Freezes randomly: M570TU (Sager 5796/ 5797)

My M570TU freezes randomly, and I can't figure out why. By freeze I mean that everything on the screen suddenly stops, mouse wont move and nothing will respond. But the image on the screen is still there. Only way out is to press and hold the power button and restart. Then everything is back to normal. This happens maybe once a week, which makes it difficult to troubleshoot.

Here is what I've noticed/done:
-The BIOS-controlled things like turning on/off the LCD etc. still works after freeze.
-The freeze normally occurs during low load situations. Like when I'm only browsing web or listening to music.
-It has never occurred during gaming, but I have not been gaming a lot.
-The freeze is not connected to any specific program (as far as I can see).
-Fans are clean. Temps are ok.
-Just got a new free set of RAM from my vendor, and this did not solve the problem.
-If I'm playing music when the freeze occurs I get a constant (I think) frequency sound which is the last frequency that was playing before freeze occurred.
-Ran anti virus program an didn't find anything.
-Running BIOS version 0.18.
-Hardware in sig.

This is what I'm thinking at the moment:
-I'm not running with the stock nvidia graphics drivers from clevo, because they are old. Running v186.81. Could this cause a stability problem?
-Is the graphics card dying?
-I did some boot tweaking and general performance when I installed win 7. Could this have caused some instability somehow?
-At the same time I installed win7 and did the tweaking I also installed the ssd. Could this disk cause the problem?

Anyone experienced this problem before? Anyone have any suggestions to what to do next?

When I have time, I will try to update the nvidia driver to the one suggested by the nvidia site (v258.96). Then I'm going to update to the latest intel RST driver. The thing is that I just want to do one change in between each freeze, so that I might eventually figure out exactly what was wrong..

 

Because you have made so many changes recently it will be hard to pinpoint the exact problem. It would help if you could reproduce the problem. See if running a graphically intensive game or benchmark causes the machine to freeze up. If it does then you can at least test in between changes.
The video card drivers can cause stability issues. Start by downgrading the drivers to the last revision recommended by Clevo/Sager not upgrading them. This way you can be 100% sure it is not a video card driver issue. You can then test different versions of the drivers to see which one works best for you.
I can't see how boot tweaking could cause the machine to freeze up.
Though the SSD could be the cause I would test that last.

 

I also have it.

I have reasons to believe it's because of a defective USB port. It seems to only appear when I am using my mouse in a specific USB port, the one next to the PCI Express slot. But unfortunately I do not have enough evidence to be 100% sure.

 

Strange, I have an M57RU that has an issue with the USB port next to the expresscard slot causing the system to freeze. But it only freezes at the time when I plug my peripheral in. Once it's in, if it didn't freeze, I can keep using it without issues. I just avoid the port altogether.

 

Interesting thought. When you mention it, I've had a feeling there was something strange with a usb port earlier, but I can't say anything specific. I'll keep it in mind in case this happens again. I usually connect my mouse to the port underneath the e-sata port, though.

 

I came across this post, and I think there might be something to it. I'll put it on my checklist.