Causes for Freezes in Win7

[daftpunkit]

I have been experiencing some hard lock ups in Windows 7 x64 Professional during gaming only. I am assuming it is a GPU issue as it only happens when gaming, nothing goes wrong watching hours of video or general use, just gaming in World of Warcraft or Modern Warfare 2.

The symptoms:
When playing WoW windowed in Win 7 the window for the program goes to Not Responding which tells me the impending lockup is seconds away, and viola, the game freezes and the sounds during the lockup go into stutter and the screen goes to a light brownish glow, a clay like color. I'll try to photo it with a camera and upload a screenshot upon next incident.

I tried googling the symptom but came up with various other issues not really related to mine. My screen does go gray and get vertical stripes.

I have the latest drivers for my GPU, and motherboard drivers/bios, etc.

(Items that could be at cause of problem, if full list of parts needed I can post)
List of Specs:

Windows 7 Professional x64
Intel Core2Duo E6420
2x 1GB of OCZ DDR2 PC2-8500 / 1066MHz
512MB ATi 4850 (ASUS's EAH4850 HDTI/512/M/A)<-- exact/specific model...
eVGA nForce 750i SLI - ATX - LGA775 Socket Mobo

I use these two programs to monitor PC health:
TechPowerUP GPU-Z 0.3.8 (monitors GPU core temps)
Core Temp 0.99.5 (monitors Core 1&2 Temps) <-- Intel's TAT doesn't seem to support x64

The temps never reach critical, C2D never goes past 50 and the GPU never past 85.
So I do not really know why these lock ups occur, is it hardware? firmware? software?

I can post Event Viewer logs if needed of the errors as they are logged as:
Level: Critical
Source: Kernel-Power
ID: 41
Category: (63)

Any insight on this would be greatly appreciated. I probably can provide more info if requested.

 

[Numenorean]

Is anything overclocked?

You can test other things like CPU/RAM using Prime95. If it can run that without errors it would narrow things down.

It could be drivers.

The stripe thing to me says video related, but that's not a 100&#37; thing.

 

[corkyg]

Generically, just about all freezes are the rsult of memory collisions. They can be from hardware, software. or both. It is fairly easy to fault isolate. If it occurs only when certain software is used, chances are, you have isolated the problem.

 

[daftpunkit]

I memtested the ram and seemed ok @ 5-5-5-15

another interesting symptom, if that's what you want to call it, is sometimes upon rebooting after the crash, the network adapter is gone, disappeared. Win 7 doesn't notice it and it is not disabled or anything, just gone from the device Manager list. Reboot again and it is there...

So is this maybe a motherboard issue causing the Brown screen lockup?

 

[pcgeek11]

I memtested the ram and seemed ok @ 5-5-5-15

another interesting symptom, if that's what you want to call it, is sometimes upon rebooting after the crash, the network adapter is gone, disappeared. Win 7 doesn't notice it and it is not disabled or anything, just gone from the device Manager list. Reboot again and it is there...

So is this maybe a motherboard issue causing the Brown screen lockup?

More likely it is an issue with the NIC Driver. Install an updated driver for the NIC.

pcgeek11