Windows Vista forum: What next to trouble shoot computer lock up?

The freeze ups happen very frequently after the system awakes from standby.... Fans, heat sinks, etc are clean.

That's a classic symptom of 2 common issues.

1. BAD CAPS (see google so you can inspect all of them.)
2. A slightly overtaxed power supply. No real fix except to install a bigger new one.
Bob

So I opened up and cleaned things out, and inspected the capacitors as best I could - they all looked perfect and I couldn't see any signs of anything out of the norm. All capacitors looked identical...

Anyway, the freeze ups are getting worse. Yesterday I decided to go ahead and start up in the safe mode with networking, and I've been browsing for a couple of hours with no freeze up....

So apparently it's not a hardware problem, but some sort of software bug?

We've backed up everything which we want to preserve... should we try a clean install?

If so, where is the best link to instructions to do this.... should it be done from the blue screen boot menu?

Would it better to just bite the bullet and upgrade the operating system so that we don't have to immediately start with years of windows update after the clean install?

Thanks,
Jack

The install took about a hour and Windows Update ground away for the day. I'm unsure how long it actually took because we don't babysit the install. Just swing by from time to time to click OK.

Did not take a week.

There may be other clues to share but without the full machine details and age along with stories I can only think we're back to some tired PSU (they get smaller with age!) or a bum OS.

-> But is the story changing here? A freeze up on boot is one thing. A freeze up in use has me looking for dried out heatsink compound or the rather famous DISABLE FLASH HARDWARE ACCELERATION.

Uniblue? Nothing I'd use.
Bob

Again, the system works just fine when in Safe mode with Networking - I can browse for hours without the system freezing up..... When I shut down and boot up normally, it freezes up within a few minutes... it seems as if the most common freeze up happens when the cursor is on the side bar but certainly not always...

This leads me to believe that there is nothing wrong with the computer hardware....

How should I continue to troubleshoot this?

Jack

In safe mode things run slower, drivers are in safe slow mode. It's a common misconception and can cause a lot of lost time at the repair counter.

For example, the CPU heat sink falling off can be a common issue and SAFE MODE can be fine. Go figure but we don't expect everyone to poke around inside, clean or replace heat sink compounds.

Try this. Use MSCONFIG to disable stuff. You can always re-enable items later. Here's the tutorial link.
http://www.techrepublic.com/blog/itdojo/monitor-windows-7-boot-logs-with-the-help-of-msconfig/3463

Figure C for example has things we can do without.
Bob