Hi, My computer running Windows 7 has suddenly started freezing. No new software, drivers or hardware have been installed. Once frozen the only thing I can do is power off and restart. However on restarting there are a series of blue lines running vertically down the screen and the computer doesn't go any further than the windows logo. If restarted again it says that windows needs to be repaired using the windows disc. I tried this but it couldn't be fixed. I restored an image I had made and it was back to normal. This has now happened 3 times and I want to try to find out what is causing this to happen. Is it hardware related, graphics card or software related? I don't have a spare graphics card to try. Thanks for any advice Specs CPU - i5 Ivy bridge Graphics card- gforce 8600gt Motherboard- gigabyte- Z77-D3H Boot drive - Crucial- mx200 ssd
It seems like a temperature crash, could you monitor th temps pf CPU and GPU until the crash happens??
How long roughly does it take for the machine to freeze? It does sound a lot like a graphics card issue. When a CPU overheats and the system hangs, you can get the machine to boot normally until it overheats and crashes again. Bars, block-coloured screens and garbled lettering during POST, after a reboot all point toward a graphics hardware failure rather than software. Windows complaining about driver errors, freezing or rebooting has more to do with the hardware failing to communicate properly.
You say you don't have a spare graphics card to try, but that mobo seems to support integrated graphics. You could try using that to narrow the problem down?
