Vista Freezing - HELP!

[KaruiKage]

I don't know what to do. I have ignored this problem for a while because I could get around it, but it seems now that there are instances where it happens 100% of the time.

Freezes, locks, whatever you want to call them. Mouse locks up on screen, input is gone, restart is necessary.

So far, I've narrowed down the instances of when this happens. A lot of it seems to stem from loading or quitting certain games, but not just that. Here are the instances (and percentages of how often a freeze occurs when doing that particular task) that I've received:

- Loading Neverwinter Nights 2 - 100% - Goes to black loading screen, mouse appears, freezes
- Attempting to get a DXDiag - 100% - Recent, I didn't even know about this one until I tried to get one for the forum. Froze once it was almost done.
- Making a shortcut from the Games folder onto the desktop, and then right-clicking it - 100% - I...don't know
- Starting / quitting Command and Conquer 3, Total War 2, Company of Heroes - 5-10% - Not often, but it happens
- Other games - No problem

Here's the system specs:
AMD Athlon 3200+
Nvidia GeForce 7800 GT
2 GB RAM
Vista is on a 75 GB IDE HD
D: Drive (where most games are installed. NWN2 was installed on E recently as a test) - 150 GB IDE HD
E: Drive - 250 GB Sata HD

I did go to this thread and followed the instructions under Services to turn off all the unncessary ones. I only did the ones listed under "Disable". I don't know if that had anything to do with this problem.
http://forums.techpowerup.com/showthread.php?t=24912

I have all the latest drivers for everything. If there is something other than a dxdiag I can grab, I will. I'm not sure where to go, and I don't want to downgrade to XP (though I know that everything above works on it with the same Hardware). I want to figure this problem out, and I want to fix it. I'm stubborn.

So please, if anyone has any ideas, I'll take all the help I can get. Thank you.

[Ancient Dragon]

Did you ever get the compatability warning when you start any of those screens ? Most likely the games can't be run on Vista.

[KaruiKage]

No compatibility warning, and they can, I have friends who can run them and have read plenty of posts saying they work fine. Even still, I tried changing compatibility to launching in Windows XP SP 2 mode and no go.

[TheNNS]

have you downloaded updates for vista? if have a new copy, it might have a quite a few bugs.

[KaruiKage]

I have all the latest updates, I have Windows Update automatically do them, and I double checked last night to make sure.

I'm wondering if it's a problem with hardware. Maybe a power or heating issue. My temperature is fine normally though, and never goes above the warning levels, so I don't think it's that. Maybe a power plug for the video card came loose, though I thought it was supposed to warn you in that event.

Regardless, I'll check all my plugins when I get home, see if anything is loose.

[TheNNS]

if that's the case , also check the fans. does it freeze when doing other tasks?

[KaruiKage]

Just the listed ones above. Mostly going in and out of games, and the dxdiag, though also the weird one with right-clicking a shortcut.

A new one hit last night, changing my resolution to 1680x1050 in a Dungeons and Dragons Online game I was doing a trial on.

I'm more and more convinced it has something to do with the video. I'm just so skeptical because I've never received a warning about it not getting enough power or anything. It's definitely the first thing I'll check when I get home, though.

[KaruiKage]

Not a problem with the hardware it seems. Everything is plugged in correctly, fans are working fine, etc.

Is there a debugging program or anything I can run while I reproduce the lock? Something that will tell me afterwards "It's because your temp got too high" or "Your video card failed" or anything?

[Dortz]

how much juice is your power supply putting out? I had a problem like this one except with XP. kept crashing when loading HL2. Then I found out my cheap-o power supply was only giving 330V. I went and installed a 450V antec, and the problem went away entirely.

[KaruiKage]

450V. It used to work fine with XP, and most of my games ran fine for the first month or so on Vista before these problems started occuring. :(

[TheNNS]

consider reinstalling

[Spriggan]

this sounds more like a RAM, VideoCard, or HDD issue more than anything else

consider pulling your second stick of RAM (the one furthest from the CPU/Heatsink) first and reboot, then if it still happens pull the other stick and put the first one you pulled back in.
(also run memtest x86 if you are using a 32bit CPU)

do you have onboard video you can use while removing the graphics card temporarily?

Run a Drive Fitness Test to check your Hard drive even though it's probably not that. If all those things check out then I would consider reinstalling vista. Also if the HDD is bad, reinstalling Vista may not work anyway.

[TheNNS]

if it was memory, he'd be gettin BSOD's, he already said it wasn't overheating, or a power issue.

[jbennet]

its the power

i have a 500w and it ran my x1600 under XP just fine to play battlefield 2 etc.... but Vistas Aero interface means much much work and therefor much more power. if i use flip3d or anything it reboots.

[TheNNS]

you could look into getting the nvidia 1000 watts power supply.

[KaruiKage]

I was hoping to find a solution without needing new hardware. I'm on a pretty tight budget right now. Once I have money to buy things, I'll be putting them towards a new computer I wanted to build, but I was hoping to fix this one now without anything new.

I'll check the RAM though and see if that's the problem, though I don't think so. I'll try the Drive Fitness thing, but is there any other program I can run that would track the source of a crash/lock, to its best ability?

Thanks for all your help!

[jlosc]

I'm having a SIMILAR problem, but I don't have to reboot. Freeze for about 15 secs then resumes normally in IE7

I'm using a cordless lazer mouse Logitech MX (can't remember the number but it's recent). ONLY when I'm in IE7 every now and then the mouse freezes, screen freezes and I'm not able to do ANYTHING for about 15 seconds. This happens OFTEN.

I've done process of elimination. I'm running Vista Business, Avast! virus checker.

I've disabled the virus checker, it's not that.
I've disabled Defender, It's not that.
I've uninstalled the mouse driver, it's not that.
I've done spyware checks, nothing.
Disabled phishing filter and popup blocker, not that either.

I THINK it's SOMETHING in the IE7. Is there anything that anyone knows of in IE7 that is checking SOMETHING in the background that freezes the mouse up?

Any advice would be greatly appreciated :)