PC Locking up with certain games - Hardware & Software

I was playing Skyrim the other day, just fine, for about 4 hours straight. I restart my PC and all of a sudden I play Skyrim for about 5 minutes, then my whole PC locks up. Nothing responds, the game freezes, I can't alt tab, the mouse freezes, and an odd noise comes out of the speakers when this happens. I have to hard reboot my PC to fix it. The funny thing is that, in other demanding games like BF3, I have no problems at all. I already ran a Memory diagnostic and nothing came up. Again, this only started the other day, and I haven't installed any new drivers or anything... PS: I also stress-tested my GFX Card with FurMark for 15 minutes, and it was just fine. PPS: I forgot to mention that it does [i]NOT[/i] BlueScreen. I also checked for logs of System halts, and there were none. Specs: 4GB DDR2 RAM Radeon HD 6990 Intel Core2Quad Q9550

Some incompatibility with some driver that was unknown?

[QUOTE=DustySheep;36419677]Some incompatibility with some driver that was unknown?[/QUOTE] My first guess is driver problems, but I haven't installed/modified anything since.

You could try reinstalling/updating the drivers

Sigh, I just completely wiped both my GPU and Soundcard drivers, installed new ones for both, ran CCleaner's registry cleaner, and it's STILL doing this. I just don't understand what could make my PC lock up in one game, and then in another, even MORE demanding game nothing happens at all.

I've got the exact same problem and on the exact same game. I used to play Skyrim on ultra for hours, now it freezes after 5 minutes (or 2 hours 30 minutes if I set it to medium). It just freezes and a weird sound comes from the speaker too. It did it once on UT2004 too, but not on Crysis 1 / 2. Updating my driver from 296 something to 301.42 did not fix it. It also seems to start happening on Linux, but when it freezes the PC remains active (I had VLC playing music from its playlist and even going to the next song, but the screen was frozen and the keyboard / mouse were not working. Also Xorg would not start after the first reboot, but would work fine on the second one). I already did a memtest (2 pass, no error) and I'm currently doing a CPU stress test, I'll do the GPU test after that. I also did a CMOS reset but I did not try playing Skyrim again. I'll update the post when I'm done testing all parts and tell you if I managed to fix the problem. Specs : Windows XP x64 Edition 16 GB DDR3 RAM Nvidia GTX 560 DCII OC (non TI) Intel Core i5 750 [b]Update :[/b] Both the CPU and GPU tests show no error. However I was able to play Skyrim on ultra for three hours straight, so either the CMOS reset fixed the problem, or it just resolved itself for some reason. If you know how to setup your BIOS, just open your computer case, remove the battery on the motherboard, wait 10 to 20 seconds and then put it back.

[QUOTE=Bloodclaw;36453713]I've got the exact same problem and on the exact same game. I used to play Skyrim on ultra for hours, now it freezes after 5 minutes (or 2 hours 30 minutes if I set it to medium). It just freezes and a weird sound comes from the speaker too. It did it once on UT2004 too, but not on Crysis 1 / 2. Updating my driver from 296 something to 301.42 did not fix it. It also seems to start happening on Linux, but when it freezes the PC remains active (I had VLC playing music from its playlist and even going to the next song, but the screen was frozen and the keyboard / mouse were not working. Also Xorg would not start after the first reboot, but would work fine on the second one). I already did a memtest (2 pass, no error) and I'm currently doing a CPU stress test, I'll do the GPU test after that. I also did a CMOS reset but I did not try playing Skyrim again. I'll update the post when I'm done testing all parts and tell you if I managed to fix the problem. Specs : Windows XP x64 Edition 16 GB DDR3 RAM Nvidia GTX 560 DCII OC (non TI) Intel Core i5 750 [b]Update :[/b] Both the CPU and GPU tests show no error. However I was able to play Skyrim on ultra for three hours straight, so either the CMOS reset fixed the problem, or it just resolved itself for some reason. If you know how to setup your BIOS, just open your computer case, remove the battery on the motherboard, wait 10 to 20 seconds and then put it back.[/QUOTE] Alright, i'm gonna try taking out the battery tommorow since I'm having other mobo problems too (1 RAM Slot was causing my PC to bluescreen, before I just solved it by removing the RAM that was in that slot).

I'm beginning to think this has more to do with Windows 7 than anything else, because it appears that Nvidia and ATI users alike are getting this exact problem (me included).

It must be, since I just reset my CMOS and still got the same error. You know, something tells me a recent windows update could be the culprit (if it indeed has been happening to other people recently) since I recall Skyrim working fine, and then suddenly this error happens after windows updates? Seems like too much of a coincidence...but I can't be sure.