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System Crashes When Copying to External HD
Apologies if this specific issue has been covered in another thread. I posted in a different thread but the issue was not entirely similar.
I am now using build 7600 but had the same issue in beta and rc. Whenever I connect an external drive to copy or back-up large folders, my system freezes almost immediately. I have 2ghz AMD x64 with 4gb ram. In Vista, this was never a problem. I could copy many gigs of media-data with five or six instances running at the same time, reduce the "copying" windows and continue running multiple apps with no performance issue.
In all versions of 7 to this point, If even one other window is open-and even if I am doing nothing else, complete freeze. Mouse and keyboard do not respond and even if I can get CPR to work, it takes several min to get to task manager and even longer to end the process string if I can even do it at all. Most times, I end up doing a forced shut-down.
On the occasions I can cancel the process, my computer response is slow, sporadic, repeated cpu max-out and barely functions. The only way to get it back to normal is a full re-start. Drag and drop is the worst followed by copy and paste and then robocopy though all eventually cause freeze up. Every once in a great while, I can get a large folder to copy as long as it is the only thing I am doing, shut off all non-critical services and close my network connection. Small files are no problem though there is no magic size that seems to cause the problem. A copy function of as little as 40mb has caused the freeze-up.
I have seen on other sites that there have been unpublished updates leaked that change the hardware abstraction layer from 16385 to 16399 along with explorer, iexplorer, etc. build strings. Interestingly enough, the free app "blue screen review" reports these issues as BSOD caused by the hal.dll file. Though I dont actually get a blue screen, it does grind my system to a hault. I am wondering if this newer hal 16399 could solve this but since it hasnt been officially published by ms update or catalog, am reluctant to try it. Has anyone heard or tested these particular updates? Could this be the real problem? A bad hal driver?
This had been the only real problem I have had with 7. Other than that, it rocks. Some troubleshooting steps I have taken are:
1-shut down aero and as many process strings as possible to see if the performance improved. System still crashes though it does manage to copy some info first.
2-Disabled AV software prior to copying
3-Ran every test I could think of on all drives including SMART but just got a brand new WD passport-same issue. Even Win back-up(used it for the image file) fails the first time everytime though will eventually finish the backup after the 2nd try.
4-Can copy large media files one at a time but with over 400gb of movies and 100 of music, no time. Hopefully this is some kind of glitch??
5-Tested this process with the same drives on other machines and no issues though I have not had the opportunity to test on another pc with 7-not available to me at this point.
6-Checked for and installed all win7 compatible drivers for the external drives, no change.
Is anyone else having this specific issue? Known bug? Possible fix? Thanks in advance for reading my small novel. Any help you can provide would be greatly appreciated. As I said, other than this particular problem, I am absolutely loving 7. But on the same machine, same hardware, cpu, etc under Vista, no issue.