Windows 7 freezes

[johncage]

i'd try your suggestion, except i have 4 sticks and determining which one is bad will be time consuming as the freezing doesn't occur until maybe 2 or 3 days, it's completely random. also, it works perfectly with windows xp, so i think it's a win7 problem. until microsoft pulls its head of its ass and fix this widespread problem, i'll be using xp. as for my pirvate comment, i meant that i regretted paying money for this obviously unfinished product. someone mentioned elsewhere that the freezing didn't occur in beta stage, but only after retail. that leads me to believe their beta selection process was controlled, as in certain hardwares were restricted possibly due to corporate politics.

 

[johncage]

bought a new set of ram, returned the old ones. i can't believe it. same problem starting again. it's definitely windows 7. what a freaking scam.

 

[johncage]

this might work for some of you. i found in the event log that something about tcip caused freezing over the net(only one diagnosis of the freezing, might be more) so when you use firefox, sometimes it will kick in and cause freezing. to fix this, go to services and disable netbios service. my internet related freezings stopped right after. this is another stupid scheme by microsoft to get people to use ie8 rather than 3rd party browsers.

 

[johncage]

i'm guessing a lot more of these triggers are embedded within win7 that causes these freezings. so if you want to use anything other than windows firewall or anti virus, be sure to set the new software as default, or sometime they'll have an option to "auto configure", meaning they'll disable bloatware junk that try to interfere with 3rd party software. it's a good thing microsoft underestimates the customer, otherwise eventlog might be heavily censored. who am i kidding? that was probably part of some federal law designed specifically with microsoft in mind. funny how my problems go away when windows gets its services shut down. it was the same with win xp as well. all that bloatware junk that kept gunking up the memory, taking up resources and causing freezes.

 

[Anurag Kumar]

solution

Hi, I love windows 7, but it keeps freezing (allot) sometimes less than 5 minutes after I turn it on and soetimes 1 an hour after. So does anyone else have this problem? Or does anyone know how to fix it? I'm probably gonna try to reinstall Windows 7, just wanted to know if anyone knew a solution to the problem before i did it.

-Sjurdur

Dear Sjurdur,
Just do one thing in your PC just uninstall the antivirus use window defender your Problem will be shorted. I am 100% sure.

Thanks
Anurag

 

[johncage]

i have determined the problem. no more freezing for me. how? windows wlan autoconfigure. this program is a catastrophe. bugged beyond belief. i turned off automatic connect and do everything manually via software and driver.

 

[johncage]

Yeah I've got the same problem.

On VMware it works fine, no problem at all, so it's probably a driver related issue.

Straight on my harddrive wich is a OCZ Core (SSD), gives this problem a lot.
Straight on a RAID-0 with 2 OCZ Core ssd's: same problem, I thought the raid was a problem till i installed it on a single drive.

Now i've checked the event viewer aswell but the problem with the Kernell just means that you resetted the PC. So that ain't the one who gives out info about the thing that caused the freeze.

Post all your hardware specifications please, let's see if we have anything in common wich might cause the problem.

My system:
Main: Asus M2N32-sli Deluxe
Proc: AMD Phenom 9850 Black edition (Overclocked to 3.1GHz but that ain't the issue for sure.)
Memory: Kingston nVidia SLI-Ready memory, 2x 1 GB and 2x 2 GB
Harddrives: 2x OCZ Core SSD, WD5000AAKS and a WD Passport external (lol)
Graphics card: Asus EN8800GTS 320MB
Sound card: Creative SB x-Fi extrememusic.

If your hardware contains one of the ones I use then that could be the problem.

what we have in common is we have windows xp sp2 and above os. this is when the shoddy power management was introduced. and has now carried over to windows 7.

my hardware:
i7 930, standard clock, turbo boost off
3gb patriot viper 1600 default clock and timings
western caviar 500gb sata
9800gtx+ 512mb
realtek onboard audio

trust me it's not hardware. i even changed the memory from another brand. i also tested with another psu.


also, i've read the symptoms others have listed and they are identical to mine, like freezes while browsing on firefox. if you haven't, i really recommend you do two things, turn off turbo boost and equivalent, turn off eist and equivalent(i left c1e on), this has solved the problem for me permanently. it's not an nvidia issue either. i have their latest driver 193.17

 

[jnieurzyla]

I copy files around my pc, drive to drive and from folder to folder, this is where I notice my PC freezes, or goes on a real real go-slow, as well as back ground freezing,
How is Microsoft allowed to get away with this, does the US not have a legal section law which covers fraudulent sales of equipment not equipped to do its job???
Google now lists over 17,000,000 hits on Win7 freezing!!!
Yes all my drivers are up to date, and I don't want to start changing all the settings which I do not understand in the various depths of win7 in case I make it worse, I should not have to.
Its not just one program effected, ie. firefox, but many internal as well as add on programs, though they can affect it, but if these all worked with XP surely the majority would work with Win7???
No this is still a very raw piece of software, and Microsoft is using it to generate funds prematurely, and we are idiots for buying it. Is Bill Gates et al really bothered by all the problems?? apparently not, no fixes coming, no requests for further information from them, just releasing Office 2010 instead, I wonder if this is just as buggy??

 

[quix]

I copy files around my pc, drive to drive and from folder to folder, this is where I notice my PC freezes, or goes on a real real go-slow, as well as back ground freezing,
How is Microsoft allowed to get away with this, does the US not have a legal section law which covers fraudulent sales of equipment not equipped to do its job???
Google now lists over 17,000,000 hits on Win7 freezing!!!
Yes all my drivers are up to date, and I don't want to start changing all the settings which I do not understand in the various depths of win7 in case I make it worse, I should not have to.
Its not just one program effected, ie. firefox, but many internal as well as add on programs, though they can affect it, but if these all worked with XP surely the majority would work with Win7???
No this is still a very raw piece of software, and Microsoft is using it to generate funds prematurely, and we are idiots for buying it. Is Bill Gates et al really bothered by all the problems?? apparently not, no fixes coming, no requests for further information from them, just releasing Office 2010 instead, I wonder if this is just as buggy??

Tried talking to the vendor who sold/built your machine?
This sounds a lot more like a hardware fault than a windows fault.

If everything slows down to a crawl when you use the hard drive, I would approach this problem this way (start with 1 and escalate until the problem is solved):

1. if you have an anti-virus, disable it and try transferring files. Some anti-viri's active-scanning features can slow down a computer tremendously when transfering large amounts of data.
2. install the latest storage controller and ahci drivers. (matrix storage controller)
3. Check bios settings for your hard-drive, make sure it's set to SATA or AHCI if it is a SATA drive, and IDE/ATA/PATA if it is an IDE drive.
4. try disconnecting/removing and reconnecting/replacing both the hard drive connectors as well as the RAM sticks.
5. check RAM voltage, adjust if necessary
6. check for malware/spyware/trojans that could be overloading your hardware.
7. If you reached this stage, you probably have faulty hardware. If your machine or hardware is under warranty I suggest you just get the manufacturer/vendor to replace it. Otherwise do some research about this type of problem and see what you can do about solving it yourself or simply replace the hardware with your own $$.







* you guys really have to stop accusing windows of every single problem on your computer. A lot of them are caused by the hardware and the fact that people cheaped out and bought the cheapest (bundle) option available, which usually means lousy quality control and the cheapest hardware they can get to pass the bare minimum requirements.
So far its the best operating system I've ever used. And I've used nearly all of them (OSX, OS9, Win 3.11, 98, 2000, xp, vista, various flavours of linux, solaris... It really is the most versatile of the lot).

 

[jnieurzyla]

Freezing

I have had a look at your comments, and re-checked out my settings etc. but its very glib to say thats its all down to the hardware, which in my case it is not, the system did work ok with xp, and with over 17 million problems listed on google, its a bit far fetched to say they all have hardware problems.
How do you actually decide which is the latest driver for storage controllers?? I am not a computer technician, again a glib answer of techno babble.
If yours work well great, but I wonder many actually do?
I just wish MS would do their job better and more professionally, rather than dumping it on the unsuspecting public to do their beta testing.

 

[quix]

I have had a look at your comments, and re-checked out my settings etc. but its very glib to say thats its all down to the hardware, which in my case it is not, the system did work ok with xp, and with over 17 million problems listed on google, its a bit far fetched to say they all have hardware problems.
How do you actually decide which is the latest driver for storage controllers?? I am not a computer technician, again a glib answer of techno babble.
If yours work well great, but I wonder many actually do?
I just wish MS would do their job better and more professionally, rather than dumping it on the unsuspecting public to do their beta testing.

I didn't say it's down to hardware. I said it sounds like it's hardware. I don't know the specs of your machine, and that's why I suggested to let the vendor/manufacturer handle this IF your machine is still under warranty.

Did you try steps 1-6? Any changes?
What are your computer's specs?
How much RAM does it have?
What type of hard drives are you using (SATA or PATA)?
Are you using an anti-virus, if yes which one?
Did you try turning off active protection/scanning while transferring large files?



Anyway, to see what matrix storage manager you've got:
press start, type "device manager" and run it.
There is a field called "IDE ATA/ATAPI Controllers", expand it.
Find the AHCI line, double click to open its properties, go to the "Driver" tab.
There you can see the date, version and source of the driver.

To get a more up-to-date version:
Go to the website of your computer's manufacturer (if it's a bundle or laptop), or the motherboard's manufacturer, and look for a Matrix Storage Driver/Controller or AHCI controller/driver for your model and follow the installation instructions provided.

If there is no AHCI conrtoller, then simply installing it should do the job.

Now, all of this is only relevant if your hard drive is a SATA hard drive. PATA (or IDE) hard drives don't use the AHCI/Matrix Storage controller.
To tell the difference between SATA and PATA just google image them, you'll see the difference in the cables.

Check the pictures to see what I'm talking about in device manager.




Also, it might help to know that windows will try to write stuff in parallel on the hard drive if you do multiple file transfers at once. It's faster to do them sequentially (one by one) because of the way the hard drive operates, or to mark all the files and directories you wish to transfer together and move them as a group (which does it sequentially, too).

Please let us know if this helps, and if not try to provide more details about when and how the problem happens. I've only ever experienced slow disk-writing speeds when trying to move multiple files in parallel, and that happens just as often in XP as it does in 7.

 

[Vectre]

Freezing

I have been skimming through the forum and haven't seen the freezing I've experienced. When mine froze it was a hard freeze, no response to mouse or anything. But everything ran fine in safe mode.

It started shortly after an update for the adobe reader. What seemed to fix it thus far was removing the Adobe reader.

 

[quix]

I have been skimming through the forum and haven't seen the freezing I've experienced. When mine froze it was a hard freeze, no response to mouse or anything. But everything ran fine in safe mode.

It started shortly after an update for the adobe reader. What seemed to fix it thus far was removing the Adobe reader.

That's the type of freezing I had.
However, in my case it was caused by a corrupted system service file. Replacing the service .dll file with a fresh one from the repository fixed the problem and I had absolutely no freezes in the 4 months since.
This is the thread for my solution: https://www.w7forums.com/windows-7-random-freezes-potential-solution-t3275.html


It's good to hear that removing Adobe Reader solved your problem.

I'm not entirely convinced Adobe Reader is the root of the problem (my guess it just triggers an existing problem, but you never really know).

Would you mind doing a little experiment for me?
Reinstall Adobe Reader, and once the freezing starts again, go into safe mode and try to read some PDF files with Adobe Reader.
Does it load A Reader fine?
Are there any freezes with Reader running in safe mode?

The reason I'm wondering about this is because most of the windows-rooted (i.e. not caused by ram voltage or power settings) hard-freezing I've come across was caused by faulty services. The freezes were being triggered whenever the service would be loaded (this is done by the appropriate .dll file being loaded and run y the operating system). In my case it was the Workstation service, which controls the network sharing/neighbourhood features, and whenever applications would try to use it the system would freeze. Others have found their root to be different services...

 

[clifford_cooley]

Cleaning thread

 

[Younus Bhura]

Possible Solution

I'm not a geek. I installed Windows 7 32bit over an existing Windows XP which was running absolutely without error.
After installing Windows 7, I noticed periodic freezing lasting from between 5 to 15 minutes every half hour or so depending on activity.
No freezing when no computer activity. All this with a new installation without any other programs installed, not even antivirus software.
Tried all suggestions on this forum without luck.
Updated all drivers, checked RAM, switched off hyperthreading, clean boot, power settings, removed all add-on boards and peripherals... no luck.
Accidentally came across "LIMIT CPUID MAX VAL" setting in the Bios and changed it. No more freezing since.
Been using the computer now for over 10 days without freezing. No idea what this setting is for... but it worked for me.
All you geeks out there may have an explanation.
Hoping this may help others.

Microsoft Windows 7 Home Premium
Version 6.1.7600 Build 7600
X86- based pc
Intel D101 GGC Motherboard
Intel(R) Pentium(R) 4 CPU 3.00 Mhz, 1 Core, 2 Logical Processors
Award Bios for Intel GC11010N.86A.0303.2005.1108.2057, 08-Nov-05
RAM 2.00 GB ( 2x PC3200 DDR 200)
Nvidia GeForce 6200 TurboCache 128 MB Ram
Realtek High Definition Audio Onboard
500 GB Western Digital Sata Drive

 

[Nibiru2012]

Accidentally came across "LIMIT CPUID MAX VAL" setting in the Bios and changed it. No more freezing since.
Been using the computer now for over 10 days without freezing. No idea what this setting is for... but it worked for me.
All you geeks out there may have an explanation.
Hoping this may help others.

Glad it worked for you! This tip may help others also.

 

[johncage]

it's back. the freezing is back. i had a run of about 2 weeks of perfect performance with eist off. then these few days, the problems came back. black screens, freezing, etc. what did i do? i just updated windows through windows update. that's all i did. i have resorting to turning off c1e. lets see if that works.

 

[kristain]

RE : Windows 7 freezes

Windows 7 freezes can be caused by viruses or Spyware. You should run a Spyware and Antivirus scan to fix this, and make sure security software is properly installed and updated on the computer. Follow the instructions in order to get rid of Windows 7 freezes issue:
You should run fewer programs at a time.
Update your drivers
clean the registry of corrupted files
Do a scan of your computer with a top flight registry repair program.

 

[davison2]

windows data recovery

I have also faced this issue. Although I don't the actual reason , but have also lost my important files in this situation. I used the data recovery software from stellar phoenix to recover those data.

 

[Digerati]

I am glad some are getting their problems resolved - I was going to post that this not likely Windows 7 freezing, but the hardware, or another programs and the solutions seem to bear that out.

Sudden freezes and reboots normally point to heat, driver problems, failing RAM, failing motherboard, or the graphics card. And finally, it could point to a stressed or failing PSU too - with all those possible causes, no wonder freeze and reboot problems are hard to troubleshoot.

@Sjurdur - You need to make sure the interior of the computer is clean and free of heat trapping dust and dirt. Ensure all connections are tight and secure. If this is a new build, was a proper layer of TIM (thermal interface material) applied before securing the heatsink fan assembly?

Ensure you have good front to back air flow - with cool air being drawn in from the front and side (if side fan present), and hot air exhausted out the back and top (if top fan present).

Consider running with one stick of RAM at a time and see what happens.