Freeze- Reboot- Freeze- Same Cycle. :(

[deargodpleasehelp]

So far my computer has done quite fine in the past on gaming and such, well, not really, in the past months now my PC has suddenly started freezing while playing games, the first time would just freeze the app, 'exiting' out temporarily with Ctrl+Alt+Delete and clicking 'Task Manager' and quitting the game, nevertheless, will work, but there will be black bars where shadows/transparency/opaqueness should be on windows, and where the frozen game window would be, somehow seemingly shrunk on the screen to a size of I'd say, 12x12 or something, all covered by black as well, after quitting the Application, re-starting and trying again, just after a few short minutes of gameplay (Managed to snap a pic of it), the computer audio will skip and stutter repeated 1-2 ms of the currently playing audio, the computer will respond to NOTHING, Not even Ctrl+Alt+Delete, I could tell the system had seriously bunked itself, because when Plugging in a USB device or whatnot (Like my Camera), the light would not come on or give me an indication it was being charged in any manner... So at that point this leaves me to click the ACPI Reset button, and force-restart my PC...

Think it's done yet? Let's go further into what happens upon restart.

The system would turn on, all fans, USB/Mice, etc, all optional, this would only last about estimated 1 second, and then would instantly power off again, it gives a whirry/whine when it does this, I have yet to see why my Computer does this at all, and upon powering back on, works fine...

This happens quite often, leaving me to believe my PC has some PSU fault, I've checked but this PSU has been good (hopefully) since brought back in '07, this is a custom computer, no warranty, and the place I brought it from closed down, so I can't ask them or whatnot... you know...

Anyways, The least I expect is for someone to atleast give me an answer for why my PC might be doing this?

Checked by Temps with nTune (Nvidia's built-in software fan/clock controlling software), Temps are fine, ranging only to a Max of 72*C, not bad?

So I'm not sure overheating might be an issue, unless I've overlooked something.

I'm running Windows 7 x64 bit, Nvidia 250 GTS, 4 GB of RAM, and Water-cooled CPU cooling, so CPU shouldn't be a problem- BIOS settings report it at 40*C

[DaveLembke]

I'd run Memtest86 on this just to make sure you dont have a memory issue. I had a Pentium 4 2.66Ghz act the same way with two kingston 512MB Ram sticks and found out that one of the sticks had issues with a range between 540MB and 640MB of the 1GB available. Just as you said windows with black boxes and LOTS of freeze ups. I found this using that memtest86. Contacted Kingston and they RMA'd me a new stick and then both sticks worked fine together. I later found out that this was a risk you take in not buying matched pairs 5 years ago. For about $10 more you could get matched pairs that were tested to behave with each other, or you can save money and take chances with unmatched pairs bought individually at the time.

[deargodpleasehelp]

I'd run Memtest86 on this just to make sure you dont have a memory issue. I had a Pentium 4 2.66Ghz act the same way with two kingston 512MB Ram sticks and found out that one of the sticks had issues with a range between 540MB and 640MB of the 1GB available. Just as you said windows with black boxes and LOTS of freeze ups. I found this using that memtest86. Contacted Kingston and they RMA'd me a new stick and then both sticks worked fine together. I later found out that this was a risk you take in not buying matched pairs 5 years ago. For about $10 more you could get matched pairs that were tested to behave with each other, or you can save money and take chances with unmatched pairs bought individually at the time.

It seems Memtest86 on my Machine is messed up or something, upon Memtest executing, when asked to reboot, upon reboot I get the following message:


Windows failed to start. A recent hardware or software change might have caused this problem.

File: Memtest.exe is missing or corrupted.

And I can't run memtest, if I try to manually execute it Windows says it cannot be run in Win32 mode. :/
Help?

[patio]

MemTest should be ran from a bootable CD....not inside Windows.

[deargodpleasehelp]

MemTest should be ran from a bootable CD....not inside Windows.

Then perhaps I should copy the whole memtest file and it's components, and put them on a flash drive and run them on the next boot then, eh?
How would I get it to work anyways? Would I have to run it through DOS or something?

Sorry, I don't have the Windows 7 CD and I'd rather not waste time waiting for Windows to load, just to run a Memtest.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but blame Microsoft.
the last Memtest I ran when I was running Linux on my machine said half my memory was bad, and it was brand-new RAM! :/

Of course, running memtest via the dual-boot options while before loading linux or windows, Attempting memtest from there claims 'too small memory in (ex.) 07x0E.  Press any key to continue...'.

 

[deargodpleasehelp]

Ok, just for the heck of it, ran Memtest, no problems found, this is new RAM anyways, I recently tried USED RAM and that just corrupted the memory Pfn list or whatever windows crud...

any ideas anyone?
Also if this
might be of any use; this freezing of the system so far only happens the most in Fallout New Vegas...
Although, app crashes are on a regular daily basis for me. along with hangers...

Can someone tell me if this may be a hardware issue of some kind?
I know only one time, after a few seconds of my system freezing Ctrl+Alt+Del finally responded and the system came back to life...

Although this is mostly not related, I'll post it anyways... Back when I was young,
my extra HDD I filled with Windows Movie Maker Vids and games, started to go bad. It clicked, and after a few minutes of gameplay it would freeze, a few minutes or 30 secs later, it would resume, but only to dead fault straught back to a BSoD... which I haven't gotten any from my games...yet. Unfortunetly before you asked, my father kicked it hard in the front and smashed the front my old PC inward...

Hope I atleast provided some additional info, if I missed something please don't hesitate to tell me!
Thank You!!