Computer Hanging - Have a workaround but don't know why it works

Hello,

I built my computer about 5 years ago and since it was built it has randomly hung up after some period of being on, although it seemed to only happen sometimes. By "hung up" I mean all sound cuts out, screen freezes, hard-drive activity stops, mouse and keyboard are completely unresponsive.

Over the years I did a lot of troubleshooting, switching out parts such as GPU, memory, PSU, running various diagnostics such as memtest, re-installing the OS (Windows 7 Enterprise), etc.

Earlier this year, I was doing some experimenting and realized that the computer does not seem to have this problem if I put it to sleep at least once, however briefly, after doing a cold boot. I have no idea why this works but it has been several months now and it seems to consistently prevent the hanging issue from happening.

I am really not sure exactly why this seems to resolve the issue, I am guessing it has something to do with the mobo / CPU since I never actually switched those out. Fortunately this is an easy enough work around and it has saved me a lot of frustration, although it did take years to discover.

Has anyone else experienced an issue such as this, or have any ideas for why this could resolve it?

Thanks