Entire computer freezes

[GypsyLogic]

Okay, so any random time after login, my computer freezes. The longest I've gone without it freezing is about an hour.

 

I DO have a Nvidia driver, GeeForce 7300 GT, I've got a quad core so it's not a memory or CPU problem. My system is Win7 64-bit

 

I KNOW it's a graphics problem because when I used to use two monitors, it would freeze nearly immediately after logging in. Now, it can take up to an hour with only one monitor plugged in. Also, I've had problems with my graphics in the past.

 

What I'm looking for are solutions you can't find when you google the issue, because I've tried them all. I've fiddled around with the settings in the Nvidia control pannel, but have set them all back to defaults because I didn't want to muck anything up. 

 

If you could give me a solution, you'd be a godsend!

[Marigold Devin]

Have you checked your computer's temperature? 

 

[Madelaine McMasters]

I do like the irony of freezing by overheating, but that may be the cause of the problems.

The GeForce 7300 family is, by today's standards, low performance. It'll be working it's li'l heart out to render SL, and if the cooling system can't keep up, the operating system may start throttling the clock to the graphics hardware. When that happens, the result is often a crash of the SL viewer. When I had this problem on my old Mac laptop, a cleaning fixed it right up.

If you have a system monitor, as Mari suggests, peek at the GPU temperatures and see if they're high. If there is some means of monitoring GPU loading, you may also see loading start to rise after the temperature stabilizes at some high temperature. That will be evidence that the OS is slowing down the clock to limit temperature, resulting in the GPU having to work even harder to keep up. Eventually it won't be able to and... whoosh, down you go.

Good luck!

[Thinkerer Melville]

Che the temperature in your computer.  Here is how.

• System slows or stops when running graphics? Check for GPU overheating

TKR

[Marigold Devin]

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Madelaine McMasters wrote:

I do like the irony of freezing by overheating, but that may be the cause of the problems.

The GeForce 7300 family is, by today's standards, low performance. It'll be working it's li'l heart out to render SL, and if the cooling system can't keep up, the operating system may start throttling the clock to the graphics hardware. When that happens, the result is often a crash of the SL viewer. 

When I had this problem on my old Mac laptop, a cleaning fixed it right up.

If you have a system monitor, as Mari suggests, peek at the GPU temperatures and see if they're high. If there is some means of monitoring GPU loading, you may also see loading start to rise after the temperature stabilizes at some high temperature. That will be evidence that the OS is slowing down the clock to limit temperature, resulting in the GPU having to work even harder to keep up. Eventually it won't be able to and... whoosh, down you go.

Good luck!

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Aye, irony. Like the way you can get freezer burns if something is extremely cold. I'm glad you put the full explanation here, as I re-read my post and it was a little bit ... hmmm... sparse! I have got mince pie brain!!