Everything feels like bad RAM, but I did a memcheck86+ or whatever the boot option in Grub says and let it run over night for 6 passes and it found 0 errors. In Windows it actually hard freezes as in no response from mouse or anything. It happens often when I'm loading a game, but also when I'm not doing anything I'll try to move the mouse and find its stuck. Sometimes it'll go for a couple days without freezing, but it does it. Also, sometime weird stuff starts happening in programs like in Photoshop I won't be able to save anything. Restarting the app works.

In linux I don't get freezes but random crashes of programs that certainly should be stable. A week or so ago one KDE app crashed and as I was trying to fill out the bug report, Kmail crashed!

because of the whole freeze thing in Windows I think its a hardware issue, but since the RAM checked out, how can I go about diagnosing it?

Just to double check I would download latest Memtest86+ ISO and run again.

Then, I would download from the HD manufacturers website, their diagnostic utility for their drives. Run that and let it check your hard disk.

This issue really sounds like RAM to me, so just run the latest MemTest86+ again...

Scott

On boot up if mem self check comes up probably ok.
I see them rarely fail. Mem test is a good program.
Download free program for CPU check.
Download free software to check hard drive.
How long have you had your computer? Couple of years?
Unplug ,wait a while for discharge, take off cover and safely (look) around too see if it has collected alot of dust especially around CPU fan and on motherboard.Get a blower and blow it out.
Check power supply too.
Make sure all fans are spinning and unobstructed.

Hope this helps,
DropKey