Greetings and thank you for your time. I have an issue wherein Vista (Ultimate 64-bit) Will freeze up completely forcing me to reset / reboot. This has occured a few days after I put the computer together and installed all the software. It does not happen reliably. The first two times it happened, I was using Firefox in a window, in front of a video game (world of warcraft in windowed mode). This does not happen every time I do that, and has not happened from doing that in about a week. The problem recently resurfacedin a more reliable fashion while using the Play-On media server software to stream Hulu to my Xbox. The computer froze after about 5 minutes of doing this, and then after about 8 minutes of doing this. It is because this happens more reliably during this streaming that I am putting this question in the networking forum. This does not happen during heavy processing load, such as games, when I would expect the processor to potentially overheat. So I don't think heat is an issue. When I visit windows update I don't see any driver updates, perhaps I need to look elsewhere to find updated drivers, or maybe I'm not looking in the right place. Or maybe it isn't a driver issue either, I don't know. I hope some genius can help me, because it is really infuriating to have built myself a new box and have this mysterious interruption on a random basis.ASUS Rampge Formula LGA 775 Intel X48 ATX Intel MotherboardIntel Core 2 Duo e8500 Wolfdale 3.16 GHz LGA 775 64W Dual - Core ProcessorOCZ Reaper HPC 4GB (2 x 2GB) 240-Pin DDR2 SDRAM DDR2 1066 (PC2 8500) ] x 2 (8gb)Corsair 750W ATX12V Power SupplyEVGA 896-P3-1267-AR GeForce GTX 260 Core 216Windows Vista Ultimate SP1 64-bitThank you! - Alex

Hi Alex, Thank you for your post. I know the Windows Vista computer freezes. As for this system freezing issue, we generally need to analyze the performance monitor logs and memory dump files to locate the root cause. Unfortunately, debugging is beyond what we can do in the forum because of the nature of forum support. A support call to our product service team is needed for the debugging service. I'd like to recommend that you contact Microsoft Customer Support Service (CSS) for assistance so that this problem can be resolved efficiently. To obtain the phone numbers for specific technology request please take a look at the web site listed below: http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=fh;EN-US;PHONENUMBERS If you are outside the US please see http://support.microsoft.com for regional support phone numbers. Having said that, I'd still like to provide the following general troubleshooting steps to see if we can eliminate this problem: Note: Please perform a complete system backup first. If any unexpected issue occurs, we can quickly restore the system to the current status. 1. Scan your system to make sure that the system is virus free. Temporarily disable your anti-virus software to see if this problem is gone. 2. If you have recently installed any software, hardware or drivers, please remove them. And please also check if they are compatible with the current operation system. 3. Please perform a Clean Boot to check the issue. Clean boot ================= 1) Click the Start Button type "msconfig" (without quotation marks) in the Search box, and then press Enter. Note: If prompted, please click Continue on the User Account Control (UAC) window. 2) Click the "Services" tab, check the "Hide All Microsoft Services" box and click "Disable All" (if it is not gray). 3) Click the "Startup" tab, click "Disable All" and click "OK". Then, restart the computer. When the "System Configuration Utility" window appears, please check the "Don't show this message or launch the System Configuration Utility when Windows starts" box and click OK. NOTE: we can go back to normal boot by running msconfig again and checking on Normal Startup in the General tab. In the Clean Boot Environment, the third party services and applications are disabled, please check if the issue reoccurs at this time. If the problem does not occur, it indicates that the problem is related to one application or service we have disabled. You may use the MSCONFIG tool again to re-enable the disabled item one by one to find out the culprit. However, if the issue still persists, please contact Microsoft Customer Support Service (CSS) for further troubleshooting. I hope the problem will be resolved soon. Thanks! Nicholas Li - MSFT Nicholas Li - MSFT

Well I tried the clean boot. I booted and then enabled only the one program that I know will cause a freeze. The freeze still happened so I can rule out other applications and services. It is not just this program that causes a freeze, but I know I can force a freeze with it, so it is what I use to test.I called microsoft for help but they aren't interested in spending their valuable time on an OEM version of their most expensive software. $180 isn't enough to warrant telephone support I suppose.

Hi, Thank you for your update. I am sorry for what you experienced. Since you have found the program which may cause the issue, please let me know what it is and continue narrowing down the issue with Clean Boot. Generally, to troubleshoot this issue, we need to analyze the performance monitor logs and memory dump files. Due to the nature of the forum support, debugging is beyond what we can do. Thus, I still recommend that you contact Microsoft Customer Support Service (CSS) for further support. Meanwhile, you can also contact your OEM manufacturers to receive support on OEM system related issues. Hope the issue can be resolved soon. Nicholas Li - MSFT Nicholas Li - MSFT

Microsoft tech support wont help me unless I pay for it. I'm not going to pay $60 for them to fix my issue, that's ridiculous. OEM or not Microsoft should be on the phone with me figuring this out, I payed a lot for this and it's clear to me that this is not a third party program issue.I've tried everything. I tried a clean boot, I tried disabling drivers and downloading new ones, I tried alternat memory configurations, and memory testing programs, flashed my BIOS. Basically I did everything I could to fix the problem without contacting MS, but they won't help me.I bought the OS by OEM from Newegg and there's no support for this kind of problem from them, it's Microsoft or nothing. I feel totally shafted by microsoft support for this. This was expensive and now they want more. Absurd.

Hi, Thank you for your update. Sorry for the inconvenience. However, for this specific system freezing issue, debugging is needed to solidly locate the root cause. Therefore, it is highly recommended to contact Microsoft Customer Support Service (CSS) for further research. At this time, please uninstall the newly installed applications (which were installed after the issue started to occur) as a test. Please check how it works. Meanwhile, if everything worked before, a quick solution is to restore the system back to the previous status when the issue didnt occur with System Restore. (Note: Performing a system restore may cause the loss of the current system settings; therefore, before doing this, please make sure that the system restore point is not too old and set a restore point for the current status.) Hope the issue can be resolved soon. Thanks.Nicholas Li - MSFT