found your post kind of confusing, but please bear with me. So my computer originally came with two slots total for RAM. One slot was already taken up with a 2 gig DDR-2 stick. So I put in another 2 gig DDR-2 stick in the other slot, but it was from a different company.

Are you saying that the 2-gig stick that I put in should be from the same company (if I want to take advantage of the dual channel performance?). BTW, how do I check if my computer does have dual channel performance?

The company shouldn't matter as long as the sticks are the same kind. If it's DDR2 dual channel should be supported. (I don't remember if a program like Speccy will tell you.)

The RAM probably is not causing your problem. It sounds more like a graphics driver issue. Does your computer freeze every time Firefox is up and running?

 

[JG89]

It doesn't freeze every time Firefox is up and running, but the only program that has been open each time the computer froze is fire fox.

 

[SteamKing]

When I had my buggy nVidia drivers installed, sometimes the computer would freeze on startup, requiring several starts before it was ready for use. Other times, the computer would start fine and I could use it for a while. If I left it running while I was busy elsewhere, and came back to use it, I sometimes found it had frozen while I was away.
After I reinstalled the previous version of the video drivers, I left it running overnight to test it, and all of the mysterious crashes stopped.

 

[michelsmith]

Frequent use of a Registry cleaner is the best way to prevent computer freezing. This utility scans the registry and detects all the unnecessary trashes in it. It removes the unwanted files, information on software which is not being uninstalled properly and information that is not in use for a long period.

 

[Borg]

I had a buggy Windows 7 last year that was constantly freezing. It turned out that the computer had two virus scanners running on it. They weren't playing nice.

 

[Pattonias]

Firstly, stay away from registry cleaner. That crud is a waist of time.

Is the freeze a true freeze e.g. the screen is frozen in place? Or is the screen blacking out?

I've made it a habit to never update a Nvidia driver when it is first released as they are notorious for having problems. You may consider going to the Nvidia site and loading a driver from two or three releases ago and seeing if you still have the problem. Try using Windows explorer for a week or so and see if Firefox was the triggering the problem.

 

[Adyssa]

Checked your event log? Log in as administrator (or an account with admin privilige), right click on "My Computer", select "Manage", and go to the "Event Viewer". There are various logs in here, see if you can find an "Error" - they have nice easy to find red cross icons.

When installing hardware, it's a good idea to install one thing at a time (this goes for software too). It simplifies troubleshooting.