My Windows 7 PC has been subject to random freezes, once every couple of days, where the entire PC freezes to the extent that a reboot is necessary. Since most of my phone calls are VOIP, when my PC freezes it cuts me off, which isn’t great for business or my peace of mind. So I set about trying to find the cause.
One potential cause of these sorts of crashes is old drivers. So I updated the sound card drivers, the mouse driver, the video card driver, and most others I could find. Net effect on freezes: zero.
Some web site suggested old versions of Java might be a problem. I uninstalled Java completely, and reinstalled the latest. Net effect: zero, except for mucking up my installation of Eclipse and costing me time playing around with environment settings to get the right combination of Java versions set up again.
The famous (infamous?) Windows chkdsk program found no errors.
Checking whether any important kernel files had been corrupted, using system32/sfc.exe, showed no problems.
Microsoft has a Memory Diagnostic Tool, worth a try. Result: no apparent memory issues.
At this stage I was running out of good ideas, so I tried something more random and moved the USB cables for the mouse and keyboard to different USB slots on the back of the PC. I did this two weeks ago, and the system hasn’t frozen since. Coincidence? Maybe moving to a different slot made Windows reinstall the USB drivers?