Freezing fixed... I HOPE!
First, my thanks to Sasmira for the 0804 link and that suggestion. It may have solved my problem.
First off, no issue with the 0804 flash - worked just fine, no motherboard damage. Used Ezflash (from 0703) to do it.
My system specs:
Striker II Extreme (obviously)
Core 2 Quad Q6600 (G0)
OCZ OCZ3P1600EB4GK (2x2GB, DDR3 12800)
2x BFG 8800 GTX OC2 (in SLI mode)
WD Velociraptor 300GB
OCZ EliteXStream 1000W power supply
SoundBlaster X-Fi XtremeGamer Fataility Pro
Swiftech H20-220 Apex ULTRA+ Liquid Cooling Kit
Vista x64 and x86
Firstly, I've been running this machine for months now and it worked fine. Something happened which screwed it up... maybe a BIOS flash, maybe a driver or a combination of drivers. I don' know - I'm constantly messing with it. Then, one day (about a week ago?) the problems started. I had problems similar to others here... the computer would boot and work just fine for some period of time (sometimes 15 minutes, sometimes a day), then just freeze. Somtimes while I was on a web site, sometimes just sitting idle. No BSOD, no error, just a freeze. That was not the only thing... I'd get other random errors infrequently, IRQL_NOT_LESS_OR_EQUAL, KERNEL_INPAGE_ERROR, stuff like that. Here's what I attempted:
1. Thinking my issue was overclock related, I set everything to default. Still kept freezing.
2. I was running 0704 at that time, so I backed down to 0703. No difference.
3. Updated my platform, video and SoundBlaster drivers. No improvement.
4. I have a dual-boot environment set up with the 32bit version of Vista on another HD, so I tried that, to eliminate both Windows itself and the possibility of my boot HD failing. Froze within 10 minutes.
5. I ran memtest86 v3.4, left that on overnight.... it ran its tests many times (don't recall how many) and I found it locked up in the morning... so, that would seem to eliminate both the memory and Windows itself as a cause (running Vista 64). I didn't have any other DDR3 sticks to try, so that was out.. I was going to try a single stick but memtest seemed to indicate there was not need as the memory tested ok.
6. I pulled a multimeter to see if by chance my power supply was flaky but both the 12v and 5v lines were solid... 12.1v and just a little under 5v.
Finally I ran across the post in this forum from Sasmira, so decided to try the 0804 bios. No lockups since then. It's been almost 2 days which is a record given recent history. I'll give it another 2 days to make sure it's totally stable at stock before I label this as fixed, but looking good so far.
Back to overclocking after that! Before these problems, I only managed to get a stable 3.2 out of this chip and I KNOW it can do better (I have another Q6600 G0 stable at 3.5 on a Maximus Formula SE board).
Hope this helps someone out there..