The machine has been randomly freezing and crashing recently. It is a recently new build PC.
Freezing
The machine would lock up when left for a period of time and then take a long time to respond to mouse movement. As it reactivated the machine would beep loudly multiple times through the speakers.
I have applied the latest BIOS firmware from Asus as I suspected it was something to do with the computer failing to enter sleep or low power mode properly. This does seem to have fixed the freezing problem so far.
Crashing
This is more annoying as the machine issues a BSOD, but looking at the Minidumps the recorded error is not consistently coming from one source. From the Minidumps it looks like something using USB might be the culprit. The suspects here could be a Belking USB wireless stick or a Creative webcam.
Steps I have taken
- Ran Memtest 86+ 4.10 (2 passes were fine)
- Removed peripherals one by one
- Downloaded and installed latest drivers and firmware updates
- Air blasted and resat the memory
- Vacuumed and air blasted the case out
I am still no closer unfortunately.
Details
- Windows 7 64 bit
- 1x stick of 2GB Kingston memory
- AMD Athlon II 640x4
- Asus MicroATX motherboard
- ATI HD4500 graphics card