Why does my computer freeze and make a terrible buzzing noise every once in a while?

Question

Twice now my computer has frozen, accompanied by a terrible, angry, buzzing/beeping noise through the speakers. It is my first build, and as such I'm not really educated enough to even make a guess as to what is causing it. It doesn't respond to any keyboard or mouse input and I end up needing to reset it. Here's what I've noticed:

1. It has only happens when I am online
2. It has only happens when a flash applet is running (once on chesscube.com, once on piq.codeus.net)

I know that might not mean anything, considering it's only happened twice, but I've put in like 20 hours on Steam and maybe 3 hours browsing online, so these crashes do seem connected with it. I've checked the temps and voltages after rebooting, and nothing seemed out of the ordinary. Here's my build:

• intel i7 2600k
• p8p67 deluxe mobo
• gtx 570 superclocked
• ripjaw RAM
• 800W power supply
• CM 690 case
• Zahlman cpu fan
• hard drive, disk drive etc.

All my drivers are up to date.

For some reason, I don't know why, I suspect my graphics card. Does anybody have any insight as to what might be causing this?

EDIT: also it has only happened when I've not been using head phones, as I only use my monitor speakers when not gaming. Idk if that's important, but there it is.

Solution 1

If it's the regular types of pc beep patterns, you can reference the motherboard manual to tell what problem it is trying to communicate. But i suspect that is not the case.

What you describe almost certainly translates into those indecipherable buzzing sounds that suggest the state when the audio hardware is getting rubbish input signals - due to the hardware crash - and thus producing rubbish noises. This does not necessarily suggest the audio hardware to be the faulty component; it can be any combination of components, unfortunately.

In my historical case, it was simply a bad combo of processor + motherboard. Not video card, not audio card, not RAM. I was only able to finally diagnose this with a second computer to swap parts individually. Using the processor on another motherboard, and the motherboard with another processor, worked perfectly stable.

You'd have to slowly troubleshoot a component at a time.

Solution 2

This problem will occur if the the RAM or harddisk is not connected properly.

If you can, I suggest you to open the computer and re-insert the RAM and connect the cables to Hard disk properly.

For assistance you can check videos in youtube.com. Once they are connect every thing will work fine. Also when you remove the RAM from the slots, there should be a lot of dust, so first clean it up and then re-insert!

Solution 3

You should also update your version of Flash Player. If you have the latest, try downgrading to a slightly older version.

I helped a friend a few months ago who had his desktop connected via HDMI to his TV. He could play intense games all day, watch blu-rays, or anything else graphics intensive, but once he started using flash video or games, the system would hang and the speakers would emanate a horrible buzzing sound.

After lots of troubleshooting, we found out his GPU was able to be exchanged under a 3 year manufacturer warranty. Swapped out cards and the issue went away.

Solution 4

Personally, I would take a different approach, and assume that it's deliberate. A lot of motherboards have alarms for different failure types.

Check to see what alerts it creates.

Given the propensity for flash to overwork a system, I would assume you're overheating it. I know you checked the temps are reboot, but temps come down very very fast.

See what diagnostics your motherboard has.

Also, you can run something like Prime95 to stress it and see if you can reproduce it.

Solution 5

Perform a Windows Update and have it search for all software. Here's a HTG link that describes this:

http://www.howtogeek.com/howto/23434/beginner-geek-make-windows-7-update-find-updates-for-more-than-just-the-os/

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Comments

[Admin]

the buzzing sound is probably from whatever audio you were listening to ATM and being repeated a billion times a second.

[Admin]

What OS are you using?

[Admin]

Can you try the procedure I left here and report back to us?

[Admin]

That happened to my computer, installed windows vista and it worked fine. I found out that the problem is caused every time I updated windows 7. Hope this can help.

[Arthur Skirvin]

Ok, that might explain the ugly buzzing, but unless I gravely misunderstand how computers work I don't think faulty speaker wires would cause a full system freeze, which is the main problem. When I'm not using headphones, I'm just using the integrated speakers on my display, which is connected to my graphics card through an HDMI cable. Hence my suspicion about it being my gpu....anyway, thanks for the response!

[slhck]

Welcome to Super User! It would be nice to include the essential parts of the answer here, and provide the link only for future reference.