PC Freezing Issues

[Xenn]

Hey GTP, was wondering if anyone here could help me figure out what could be causing this very weird issue.

So to explain what's going on...

Basically, my PC is crashing whenever there's any medium to heavy activity on it. Part of me think it's a hard drive issue or an OS issue, but i'm not entirely certain.

I've tried removing the video drivers as I hear that can cause these freezes sometimes, but it didn't help here.

My setup is using the SSD drive (Samsung 840 Evo 120GB) for important files, like the OS and drivers, including Firefox. My other hard drive (Western Digital Green 2TB) holds all the other files like Steam and the like.

A list of things that typically happens:

1. Downloading games from Steam is one sure way to freeze the OS quickly. Only way out of it is to hold the power button and turn it off.
   
2. Youtube can make it freeze aswell, but i've had one occasion where putting the PC to sleep mode can escape it.
3. Playing games seems to be fine, aslong as nothing downloads in the background.
4. Copying and pasting files doesn't freeze either.

Samsung Magician reports the SSD condition to be Good right now as well.

Any ideas? Thanks!

 

[optiongamers]

First I would check to see how much memory the computer is using as it might be a RAM problem. I would also reinstall the OS there might be problems with the bios.

 

[DQuaN]

Interestingly I had exactly the same issue and I also have a Samsung SSD. It seemed to be high internet traffic that caused it. Downloading via FireFox or uTorrent or watching Youtube. Local network traffic was not an issue.

I'm afraid to say that in the end, I reformatted and reinstalled but since then I have had no problems.

 

[Xenn]

So it seemed the Atheros drivers Windows Update installed was causing internet traffic to crash my PC.

Thanks for that post DQuaN, after checking optiongamers' suggestion and finding memory was fine and intact, I decided to look into anything network related.

I noticed Windows Update had installed an Atheros driver. So I did a system restore back a few days before it was installed and now all seems to be fine. I'll keep an eye on it.

Thanks all!