Windows 7 freezes

[tricky]

That's the fella, but as you can see, there are no specific chipset drivers for it with Windows 7 (32bit or 64bit).

The Express Gate stuff isn't really an issue as this is just relating to quick booting to get the internet up and running etc.

 

[Veedaz]

I think if i was in your position i would drop ASUS a line, it may help > http://support.asus.com/

 

[Ripose]

There is an AMD download for Win 7 64 bit here.

And for 32 bit here.

 

[tricky]

Got those drivers the other night. No difference.
This is ridiculous.

 

[tricky]

Tried a number of things last night.

1) Uninstalled and removed Soundblaster card: no difference
2) Removed 2 sticks of RAM: no difference
3) Re-arranged RAM sticks: no difference
4) Removed one of my tuners: no difference
5) Stopped and disabled wmpntwk.exe: no difference
6) Dropped resolution to 720p: no difference
7) Disabled network (by removing USB wireless dongle): no difference

So I am back where I started, apart from now I have the Cinergy 2400i dual tuner in there and a Hauppage Nova T 500 tuner. I am also back up to 4GB RAM.

Any other ideas???? This is ludicrous.

 

[tricky]

I recorded a an instance of on of my freezes this monring and am currently trying to upload it to youtube. Not great quality, but hopefully someone may see something familiar. I'd like to know if I am getting the same type of freeze as everyone else.

[ame="[MEDIA=youtube]1CQLQqDl48U[/MEDIA]"]YouTube- Windows 7 32 bit freezing[/ame]

 

[Veedaz]

Hi tricky

I suppose you may have already done this but did or does your system event logs show any indication to your problem ?

 

[Santron8653656]

Freezes

Tricky,

I have seen that type of freeze before when the hard drive is failing. Try running the error checking program on the drive that windows is loaded on.

 

[Ripose]

I noticed AVG in your video.

I would highly suggest switching to Microsoft Security Essentials for a problem free, anti-virus solution.

 

[clifford_cooley]

I thought I would post the only time I have experienced freezing issues was with an active scanner.

First was AVG Free. I ran it two days before I removed it from screwing my OS up. Secondly I have now disabled a-squared Anti-Malware from actively scanning because it was causing my browser to freeze. I have been fighting it all day clicking on links trying to get them to load. Finally thought about killing the scanner and instantly my page loaded.

 

[Veedaz]

Clifford wrote

I have now disabled a-squared Anti-Malware from actively scanning because it was causing my browser to freeze

odd my wife has just started using a-squared (full version free for one year) on my Rock gaming laptop that has Windows 7 Pro installed ....no problems as yet, she is using Firefox.

 

[Patu]

Same problem here, too
I'm using 7 home premium, and it just freezes about 2 hours after start...
But luckily not every day...

 

[clifford_cooley]

I will continue to use "a-squared Anti-Malware" on my PC but if I continue to have problems that are easily corrected by disabling the scanner. I will remove the software.

I have been happily using a-squared for a few months now so I won't give up on it so easily. Who knows there may have been a good reason for it not loading the pages.

 

[tricky]

Right, are you ready for this? I am tempting fate by even saying this, but my problems now are SOLVED!!!! Here's what happened:-

I can't count the number of things I have tried, but last night, I finally gave up and decided to format and install Vista 32bit instead. Rebooted with the Vista CD in and went through the installation process. Didn't appear to be any problems until it was just about to login for the first time, and the screen just froze with the desktop wallpaper. No icons, no taskbar, no clock...JUST the wallpaper.

I couldn't believe it. Never had problems like this with Vista. So, I had to do a hard reset and try again. Same deal. It just froze with the wallpaper. No disk activity. Nothing.

I then started to think about what had fundamentally changed since trying to upgrade to Windows 7 from Vista. The significant thing was a new hard disk: a 1TB Western Digital WD10EADS Caviar Green model freshly purchased. I hadn't had any issues with it: in fact, I'd even had Windows 7 run a chkdsk on it at one point and it found no problems. But, I decided to disconnect it and instead use one of my original 500GB drives (Samsung Spinpoint) as the boot drive instead. In fact, for simplicity, I disconnected all my hard disks bar this one and went through the Windows 7 installation process (again) to this drive, formatting along the way.

The install seemed to go quicker (but that could have just been in my head). Everything seems to be working just fine. I have downloaded all updates, and installed all drivers and everything is working like clockwork. Tried to force a crash by going in Media Centre, starting a program, stopping it, minimizing it, opening internet explorer etc etc but it seems rock solid.

I then brought my second 500GB Samsung Spinpoint back online by reconnecting it to the motherboard and importing the disk using Win7 Disk Management. This disk has all my photos, music, recorded TV etc on it. It is still working perfectly!

I haven't tried to reconnect the 1TB drive yet: I will give it a few days and see how things go.

I am not 100% about partitions and things like that, but I recall in my first attempts with Windows 7 that the 1TB (boot) disk was set to a primary partition. One of my 500GB drives was also set to a primary partition. The other 500GB drive was set to a Dynamic disk. These are three physical drives. I don't know if having 2 primary partitions in there was the problem, or just that Windows 7 doesn't like the model of WD drive that I was using. Now, my boot disk is a primary partition, and the second disk is still set to a Dynamic disk. I don't know whay pone of them is Dynamic, but I know that if I tryu to change it to a 'basic' disk in Windows 7 Disk Management, it tells me that all data would be lost. So I have just left it as it is.

I will try re-connecting the 1TB disk at some point soon as I really could do with the extra storage space.

 

[Veedaz]

Hi tricky

Yes you can have more then one primary partition within a computer as in multi boot, more on partitions > Here

 

[Santron8653656]

Tricky,

It’s odd the windows error checker did not error out, but I guess if you had some marginal sectors it might pass the sector instead of error out. What I have found with this is the activity will appear to be negligible but the computer does not give up trying to read that sector. Something like spinrite would probably find the error but on a 1 TB it may take forever.

On another note I fixed my lockup. I tried all the previous methods on the board and they did not work. What I found is my computer was locking up only when there was no activity. I thought for sure the performance power option would fix it. I have an older SB card that was probably locking up upon reawake; I even went into the advanced options and turned everything off. The only thing left on was video blanking. I finally changed that from the default 15 minutes to 1 minute to see if that was the problem. When I did this the lockup stopped. The blanking worked fine it was like the other settings did not kick in until I changed that setting.

 

[NickyMartin]

Hi guys, I have now read this whole thread, and written down stuff I am going to try when I get home.

Freezes randomly after 10mis to 40mins, and all I can do is Power off with power button.

Happened twice when looking at youtube. Twice when in a game. few times when just typing in windows.

Reinstalled Chipset driver, Installed older version of Nvidia GFX driver. Did CHKDSK /F. (these things didn't help)

Did see this happening after I installed the windows updates. Did a system restore and disabled windows update, will test more when I get home and get back to you all


EVGA nForce-750i SLI, (FTW),
Q9550 @ 2.83GHZ QUAD
Corsair TWIN2X 8500C5 DDR2, 4096MB CL5
EVGA GeForce GTX 280 1GB SSC GDDR3

 

[tricky]

Well, I am not 100% sure that I have solved my problems yet, despite it seeming to run fine once I had disabled the 1TB drive.

I was watching a BBC iPlayer download of Strictly Come Dancing last night...my wife's doing...when we found the video to be a bit jerky. I decided to download the latest catalyst drivers from ATI, version 9.10 as I'd only been using the default Win7 drivers since I'd reinstalled.

The drivers installed without a hitch and it seemed to clear up the stuttering video. All was good.

I put the HTPC to sl;eep last night and came down this morning to resume it and install Live Essentials Messenger and Mail. Whilst this was happening, I loaded Media Centre and tried to watch a bit of BBC Breakfast. It seemed to freeze and not really let me watch anything - back to the old problems. I wondered if it was because I was installing in the background (even though this is quite a fast PC). Managed to get back to the desktop and shut down the machine. Restarted it and it was fine.

Had a think and wondered if it was when resuming from sleep mode that I have the problems. Tested it and it did seem to cause the same freezing problem. After a restart, it seemed to be fine.

Rolled back the graphics driver (embedded HD3200) and uninstalled all the ATI Catalyst stuff. Rebooted and tested. The freeze problem after sleep mode *seems* to have gone away. Further testing is obviously needed, but I found a link to suggest quite a few have this same problem and installing the Catalyst 9.8 drivers should fix it.

Here are the drivers:
http://downloads.guru3d.com/ATI-Catalyst-9.8-Windows-7-and-Vista-(32-bit)-download-2351.html

Here's a bunch of people with similar problems:
http://thegreenbutton.com/forums/t/80396.aspx?PageIndex=2

 

[Clickyurdead]

i might have fixed the issue for myself. as long as the logitech usb headset 250 is usb 1.1 then I have fixed my issue. currently I have gone 40 mins with no hang up after taking it off and can successfully transfer over my network which I couldn't do before. ALSO the theory on all asus boards doesn't work. I didn't read the whole thread to find that disproved or not. My other computer has a asus m2n68-vm and it runs fine never had an issue. However my older M3A has the issues.

 

[02bluesuperroo]

I just though I would share this story in hopes that it might help anyone else.

I am not positive that my problem is fixed but it has been 2 days without freezing which is a day longer than any previous time.

After trying every idea out there as far as Windows configuration, as well as a new video card and several re-installs, I seem to have narrowed it down to the Linksys Wireless network card.

Like mos of you I am running 64-bit and as many of you know, Linksys doesn't have any 64-bit drivers. Like everyone else, I installed the Ralink driver for 64-bit. The card worked perfectly fine but after a week of trying everything in this thread and others, the only thing that has helped me was switching to an ethernet connection and not installing the Linksys wireless network card.

Could some others using this card and driver and having freezing issues give it a try and let me know if it seemed to help you at all?

Thanks for all the ideas in this thread,

Rob