I've run into a really hard to troubleshoot issue: randomly (haven't found a reliable way to reproduce the issue, but happens frequently) on windows 8 pro x64, the computer freezes resulting in having to press the physical power off button to reboot.
It seems to happen the most reliably when I have some flavor of Firefox running (Cyberfox, Waterfox, Nightly (all are x64), and the 32 bit FF itself), but not always. I can sometimes run FF for a whole day w/out issue, then it just happens. It also seems to happen when I have a context-menu in any program up at the time, BUT, I've also seen it happen when I have the popup showing of a browser extension (i.e. a thumbnail zoom type of popup showing a larger version of an image I've hovered over).
Have done these so far w/no success:
• Updated Java (both x64 & x32)
• Updated all BIOS and Drivers
• Updated Adobe Flash Player (clean install)
• Updated GeForce Drivers (clean install)
• Installed all new matching RAM (and run extensive memtests)
• Uninstalled Avast and all other virus/malware software (after doing full scans first)
• Uninstalled the Image Resizer addon (has been reported to cause issues)
• Full uninstall of all Acronis products
• Run Hard Drive tests for errors both software and hardware
• Stopped the Daemon Tools service
• Tested with BIOS USB3 support enabled/disabled.
I'm perplexed at this point and out of time to figure this out, so I'm hoping some fresh minds will be able to pinpoint the issue. It's maddening! lol
@TheX : Yep, I've already run many different memory tests, including Memtest86+, it always tests healthy.
@paacharon3 : I have 16GB of G.Skil RAM, that almost never goes above about 7GB used, even with FF running and many, many tabs open, as well as Chrome open with many, many tabs open.
Yes, extensions like Facebook Zoom, I use Thumbnail Zoom Plus for FF though, and on Chrome I use Hover Zoom. I've had the PC freeze when an image was zoomed in the hover popup, but also have had it freeze when I have different context menu's up (meaning for example, if you were to right-click anywhere in just about any app and the menu pops up.)