My system freezes completely at seemingly random times- the only new thing is a wireless card. I don't imagine heat is the problem, as I can game without a problem...and the last two lockups have been from the desktop.

Driver issue with the wireless card? I'll try new drivers..I'm using the ones from the CD now.

I could use an excuse to upgrade, but I really don't need to spend the money

I have the same problem, and have for months on a new machine.
Can't be heat, it never goes above 70'c on anything, can't be because it's being pushed too far, because it happens at random.
As for your thing, I never install the drivers from the cd because they always end up being horribly outdated.

Well, with no internet, I couldn't really just download the new ones. I'll update them sometime today.

Oh right, silly me.

My BIOS sets off alarms long before the CPU reaches 70C. Only your GPU has any business running that hot.

The GPU goes around 70 tops, and the CPU has never gone above 55'c.
But this is Jlees thread.

JLee: Obvious test would be to remove the wireless drivers and see if that fixes it.

Interesting story, I once had a modem that would hard lock my system any time the land line was called.

It seems to be random, though -- and I don't want to go without internet for a few days to test it. Worst case, I will give that a shot...going to try new drivers first. That's the only thing I could think of that would have caused anything to change.

It is probably the wireless card im afraid. Over the summer I bought one and it didn't play nice with windows. It will freeze as soon as it connects to the internet, or in an hour's time. You should try to disable your wireless card in your device manager. If the freezing stops than its a drivers issue, and there isn't much you can do.

I agree. Sometimes different components don't play well with others.

I once had a situation where installing a Soundblaster sound card caused my wireless card to stop working completely. There doesn't seem to be any logical coorelation between the two pieces of hardware, and yet when the sound card was disabled, the wifi card worked fine. When the sound card was enabled, the wifi card wouldn't work. This is, of course an entirely different issue than what you're having, but I share as an example of how seemingly unrelated components can clash to cause weird things to happen.

Maybe try moving the wireless card to a different pci/pci-e slot? Also might want to re-seat and check connections to anything you might have bumped while installing it.

Thanks all. I'll try new drivers, and if that doesn't work, a different slot.

I usually run AMD FUSION when I'm playing recent games, because my old PoS AMD x2 4800+ needs all the help it can get. I used to get hard lockups because I ran it on Max Performance, which devours the computer's power supply until it couldn't supply enough, at which point the system locks up.

So could your computer be demanding too much power?

Jep that's not good for your computer <_<

Nope, I'm on a 720w Enermax, with a system that ran fine on a 500w Antec. It's also locking under essentially no load..gaming has been fine so far.

Yea I know, I run it on a lower setting now. I dont really care, though, I'll squeeze every last drop from this old computer. When it blows up, I'll be done.

I am downloading the Windows 7 drivers at 734 bytes per second.

Ugh.

Finally got 'em. No lockups since.

woo!