An annoying problem, random freezing

[Astronomica]

So for the past several months i've been experiencing an annoying problem with random freezing. The screen freezes with whatever im doing and the sound goes crazy (picture is still their but nothing is going on) and my USB peripherals lose power. The real problem is nothing im doing really seems to cause this, it happens if im browsing the net, or playing a game. Sometimes it happens after 30 or so hours of use, or 15 minutes into a cold bootup.

I've set everything to stock settings to make sure it wasn't related to any overclocking, and it doesen't seem to help any. I've run Memtest for several hours, orthos overnight for 10 hours, and 20 passes at Intelburn and everything returns A-OK no problems. I've RMA'ed this motherboard already because i was experiancing a similar problem before, i got back the replacement and it's still the same old story. I have also been through 3 different power supplies, as that was my first thought.

As for voltages, im running the e4500@ 1.325, ram @ 2.05, NB 1.30, everything is getting enough juice. Can anyone shed some light on the causes im looking at here, because my gut instinct says motherboard, but i'm not ready to shell out money i don't have to replace something that may not be the cause to my problem. I went over to Abit forums some time ago and got the worst possible tech support i could hope for, which included either rabid fanboyism or flaming. Hopefully some [H]ard guru's can help me out.

 

[dr.sandman]

1. Does the computer need to be rebooted after the freeze or does the system eventually come out of it?

2. Note the time of the freeze next time and go into your "event viewer" look at all of the "system" and "software" events and see if you can tell a pattern as to any error messages or certain services/programs doing any maintenance or starting/stopping.

3. When was the last time you reloaded windows.

4. I think the best first step would be to eliminate software in this situation. Reply to 1-3 and I/we can help you eliminate more possibilities.

 

[Sathsayin]

I had a computer once that uesd to do this. It would freeze at random times without a load on anything includeing cpu/gpu I thought it was my power supply turned out the watchdog timer got upset and the certain power supply i had bridged power a certain way that the board would throw a fit. Wasn't anything wrong with my board are my power supply. They just were both on the oppisite tolerance i guess. I read this certain power supply did this to certain boards. But only if the boards didn't do something in particular to the power so. I flashed it and also adjusted the watchdog in the bios. From the way I read an article was mainly due to the board's firmware not set for the power supplys input. The freeze would happen form 3 sec's untill 15 seconds out of the blue. If sound was playing it would just loop in half second interval's until computer came back out. the interval of the sound playing was similar to holding a key on your keyboard to long and hearing that annoying sound we all know about. I would advise you to go thru the steps dr sandman has told you to before flashing your board. These are excellent troubleshooting techniques you should determine if it is software before you jump to a hardware situation.

 

[Sathsayin]

did you fix it?

 

[Astronomica]

Whoops sorry for the long delay in posting again, thanks for the feedback.

@ dr.sandman, the computer doesen't come out of the freeze, always reqired a hard reboot. I checked event viewer but all i could find was the error saying the system was shut down. Also, the last time i reinstalled windows was roughly 3-4 weeks ago, fresh install of vista.

@Sathsayin, when your refering to flashing the board, are you refering to updating the bios on the motherboard? If so, im using the most current one for this particular abit board.