Sounds like something to do with your video card, try running a cpu-intensive program with no graphics. If it only fails with graphics, update video drivers, and then test a new GPU if it persists and you have that option.

yeah my comp is still fine now, i guess my gpu is dying time to upgrade this pos card

links? suggestions anyone? i'll probably just pick it up at micro center unless its cheaper on newegg/amazon etc

might go with this one, papa fog sent it

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814121633

go for 2gb instead of just one

aite what about this one?

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814121642

if ur going to spend $135 get a 7850 (i'm pretty sure they're that cheap now could be wrong)

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814161406

or for a more trusted brand

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814202004

nvm 2nd link is 1gb i'll keep searching

i duno i'm hearing it might just be a bad overclock, might need to reset to default settings. im gonna try that now

if that doesn't work maybe its my psu, sometimes my comp will freeze even if im not running something graphic intensive but it seems to happen more than anything with games so maybe i should just upgrade the gpu

if it were the psu i'm p sure the computer would just die and there would be a high pitched noise & nasty smell.

I'm willing to bet it's your gpu or ram if this just recently happened spontaneously. how long have you had your computer

wait defy don't post please you have 1337 total posts. edit ur posts only from now on k

ok so my comp has been running fine, this problem is really random

for hours the moment i would load tf2 my comp would freeze instantly, now im running the game and my comp isn't freezing which is very odd

so would anyone say its safe to rule out my gpu, possibly ram or psu? when my comp is idle on my desktop or when im running basic apps im at 80-110w but when im playing tf2 easily 200

Try running off of integrated graphics? Test RAM one stick at a time as well.

Is it always just freezing, or does it ever give you a blue screen (and save memory dump somewhere)? Without that its hard to tell what actually failed. But ram testing/gpu stress test/etc couldn't hurt

Run Prime95 for 30 minutes or so. If you don't blue screen/crash, run it overnight and see if it's still running in the morning. If it is, You can most likely rule out your CPU and RAM. That leaves your GPU and HDD as your most likely culprits with cable issues being less likely.

I would try a reformat before you go buying things because your troubleshoot isn't 100%

The last few nvidia drivers have been causing computers to lock up. The latest WHQL version just recently came out. Try that, or downgrade to even older WHQL drivers. You didn't specify what hardware you had, so this may not be related to you at all.

Also if you do have an older Nvidia card, like an 8800 series, they are known to stop working.

here are my specs, sorry i should of put this in the OP

i7 860 @ 2.80ghz
8gb gskill ram
Windows 7 Pro - 64 bit
geforce 9500 gt - driver version 327.23 - i know this is terrible i had no intentions of getting a high end graphics card when i built this comp over 3 years ago

i'm gonna try this

http://www.memtest86.com/

and i already have prime95 installed as well so ill run that in a few

im gonna try going back to old drivers (links to good ones?) for my graphics card

i'll run the tests as well, if the problems persist i'll just reformat

http://www.geforce.com/drivers/results/59641

Those shouldn't have the problem. The 326 drivers I tried caused my PC to lock up randomly. Haven't tried 327.23, but at this point I'd rather avoid them.

im running Prime95 oh god what does any of these mean im beyond lost lol

will report back with the results that are continuing to melt my brain

If you reverted to stock settings and are no longer having any issues, it was probably your overclock. Processors and other components can degrade over time at various rates, so it's possible your overclock that used to be stable became borderline unstable after some time, or something could be dying.

Honestly, running a series of different games/benchmarks will be better for stability testing than running Prime95 or IntelBurnTest/LinX/etc. as a processor may be completely stable for that routine yet fall on its face and cause a BSOD very quickly in certain games. Unfortunately, your GPU is a poor match for your CPU (maybe not so much for TF2, as it loves good CPUs but can get by with lower end GPUs) but YMMV (your mileage may vary).

Do you remember what you had it overclocked to originally? I've only owned one first-gen i7 (870) and only got ~3.7GHz out of it with HT enabled, and it took >1.35v to get it stable.

I believe this is only true for GPU-based stress tests were tools like furmark don't load the GPU well/properly (supposedly damaging it as well) versus just using a heavy benchmark like Heaven bench.

i ran prime 95 for about an hour and didn't have any problems, ill run it all night and see what happens

when i had my i7 overclocked it was at 3.2ghz, and it remained that way since i got my comp so about 3+ years and i only started running into problems recently

i've been on my desktop for a while now but i know the moment i load up tf2 my comp is gonna freeze

so far i did prime95, went back to old drivers for my card