Not responding

My Windows 7 64 bit gives me "not responding" every few minutes. It is not a hardware problem because this VelociRaptor had on XP Pro for years and the Vertex is still running XP.

I seriously suspect it is a memory problem because early in the morning it will go for about 30 minutes before the first crash and then it gets progressively worse until every 20 or 30 seconds it gives "not responding" which always corrects itself (after the screen goes pale) and then you hear a lot of hard drive activity. There are no processes using excessive CPU or memory when this happens. This is a downloaded version and I built the ISO and upgraded XP. I have tried another upgrade DVD but that crashes during install.

I have spent days going through these forums and I see many people have the same problem but nobody has an answer. Other than msconfig and dozens of reboots is there any other option?

DannyAves said:

My Windows 7 64 bit gives me "not responding" every few minutes. It is not a hardware problem because this VelociRaptor had on XP Pro for years and the Vertex is still running XP.

I seriously suspect it is a memory problem because early in the morning it will go for about 30 minutes before the first crash and then it gets progressively worse until every 20 or 30 seconds it gives "not responding" which always corrects itself (after the screen goes pale) and then you hear a lot of hard drive activity. There are no processes using excessive CPU or memory when this happens. This is a downloaded version and I built the ISO and upgraded XP. I have tried another upgrade DVD but that crashes during install.

I have spent days going through these forums and I see many people have the same problem but nobody has an answer. Other than msconfig and dozens of reboots is there any other option?

DA

It could be:
memory like you said. download memtestx86 and run overnight. it will tell you

Heat-either cpu, or gpu. Get an app like cpu-z, gpu-z, everest and monitor temps

Page file size, check in system control panel

System files-- run system file check -- search>cmd>right click and run as admin>
Sfc /scannow

Let us know the results

let us know if you need help with any of this


Ken

Thanks Ken but it is not heat. My core temp hardly goes over 24C and I have runs Sfc /scannow more than once. I will try memtestx86 tonight but I doubt it is bad. I had recently upgraded to a Radeon 5750 so I thought that might be the culprit (although it never passed 47C), so I changed back to a 3450 since that had worked perfectly for years.

However, what meant by memory was that there must be some flaw in the way Win 7 handles memory in that there is a conflict with certain types of hardware.

DannyAves said:

Thanks Ken but it is not heat. My core temp hardly goes over 24C and I have runs Sfc /scannow more than once. I will try memtestx86 tonight but I doubt it is bad. I had recently upgraded to a Radeon 5750 so I thought that might be the culprit (although it never passed 47C), so I changed back to a 3450 since that had worked perfectly for years.

However, what meant by memory was that there must be some flaw in the way Win 7 handles memory in that there is a conflict with certain types of hardware.

Danny

Could be but not the most likely. I will stop back in to see your results tomorrow. Good luck

Ken

Ken, ran memtestx86 V3.4 for over 9 hours, no errors.


Usasma, yes I have ran the upgrade advisor and apart form a printer needing a separate driver download, everything was OK. I also doubt if it is the VelociRaptor since it was running XP before and that would mean it went bad in the hour it took to install Win 7, not impossible but very unlikely. Also remember that this computer has multiple hard drives and is still used in XP on the Vertex SSD for between 16 - 18 hours per day without any problems.

I still don't think it is a hardware problem but I have extras here so I am going to change the RAM and try that for a few days, then change the CPU and try that for a while, then change the M/board. If that doesn't work, what a good excuse for a total upgrade !!

I ran msinfo32.exe but that is not a file I would post in public, is there any particular information you need from it?

Thanks for all your help.

SOLVED...I think

I changed the OCZ memory for 4 GB of G.Skill and I haven't had a problem for the past 2 hours (knock wood). It is hard to believe that memory that worked perfectly in XP would give problems in Vista 2.0.

I will watch it for a couple days and see how it behaves.

Thanks for your time.

Not solved. The new memory will last for hours before the first "not responding" but it get progressively worse.

For example, up to about midday I can work perfectly, by about 3.00 it is not responding about once every 20 minutes. By 5.00 I have to switch over to the XP drive since it is impossible to use.

Hi Danny, I have been following this thread with interest, hoping for some kind of clue...

There is a whole herd of us who have this same "not responding" problem on Vista, and with the launch of W7 some of us have been hoping the problem would be addressed/fixed... But, incredibly, maybe not??

Here is our thread - maybe a few further clues can be found there? Have you had additional progress with selectively switching out your hardware?

Vista Ultimate x64 - frequent "(not responding)" on various applications
http://social.technet.microsoft.com/Forums/en/itprovistasp/thread/123cd549-1c83-4c9d-a05e-38c8db25ab39

DannyAves said:

Not solved. The new memory will last for hours before the first "not responding" but it get progressively worse.

For example, up to about midday I can work perfectly, by about 3.00 it is not responding about once every 20 minutes. By 5.00 I have to switch over to the XP drive since it is impossible to use.

What's "not responding" exactly?

That error message generally means the app is not processing "messages" sent to its window. The reasons are generally app-specific.

As a suggestion, the next time an app gets into this state:

- fire up Task Manager
- find the app's entry on the "applications" tab (it's status is presumably "not responding")
- right-click the app's entry, choose "Create dump file"
- note the path to the memory dump which should pop up a few seconds later
- zip up the memory dump and upload it to someplace like rapidshare.com
- paste the link here and somebody may be able to tell you why the app is hanging based on analysis of the app's state at the time.