[SOLVED] Windows 7 random freezes - Potential Solution

do you know what a .dll is?
It's a Dynamic Link Library.

This file contains process, machine and user specific information... When a system service is updated through windows update, the windows update process is supposed to take information from the original .dll and store it in the new .dll before replacing the old with the new.
Errors in this process can result in bad .dll's that can then result in system services being buggy (or running into an infinite loop at the system services level, which is why you'd experience the hard freezing problem).

It's a legitimate bug... It doesn't occur very often (for evidence: only a tiny fraction of the widnows 7 users experience these freezes), which makes it difficult to track the precise cause of the error and fix it, not to mention expensive.

I think you are mistaken. If there is any modifying done, it is at Microsoft during development. You don't realize how many bugs would be created if DDL's could be modified during Windows Update. Furthermore specific information about the computer is not stored in DLL's.

OK then. Thanks for the correction.
I was projecting from the fact that replacing the .dll for the workstation service affected the network and workgroup/homegroup settings.

There has been discussion regarding setting the voltage higher for memory....how much higher? My freezes occur about every other day and are getting to be a real PITA!

Can someone reply to my email address of:



Thanks

djdinvt, this is an old thread and you should probably start a new one to address your issue. Voltage is very hardware specific so you should list your motherboard, chip, RAM type and specs, also throw in as much other info about your machine as possible, GPU, size of your PSU etc. Generally you should use the core and rams required voltage unless you are overclocking so please indicate if you are doing that as well.

There is also a difference between a freeze and a BlueScreenOfDeath - if you are getting BSODs then post your dumps in the BSOD forum along with the information I mentioned.

Freezes (and BSODs) can also be caused by out-dated BIOS or drivers or by your anti-virus software. So make sure that stuff is up-to-date and also mention what AV you use. Microsoft Security Essentials (MSE) is generally recommended by this forum though some of us use others with minimal noticed performance impact but since you ARE having performance issues it is definitely something to consider replacing, at least temporarily.

dito the above.

Version of windows you're running is also helpful, as well as where you got it (came installed with a new computer, came installed with used computer, you installed it yourself, etc..).

Also, we prefer to keep the dicussion and help within the forum, so that people who have similar problems in the future can easily find the solutions they need with out having to start new threads (or sometimes even post anything at all).

Edit: Moved to a new thread.

I am posting this reply as a thanks to the community for the assistance they provided in helping me to solve my problems with this frustrating issue.

The thoughtful posts here were very helpful and caused me to look at new areas, and to re-check others.

Anyway, I recently built a new system and after a while it started to display the same seemingly random freezes without any BSODs as many of you have experienced.

My system would freeze at random times and with or without any load, the screen would continue to display whatever was last on-screen, but the mouse and keyboard were totally non-responsive regardless of the length of time I waited.

No BSODs were ever experienced.

The only way out of this situation was a reboot.

The same random freezes were experienced after booting into either WinXP or Win7, so I figured I had some kind of hardware or driver problem. But, I could never pin it down to any specific component.

I had just about given up figuring it out, but thought I'd check here before formatting and trying again.

What got me looking in the right direction were the posts here about memory timing and voltage settings.

After researching my memory's specs I noted that the system BIOS was reporting and auto-configuring the memory as PC3-10700 (DDR3-1333) instead of the correct PC3-12800 (DDR3-1600).

The BIOS was set to the default auto-configuration timing and latency settings, but it would not recognize the memory as DDR3-1600.

Digging further into the BIOS led me to a setting that by default was disabled, but needed to be enabled.

The setting that was giving me problems was buried at:

"MB Intelligent Tweaker (M.I.T.)"
"Advanced Frequency Settings"
"Extreme Memory Profile (X.M.P.)" "Disabled"

I changed the setting to:

"Extreme Memory Profile (X.M.P.)" "Profile1"

The bios now properly reports the memory as PC3-12800 (DDR3-1600).

After making this simple but hidden change, ALL my problems went away.

Here are the system specs for the machine that was giving me headaches:

Gigabyte GA-P67A-UD7-B3 motherboard
Intel Core i7-2600K CPU @ 3.40 GHz
8 GB Corsair CMX8GX3M2A1600C9 (XMS PC3-12800 - 1600 MHz)
Dual MSI N470GTX Twin Frozer II (GeForce GTX 470 in SLI configuration)
Creative Labs X-Fi Titanium Fatality
Dual WDC WD1002FAEX - 2x 1 GB HDDs (Dual-Boot configuration not in RAID)

Win7 Ultimate x64 (Drive 0 Partition C: NTFS)
WinXP Pro x86 (Drive 1 Partition D: FAT32)

My special thanks to everyone who has posted here, as it really helped me look in the right direction and fix this issue.

CptA