OK...so here's the situation...i'll just spit it all out and hopefully you can make of it what you will:
System freezes up...without warning...without stutter. It's as if im looking at a screenshot of my screen on paper (no faded out windows from unresponsiveness and no moving mouse)...and it happens instantly and swiftly. Completely random too, no difference if I have a load on it or not. Also happens when the screensaver is up.
When I boot the computer...the mobo splash screen won't go away unless I have my HP C4180 disconnected...(what the heck?). the printer does have a card reader...but there's no card in it. With the splash disabled...it seems to be halting at the USB Mass Storage detection. is there any way to fix this?
Both issues appeared 3 weeks after I build the machine...so maybe drivers or something?
I've run the latest version of memtest for over an hour...and it hadn't brought up any errors.
System:
Cooler Master 550W PSU
Seagate 7200.11 500GB
Vista Ultimate x64
EVGA GeForce 8800 GT 512MB
Asus P5K Deluxe/WiFi LGA 775 Intel P35 ATX Intel MB
Intel Core 2 Quad Q6600
G.SKILL 4GB (2x2GB) DDR2 1066 Dual Channel **is running at 1066 too
Any help would be really appreciated. I just don't know really where to start...if anyone has ideas, please let me know! Thanks!
Just some general pointers firstly as you said I would go to the manufactures site's and get the latest drivers for your components. You can use the Device manager and update drivers but unfortunately this is not always as up to date, Also check the date of your bios. Often, freezes may be caused by power options so you may want to have a look at these both in the bios and in windows Power Management.
Another thing I would check is Temperatures, Especially the Video system you may want to download CPU-Z and GPU-Z for this purpose
Hope this helps
with the Printer thing you may want to check your start-up programs to see if anything is pointing to the card reader.
Also, you may want to make sure the SATA connection and cable is good. Loosen connection and bad SATA cable is a known source of freezing problem due to error access HDD.
When I boot the computer...the mobo splash screen won't go away unless I have my HP C4180 disconnected...(what the heck?). the printer does have a card reader...but there's no card in it. With the splash disabled...it seems to be halting at the USB Mass Storage detection. is there any way to fix this?
Even though there is no card in it, there is still the card holder. So it's a bit like a CD drive without a CD in it. It may be difficult so solve, so you may have to learn to always disconnect the printer before switching on the computer or rebooting and only reconnect it after Windows has finished booting.
Looking for possible solutions which might avoid having to disconnect it for every boot, first I would try is allocating it a different drive letter. In Disk Management, right click the drive for the card reader and click "Change drive letter..." and change it to a letter late in the alphabet such as "P" (P for printer, easy to remember). It's possible you will only be able to do that if there is a card in the reader.
If you manually change a drive letter like that, it sticks, so Windows will always allocate that letter to it. Otherwise it may be allocated a different letter on different occasions. For example when you attach it after Windows has booted it is given a different letter from what it's given if it's connected at boot time. Sometimes Windows gets it wrong and gives it a letter which clashes with another device's letter. Manually setting it to P: should prevent that.
Another thing which might possibly work, in addition to giving it a fixed letter, is to always keep a card in the reader. The delay may be caused by Windows waiting for feedback when it asks the device's driver for info -- like you say "it seems to be halting at the USB Mass Storage detection".
