[da.3vil.genius]

Hello,

About three weeks ago I decided to build a new computer. After assembling the computer I installed Windows 7 Professional. The computer worked fine except for when left alone. I could use it all day but if I left it alone and came back an hour later it would be frozen. I have hibernation disabled in 7 and don't use sleep mode. The only power saving option I use (besides having the computer turn off the monitor) is having the computer turn off the hard drive after 20 minutes. I've had several machines and never had an issue with this option in the past. When I turned off this option, the computer still froze, but only for about 3 minutes (after I move the mouse). So it was a little of an improvement but three's still an issue. I then checked the memory (memTest) and found it to be bad (4GB (2x2GB) Corsair DDR3 1600MHz). I replaced the memory with Kingston HyperX memory (same specs) and ran memTest and received no errors this time. However, the computer still freezes up on me when left alone for half an hour or more. I haven't tried pulling out the video card yet and booting up with just the onboard; I will try that tonight when I get home.

Does anyone have any suggestions?

Thanks

[-pops-]

Try it with one stick of memory instead of two.

[Hb_Kai]

Also, just in the interests of testing, take off all the power saving options and put each of them back on each at a different time and see if there could be anything wrong there too

[da.3vil.genius]

Thank you both for your responses however neither seem to change the results. It still freezes when left alone regardless of what I seem to do. I am thinking that the issue is related to ATI's driver for W7 because I did a google search and it seems others have reported the issue. But I'm still very open to other suggestions. On a more interesting note, I installed Vista on a separate partition and mirror the settings from my W7 partition and I have no problems at all. It never glitches or freezes. Any ideas?

[Hb_Kai]

If the Vista partition resolved the issue then it probably is a driver issue. Are there any updates from the ATI website or Microsoft Update?

[da.3vil.genius]

Unfortunately no. I'm running all the latest drivers. My neighbor just let me borrow his nVidia card. I'm going to see if it freezes with that, if not, I'm going to replace my ATI card with and nVidia one today. I'll keep y'all updated.

[da.3vil.genius]

Okay, so the nVidia card worked flawlessly. Think I'm going to look for an older Vista x64 driver first and try to install under W7 before I replace the card completely.

[da.3vil.genius]

Well, so far nothing. I've gone back to the 9.2 driver and it's still freezing. It looks like I'm going to switch to nVidia.

[Hb_Kai]

I was considering trying Windows 7 out properly on my Toshiba laptop but now you've enlightened me not to...

[da.3vil.genius]

Well, I've been running the machine since yesterday with an nVidia card and not one glitch. So long ATI - hello nVidia.

I'm just happy this whole freezing issue is done with. Now I can go back to uninterrupted computing. WOOT!