I agree with Jeff Atwood his post, and we should only allow very specific cases that have rich detail and went through all the questions relevant to his problem.
One word of caution: creating the canonical "perfect" mega-answer is very very hard. So don't even entertain the idea that you can create a single question and answer that covers all scenarios.
While a mega-answer is very hard, it's always nice to have a nice overview or approach to follow.
A specific scenario isn't always answered with a specific answer, for a video game the video card or it's driver is more likely to be the problem but it could also be the hard drive, system memory, ...
My answer does indeed not apply to any freeze case; as it might be a part of Firefox freezing, a freeze during the boot phase, and so on. But it does apply to a lot of soft and hard freeze in a general way when you are in the desktop phase...
But as we're discussing in the chat right now, as @IvoFilpse stated it is probably handy to split of parts of those resources into their own answers and create more detailed tutorials that can be linked to.
Some resources for the FAQ question(s) and answer(s):
Dumping the freeze:
Hard Freeze: CrashOnCtrlScroll, to initiate a manual crash dump.
Soft Freeze: ProcDump (former ADPlus), to initiate a dump of a hanging process.
Troubleshooting the dumps:
Make sure that automatic restarts are disabled and the memory dump settings are right.
WhoCrashed, to check the dump to see if something obvious is hanging the system.
Debugging Tools for Windows, for in-depth analysis of the dump.
Troubleshooting the computer:
Check the event logs, just in case they caught something...
Make sure your BIOS is up to date, the BIOS settings are right and no overclocking is applied.
Disconnect any hardware that you don't need, to rule it out.
Check the temperatures, clean the fans. Check the connections, cables and transistors.
Check for incorrect motherboard voltages in the BIOS, correct them there.
Try to update all the drivers, remove unnecessary boot entries and software.
Other reasons:
- Insufficient/problematic PSU, replace it by a more powerful one.
- Corruption or faulty system drivers beyond a level that you could fix, a reinstall is required.
- Faulty hardware, try to replace individual components with spare parts to see if it has an effect.
- Still have issues? You're asking too much of your system, give it a rest and upgrade... :-)
