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My computer has this problem where it will randomly freeze and can only be turned off by a hard power off (i.e. I have to flip the power supply switch, the power button won't respond).

The power button works normally otherwise, but when this freeze happens, the power button doesn't respond, in addition to the keyboard, mouse, etc. not being responsive either. The fan also goes full tilt, but there is no increase in temperature of the CPU, and the amount of power being used also does not increase.

It seems to be related to sleep/fresh booting from being off, but again it seems to happen somewhat randomly as it doesn't always freeze after sleeping/being off, only sometimes and after a few minutes after waking up/being turned on.

I've changed the RAM voltage to the proper settings and have gotten it to freeze less frequently (it used to always freeze at boot).

I also reformatted a while ago, but the problem existed before and after the reformat.

SPECS:

  • EVGA P55 Le Motherboard
  • Intel Core i5 750
  • OCZ DDR3 RAM

Things to know:

  • I used to dual boot with Windows 7 and Ubuntu, and it froze on both OSs. I am currently only running Windows 7 and no longer dual booting.
  • Switching between AHCI, RAID, and IDE has made no difference.
  • I've changed C3 and C6 sleep settings. (I've tried a bunch of configs, and currently, C6 is disabled).
  • I've turned off hybrid sleep.
  • The hard disk is set to 'Turn off: Never'. (This is mostly because I thought the problem was related to sleep since the problem usually occurs after waking up from sleep, but this is not always the case).
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    How long have you held the power button in? Does it not respond even if the power button is held down for 10 seconds? Aug 27, 2012 at 3:09
  • Even if I hold it down for 10 seconds, or a minute, etc., it doesn't do anything.
    – lndndark
    Aug 27, 2012 at 7:11
  • Short answer is that the computer has gone bonkers. It requires software to respond to the power button and the software is hosed. Some computers have hardware behind the power button to force power off if you hold the button in for 5-10 seconds, but yours has a separate switch instead. Dec 9, 2012 at 4:28

1 Answer 1

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Especially given the behavior of the power button, I would implicate the motherboard. As someone also using a P55 LE, and having recently gone through freezing/hanging problems of my own, I would bet that these freezes would be resolved by BIOS A74.

Does your system by any chance also include at least one WD VelociRaptor hard drive, or some other 10,000+ RPM drive? I suspect that BIOS A29-A59 suffer some misunderstandings with these drives, as I was noticing during my freezes that my two WD drives would suddenly sit at 100% active time while my two 7,200 RPM Seagate hard drives would remain normal.

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