My computer randomly locks up. No event recorded in event log.?

Question

So i've been trying for over a week now to figure out the cause of this problem. to describe the lock ups, they happen pretty much the same way every time, sometimes im at my computer for it and sometimes im not but suddenly it freezes, my mouse will move and give me a loading symbol but no other function including ctrl+shift+esc does anything. the problem started a little over a week ago I did some windows updates (I am running windows 8), among them was an update for my graphics card (Nvidia 670Ti) as usual my computer asked me to restart to finish installing and so i did. My computer locked up during the installation and i was forced (after waiting over an hour) to hard reset my PC. after rebooting I had some issues installing the failed updates so i restored my computer to a previous state from the day before. The updates were then installed successfully but my computer continued to lock up, i spent some time trying to figure it out but since i had been meaning to re-install windows anyways just to clean up my system I went ahead and did so. After re downloading and installing windows (download was directly from microsoft) and completing the installation I still continued to have problems with my computer locking up, puzzled at this point as i was certain the lock ups had to do with the failed install of the drivers I started to wonder if my overclock (which hasn't changed in over 2 years or so) was to blame, and sure enough one time after my computer locked up i reboot it and on boot it said overclock failure. so i tried to stabalize it and seemed to have succeeded.. until the lock ups came back.. so i disabled my OC and returned my bios to defaults.. no change, comp still locks up. seems to happen after about an hour, without any warning.. and the weird part is that now the only errors in my event log are just telling me my computer shut down unexpectedly.. to my knowledge my drivers are up to date and i ran a windows memory diagnostic but found my no errors.. The problem is baffling me because i can't find any evidence or reason for it and i've been running this PC build for over 2.5 years with virtually no issues. If any one has any ideas as to what could be causing this i would appreciate the help. I am at a loss.

Answer 1

Get the newest Nvidia drivers for your card from their site to rule out Windows Update having an older troublesome version of the drivers. http://www.nvidia.com/Download/index.aspx?lang=en-us



If you still have problems then I'd do a chkdsk /r on the OS partition to rule out a problem with the HD (usually chkdsk c: /r entered into a command prompt run as administrator).



Also I'd swap cables between the HD and the DVDROM to rule out a bad cable.

Answer 2

Your CPU might be overheating. You can take the computer case cover off and blow out the dirt/dust from the cpu fan/heatsink with a can of compressed air.. Make sure your computer is unplugged when you do this

Answer 3

Have you used safe mode and disabled drivers one by one? It's tedius, but you'll probably find something in there that, 1.) You don't need anymore, 2.) Something that's using memory or harddisk or graphics. 3.) Hell, I don't know.

Answer 4

I think you have a virus, have you tried sweeping your computer of viruses?