Specs:

*Sapphire HD 6850 1 gb, *4 gb G.Skill RipJaw DDR3 @ 1600, *Intel E8400 CPU @ 3.8 ghz, *1 tb Seagate Barracuda HDD @ 7200 rpm

I have been having a strange problem lately. Recently, I upgraded my computer to accommodate my need to play Battlefield 3 and Skyrim (specs in sig). I decided to OC my processor a bit from 3.0 to 3.8 ghz in order to get some performance out of my aging dual core. I also purchased new memory (G.Skill Ripjaw) to help with the OC.

Everything has been running fine for about a week now, but yesterday when I get back to my place absolutely no game will execute properly. Battlefield 3 will start to execute but give me a blank and white window. When I go to task manager it shows that 100% cpu is used. With Deus Ex it will act as if it is opening the game but will never actually start. I go to task manager and it says 85% cpu usage.

Other executables will run but not games. I tested my Windows Experience Index and it is giving me the same scores as when I previously ran it. I tried a system restore to 3 days ago and the same thing happened. I also set the default timings on my motherboard to see if it was an OC issue but that didn't work either.

I'm lost on what to do. I think I may have to do a complete restore and see if that works. If not, then it is definitely a hardware issue. Sorry for the long post but I was just wondering if anyone else has experienced this.

The only thing that I haven't tested is if it could be a driver issue. I have the most recent version of CCC installed, but I have heard there are some issues with it. Odd thing is, I have been running games fine for about a week now with this version of CCC.

Anyone know what could be the cause? I have tried reinstalling my drivers and that didn't work. I am very lost.

What are the processes that are spiking the CPU? It is not enough to know that the CPU is at 100%. What is taking it there?

What do all the games have in common? Are you running PunkBuster or something like it?

Are the games "acquired" or purchased?

I just ended up doing a full system restore. It works fine now. Luckily I had recently done a clean install of Windows 7 Ultimate so there wasn't much information on my HDD.

I still have no clue what it was though. My event log said 1001 Application hang and 1000 application error and there were no hardware logs so I am pretty sure it was something within the application itself. I tried reinstalling both games though and that didn't work. Strange.

Both games are installed and work fine now though.