PC keeps hardlocking randomly

[dan_mackers]

Basically every so often my PC will just totally hardlock without warning and have to be manually shut off at the tower and rebooted every time. The first few times it did this, there was a large buzzing sound from the speakers, and the last few times there haven't been, although on the occasions there has been sound, sound was actually playing on the PC, so I'm not sure if the buzzing is just the sound freezing (although its always been the same buzzing sound), or if I am having two separate problems, etc.

I sort of ignored the first few times as it was literally just once every couple of weeks and I figured it was just one of those quirks of having a PC, and perhaps something had just glitched out while closing down, etc. Whenever I restarted it'd be absolutely fine for a couple of weeks after. However, it's now done it twice yesterday and now twice today, both times totally without warning, and doing nothing more strenuous than browsing online. It's not even been during performing an action (opening a new file or tab or whatever), it's literally just been me going to type something/scroll the mouse, then realising the system has frozen. Any ideas?

Should mention temps seem fine and stuff, I don't have any viruses or anything as far as I can tell

 

[ToxicFox]

I had some random freezing with my new pc where it would freeze every 2-3 mins for about 30 seconds then it would sort it self out and catch up, i phoned PCS up and they said it could be RAM that has been knocked during transit so first things first remove one stick of RAM then test it, if the problem persists try the others (depending on how many you have) one by one, also make sure your drivers are up to date. If this doesnt work (which it didnt for me) i suggest you phone PCS and ask for advice or an RMA for it to go through further testing. My fault was a naff HDD so a new one was put in and the PC was sent back to me after 3 working days.

Tel: 0844 499 4000
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[dan_mackers]

got a BSOD earlier, the seminal classic driver_irql_not_less_or_equal. That's one of those helpfully ambiguous ones right? where it can be any number of hardware failures/driver conflicts? Also dunno if this is a separate problem from the other one I've been having

 

[vanthus]

Have a look in event viewer,it may give a clue to the problem,It's normal to have a lot of warnings & errors so best look at the event viewer immediately after the problem occurs,then check if anything is logged for that particular time.

 

[ubuysa]

got a BSOD earlier, the seminal classic driver_irql_not_less_or_equal. That's one of those helpfully ambiguous ones right? where it can be any number of hardware failures/driver conflicts? Also dunno if this is a separate problem from the other one I've been having

That Stop Error can also be indicative of bad RAM chips and that might explain the "hardlock" you described earlier. There's a memory testing tool on the installation DVD for Windows, boot from the DVD, select Repair and one of the options is a memory test (I think?). Memtest86+ is still a pretty good tool for checking memory, run it overnight though, it takes a loong time.

You might even want to try pulling one of the cards out and running without it for a few days, if you get the issue again swap that for another RAM card until you find the culprit.

Run a memory test first though.