Very unique freezing problem on Vista x64 SP1 - anybody have any ideas?

[RandysWay]

Hello everybody,

I'm having a pretty unique (in my opinion!) issue with my main box freezing up. I have searched for over an hour, with no luck. I've been damn lucky in the past 10+ years fixing every single issue on my own, yet this one is just BAFFLING. I'm running Windows Vista 64-Bit SP1, full specs in my signature. My issue is mainly when browsing photos in Windows Photo Gallery (next/previous) - if I browse too many photos (or too fast, it seems), Windows Photo Gallery locks up - the photo unloads and Windows Photo Gallery turns into "Not Responding". I've been avoiding it freezing by browsing the photos slow and taking a break after 5-10 photos, then resuming browsing through around 30 seconds later.

Now, here's where the interesting part comes in: When this happens, I can browse or do "light work" all day long - as soon as I right click and click close (to end task) OR launch task manager (either via right clicking on the task bar or by CTRL+ALT+DEL), the entire damn rig freezes. It's completely frozen - no mouse or keyboard inputs work, yet it's not fully hard locked as things such as Winamp playing in the background is still working perfectly fine! One time (and one time only), when I right clicked/closed to end task, it actually took a second to freeze - and this time, the task bar vanished a nanosecond before the rig locked up, so I am assuming that Explorer crashed - is this issue possibly related to Explorer?

Also, I thought this was related to Windows Photo Gallery only, but this same exact issue with the same symptoms happened in another program a few weeks ago (the program itself froze, everything else was fine but then the rig instantly locked as soon as I tried to end task it or enter task manager) but I can't remember which program it was. It was not a Microsoft application.

Any help at all would be appreciated with this matter!

Thanks,
-R

[devil22]

Update Video and motherboard drivers, and update the bios, if possible. Check the event log for any logged errors at the time of the freeze-up, as well. And perhaps try in safe mode, to see if it's a program that's loading that's causing it. My first suspect would be video drivers however, but that's just a guess.

[vick1000]

http://www.tweakguides.com/VA_6.html

Disable drive/ search indexing would be my solution.

[MChief]

If winamp is still running, will it go to the next track? It may just be the audio drivers finishing out what is in their buffer, but if it actually plays through and goes to the next song, your system is definitely still running.

Try hitting windows-r, then running chkdsk. If your HD starts going active, your system is definitely still running, but your display is locked up.

Also see if you can ping the machine from the network, and even better try to remote into it.

I've never used photo gallery, but I imagine if you're flipping through it quickly, it is allocating more memory in the video buffer so it can draw and show the next image. If your drivers are over allocating the memory, or the video memory is corrupt, it could cause a problem, then when you end task on photo gallery the driver tries to release the memory it was using.

Disable aero, and try a 3d benchmark that is sure to use all your video memory. Something with the settings too high that give you ~5fps.