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Here is a (terrible) photo (angled looking down) of the stripes: Notice the purplish vertical stripes about every 1/10 of the time Notice the purplish vertical stripes that appear evenly about 1/10 of the time.

My computer is randomly freezing up and showing lines across the whole screen, and freezing any audio (slightly after the screen freezes). The frozen audio means playing that last "frame" of sound forever.

It's happened to me four times, now, each time when I was pushing the 'f', 'a', 'b', and tab keys, and right and left-clicking a lot, when doing work in Blender 2.62.

It happened twice a few weeks ago when I was doing the repetitive task of pushing f, a, b, tab, and right-clicking in Blender. After the second crash I stopped doing the Blender work. I also think my computer itself started making a slightly different noise when it froze.

A few days ago I did a little bit more of the Blender f, a, b, tab, right-and-left-click work (doing some basic painstaking modeling), and there was no problem.

Then today, I decided to do some more of this modeling work, after thinking it was a one-time problem. I was surprised to see my screen completely replaced by the vertical blackish stripes across 100% of the screen. I took a video of it, then held down the power button for 5 seconds to kill the computer and booted it up again, and went back to more modeling. A few minutes later, it happened again.

These two times today I happened to be playing music, and I got some good results from it. It continued playing the music for about a second or less after the screen turned to dark stripes. Then it froze on the last bit (frame?) of sound it was playing, and continued playing that sound forever (like when a game freezes and the last tone keeps blurring out forever). The second time it happened today, it ended on a different sound and a different pitch came out. Pushing the mute button on the keyboard does not do anything to stop the constant sound. I went straight to posting here instead of trying Blender again, so it hasn't crashed yet.

I build my own computer, and here are its specs:
- Operating System - Windows 7 Professional 64 Bit
- Motherboard - Asus P8P67 Deluxe
- CPU - Intel i7-2600K
- GPU - Gigabyte ATi Radeon HD 6950 (newish but not newest driver)
- RAM - 16 GB of G.SKILL Ripjaws X Series
No sound card, just using the motherboard's default audio output.

The whole system is well cooled, and there is no way it's overheating from doing almost nothing with a very basic 3D mesh on screen. I've played graphic-intense games for hours, and run distributed computing on my graphics card overnight a lot. It's also a pretty cold day here.

I'm not sure if this is a coincidence with Blender or not, but the only times it's ever happened was while working in Blender. I've never seen software freeze up an entire computer, so that's why I'm posting here and not on the Blender forum (though I Googled it and couldn't find anyone using Blender with the same problem).

It couldn't be my monitor. I don't think it could be my graphics card, either, since the audio wouldn't freeze if it were just video output that died. Could it be my motherboard?

I would greatly appreciate help or tips to troubleshoot it. I know computers well, but I do not know what I should do here. Thank you so much!

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2 Answers

I would begin by checking RAM, power supply, and if there are any bulging capacitors on the video card or on the motherboard. Though the video card seems an unlikely cause, because (as you say) you have no problems playing games.

Run Memtest, alternatively boot from an Ubuntu live-CD and try the Linux version of Blender to see if the same behaviour happens.

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Thanks for the tip. About booting from Blender in Ubuntu, it would be hard to test, since I can't seem to see any set "trigger" that causes it. It just happens after a little while of doing the repetitive f, b, a, and mouse clicking, so it's possible that it may never happen due to that. I will make sure to try it soon, though (and your other tips). –  Keavon Apr 3 '12 at 2:17
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Same problem but with orange stripes. Graphic card Ati Radeon HD 6880.

Had problem in the beginning when i bought it. It was crashing couple of time on monthly basis. Now i cant do anything, reboot, crash, rebot, crash. My opinion its the graphic card problem, yust becouse when i changed it the problem started. I had Ati Radeon HD 5770 and there was no problem.

I took the card in store on service i hope its problem in it, now im waiting for replacement.

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Was this when using Blender? Also, this is not a forum. Please post your responses that are not answers as a comment. –  Keavon May 3 '12 at 2:54
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