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I have a problem which started about 3 weeks ago. Each time I boot my computer for the first time of the day, it will freeze around 1 hour after the boot. It happens independently of the OS in use (Linux / Windows). After a hard reboot, the system will be stable for as long as I don't close it. I've tested so far

  1. checkdisk on the only hard drive of the computer, everything was fine

  2. Testing individual memory sticks one at the time, still freezing

  3. Unplugging every hardware pieces of the computer and clean/reseat them, still freezing

  4. Updating or/and reinstalling drivers of a lot of stuff, still freezing

  5. Stress testing the CPU and the GPU, system stable after 1 hour of stress test

I can also point out that it is not an overheating, nor an overclocking problem. I also don't have a spare PSU or a motherboard to test my system with. I'm looking for more tests or ideas so I can finally troubleshoot this problem.

The computer specs are

Dell XPS Studio 9100, 525W Dell PSU, Dell Motherboard, i7 930 @ 2.8 GHz, HD 7850 2GB OC edition, 6x2GB DDR3 RAM, Hitachi 1TB hard drive

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  • Is your BIOS up to date?
    – zdan
    Commented Dec 13, 2013 at 23:29
  • Yes, the latest is from 2011
    – Pico
    Commented Dec 14, 2013 at 0:32
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    Give a close look at your motherboard to see if any of the capacitors (silver topped cylindrical shapes) are swollen or leaking.
    – Jack
    Commented Dec 14, 2013 at 2:53
  • All the capacitors are flat and clean
    – Pico
    Commented Dec 14, 2013 at 18:56
  • I've got a very similar issue and dual-boot as well (freeze-up occurs on both OS's). But I do not have the luxury of it fixing itself after a hard reboot. I've ruled out the PSU (swapped it out). Currently doing memtest. My PC is overclocked but it should be able to easily handle it. I will check capacitors on the mobo a bit later; do you have any ideas besides CMOS reset?
    – Jonathan
    Commented Jun 3, 2014 at 15:18

1 Answer 1

Reset to default
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Finally, after three months of system lock, I've found the issue. I've no magic answer, but resetting the CMOS did the trick. It rolled back the BIOS to the 2010 version and no more problem! It also started the first boot setup which may have fixed a few things.

Thank again to all contributors.

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