Windows 8.1 randomly freezes, Win 7, same hardware doesn't

I have a dual boot, two hard-drive MSI K9A2-CF based system.

One drive has Windows 7 running with all the updates and is incredibly reliable, never stops for anything.

One drive has Windows 8.1 running and randomly locks up, mouse & keyboard non-functional, desktop and open applications still visible. Only route out is to hit the rest button, on return to operation its as if nothing ever happened, including looking in the System logs.

I suspect the chipset, as its clearly somewhat dated or the GPU driver (as AMD are flaky with their legacy hardware driver support for new OS's).

I am thinking if I uninstall the ATI/AMD driver and replace the GPU with a more recent Nvidia board with known 8.1 drivers then perhaps my problem will go away.

However, before I start this process I wanted to see if anyone else had a view or understanding what could be happening. Note there is no hardware change at all between the Win 7 and Win 8 other than the disk that the boot happens from is different. Both hard drives are new and are not reporting any issues at all, on check disk, in SMART, anywhere.

Dave

Hi,
Welcome to EightForums
I have encountered the same issue when upgrading to Windows 8.1 and it turns out that I have to reconfigure my RAM settings in the BIOS for the frequent freezing to be resolved.