Iron is the only common factor when computer crashes

[jeffshead]

Guys/Gals,

I am at my wit's end. I have tried everything I can think of to find the cause of my computer crashing. The only thing I see that each crash has in common is that Iron is open. This has been happening for several months.

The computer will freeze and a hard reset is required. If video or sound was playing, I get a repetitive buzzing sound. Nothing works but a hard reset. The freeze occurs at random. Sometimes when I open Iron. Sometimes Iron can be open for an hour before the computer freezes. Nothing in the event viewer and no dump file is created. I have tried different RAM, on-board NIC, on-board sound, on-board video. I have also disabled (in the BIOS) and uninstalled all drivers for those on-board items and replaced them, one-by-one with add-on cards. I have tried every version of drivers and the vanilla Microsoft drivers for everything.

I thought maybe it's an issue with the Intel chipset/drivers or maybe a motherboard or CPU issue so I bought a different brand and model PC and did a fresh install of win7... same results!!!

The original PC is an HP 8200 Elite with the Intel Q67 chipset. My current computer is a Dell Optiplex 9010 with the Intel Q77 chipset.

The crashes are random and I cannot trigger them. I have also done the following:
- Tried different HDD's and SSD's
- Changed Iron settings to use and not use hardware acceleration
- A few clean Win7 installs
- A couple of in-place Win7 repair/upgrade installs
- Memtest86 all RAM
- Verified no overheating

How on earth do I troubleshoot this since the freeze occurs before a dump file and event viewer entries are created?

[SRWare]

What about the GPU/drivers? Are they up to date?

https://www.techadvisor.co.uk/how-to/in ... e-3605455/
Could you try to disable hardware acceleration?

[jeffshead]

Thanks for asking.

Tried latest and other versions of drivers including Microsoft's.

Tried with and without HW acceleration. Still crashes.

[jeffshead]

My PC was crashing daily. It's been a week since I've used the SRWare browser... ZERO crashes.

I've been using Firefox with the same extensions I used in SRWare without issue, so far.

[jeffshead]

Another week has past since I stopped using SRWare and zero crashes I didn't even uninstall it -- Just stopped using it. It has been my "go to" daily browser for a couple of years

I'm not posting this to bash SRWare but using SRWAre is definitely the cause of the crashes. Same PC, fresh OS installs, different drivers, different HW, different PC's, etc. The only thing that stopped the crashes was discontinuing the use of SRWare.

[Alphonse68]

Hello jeffshead.

Interesting read of all your experiences... thank you... after having tried about half of what you have, you have given me the best answer to the same problem I've had for some time now: those pesty random freezes requiring hard resets. I have been using Iron for some years now, but have been experiencing freezes for a couple of years now, except that mine are about once every couple to a few of days on a laptop that stays on ALL day, and often times all night. At least I definitely know now it is not my PC. I don't want to stop using Iron, so I guess I will just close it unless I'm going to do some heavy surfing. On the positive side, the freezing has forced me to get used to saving my work before I put the PC to sleep and even if I'm stepping away for a moment or two.

Cheers