Win 7 64: Random Freezes when Multitasking

Hey!! Long time follower of this forum, it's been a great resource. I've been checking for the last month or so to see if anyone has had a similar problem to me with no luck so I finally decided to post.

I've been using Win 7 since RC and am currently using retail home premium. This problem has been plaguing me since RC and I even went back to Vista for a while. Now on to my issue.

Problem: My system randomly freezes for 10-45 seconds while multitasking. For example if I'm installing a game and watching a movie, or extracting something and browsing the web. There are frequent offenders (itunes, winrar, firefox, VLC) but the entire computer becomes unresponsive including explorer, no ctrl alt del, nothing. It also never happens while I'm in a game. The computer ALWAYS comes back though, it never "crashes" it just hangs for long chunks of time.

I've memtested the ram, updated every driver on the planet, defragged, reinstalled, cried.

What do I need to provide, Any advice would be greatly appreciated.

audi25 said:

Hey!! Long time follower of this forum, it's been a great resource. I've been checking for the last month or so to see if anyone has had a similar problem to me with no luck so I finally decided to post.

Audi25,

I have also got this kind of problem.

I'm not sure what is going on, but I do notice once every two or three times when I bring the PC out of hibernate and after a short while (perhaps 10 seconds or so), whatever I am running (perhaps Firefox and Outlook together) will all appear to 'hang' and then after another 10 seconds or so, will all carry on just fine.

The PC isn't actually "hung" as the mouse carries on moving but if I try to run anything, the application just hangs. Its as if there is something it needs to do that stops everything else for a short while.

Audi25 - complete the "my system specs" thing as much as you can so everyone else knows what you are running and can help more.

Regards.

Ive updated my stats and attached my nfo from msinfo32...Hope the Gurus can help!

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audi25 said:

Hey!! Long time follower of this forum, it's been a great resource. I've been checking for the last month or so to see if anyone has had a similar problem to me with no luck so I finally decided to post.

I've been using Win 7 since RC and am currently using retail home premium. This problem has been plaguing me since RC and I even went back to Vista for a while. Now on to my issue.

Problem: My system randomly freezes for 10-45 seconds while multitasking. For example if I'm installing a game and watching a movie, or extracting something and browsing the web. There are frequent offenders (itunes, winrar, firefox, VLC) but the entire computer becomes unresponsive including explorer, no ctrl alt del, nothing. It also never happens while I'm in a game. The computer ALWAYS comes back though, it never "crashes" it just hangs for long chunks of time.

I've memtested the ram, updated every driver on the planet, defragged, reinstalled, cried.

What do I need to provide, Any advice would be greatly appreciated.

I like your problem description. My impression is that you're methodical and analytical, and that even the tears are done by flowchart. Have rep.

Before making suggestions as to the appropriate troubleshooting methodologies, I'd like to understand the symptom a bit better:

1) How frequently does this happen, on average? Once per week? Day? Hour?

2) On a scale of 1 to 10, how confident are you of your ability to trigger the symptom on purpose?

3) When did this start? The day you bought the computer? The day you installed 7RC? At some point down the track?

4) Did the symptom persist through your trip back to Vista? Did it resume as soon as Vista was installed? Was the frequency roughly the same under Vista?

5) Did the Vista installation sport the same anti-virus solution that you use under Win7 (if any)? Have you ever tested the effects of temporarily uninstalling the AV (uninstalling, not merely disabling)?

6) Can the mouse pointer be moved during the "problem" period?

Welcome to SF :)

Guys,

Happend to me just now (bringing my laptop back after it being asleep overnight), I was running Firefox and it just greyed out and in the title bar, it had the dreaded "not responding" suffix.

Lasted about 10 seconds... during which I had Task Manager running. I moved my mouse over the task bar icon, clicked it and lo and behold... guess what was the only thing running, while this condition was in effect? The culprit was search indexer!!!!

As the condition ended and Firefox came alive again, (I am using it now to type this reply), the indexer dropped down the CPU used list, to the zero % used point.

Now I know what is doing it on my system, the challenge is to find out why it is doing this!

bjrichus said:

Guys,

Happend to me just now (bringing my laptop back after it being asleep overnight), I was running Firefox and it just greyed out and in the title bar, it had the dreaded "not responding" suffix.

Lasted about 10 seconds... during which I had Task Manager running. I moved my mouse over the task bar icon, clicked it and lo and behold... guess what was the only thing running, while this condition was in effect? The culprit was search indexer!!!!

As the condition ended and Firefox came alive again, (I am using it now to type this reply), the indexer dropped down the CPU used list, to the zero % used point.

Now I know what is doing it on my system, the challenge is to find out why it is doing this!

As a suggestion, it would be better to start your own thread so that your issue can receive attention while leaving this thread focused on the OP's own problem. The range of possible causes for "freezes" is vast, and it is entirely unlikely that the two of you share the same problem, even if the generic symptom looks the same.

As a suggestion, it would be better to start your own thread so that your issue can receive attention while leaving this thread focused on the OP's own problem. The range of possible causes for "freezes" is vast, and it is entirely unlikely that the two of you share the same problem, even if the generic symptom looks the same.

I will just sit back and let you all look at Audi's problem first then.

If you all find enough that is similar, you can give me a poke for my input too (you know where to find me)

Thanks for taking the time to read!!

1) The problem happens for me about once a minute, when doing multitasking. I've found a really easy way to duplicate the problem, Install a game and copy a file to another folder or extract a rar and use itunes/firefox. I can listen to itunes ALONE or play borderlands(any game) for hours on end without it happening though.

2)read above

3) The day it started was the day I installed Win 7. Ive used 32bit RC, 64bit RTM and now 64bit Retail.

4 & 5)It has never happened once in Vista, same hardware and software.
I run a very clean system, very few applications. Im not a huge fan of AV software though I am currently testing windows essentials. The problem persists with or w/o it installed.

6) Similar to bjrichus, my mouse keeps working/moving, title bars usually go grey and display (not responding) and then BOOM it does everything I did during the freeze all at once, as if it were queuing everything during the hang up. I also watch the task manager performance and I/O reads and nothing looks unusual. No single process is going out of whack!

I continue to follow these forums and understand there are a lot of problems with a lot of different solutions. I recently ran the WD diagnostic tool, memtest, reflashed updated and set my bios back to stock.

Thanks!

The fact that it happens often and is reproducible is a very good thing form a troubleshooting perspective.

Can you repro if you boot the machine into safe mode temporarily?