Windows 7 hangs for a few minutes

muth56 · 05 Aug 2009

Hello!
My specs, first of all: Asus P5B (P-965 series), Intel Core 2 Duo e6600, 2 Seagate 160GB HDs, 1 WD 500GB (ALL SATAs), Sony NEC Optiarc 24x SATA writer, 2x1GB Kingston and 1x1GB Transcend DDR-2@667MHz, nVidia GeForce 7300GS.
I am running Windows 7 RC1 and it's a Clean Install.
I was experiencing this problem before as well, but it seemed to have gone away for a short while. But When I put in my new WD 500GB drive, it seems to have come back. Although I can swear there is nothing wrong with the HD, since the problem was there before as well.
When I'm in Windows, say listening to a song or something, the rest of the computer would freeze/hang RANDOMLY for upto 5 minutes :/ I mean, the song would still continue playing, but I can't do pretty much else. The mouse moves and even Ctrl-Alt-Del doesn't work. VERY annoying. I either have to wait for 5 minutes, after which the computer runs pretty slow and hangs again after sometime, or force restart.
I've done EVERYTHING possible: Flashed BIOS, reset CMOS, switched around the SATA ports for my different devices, reinstalled Windows at LEAST a million times.
I thought it was an overheating problem (and sure enough, my HDs DO run pretty hot to the touch; ie, I can't even touch them without wincing). Even my CPU was running at 73C (O.o). So I cleaned everything inside and now it runs at 53C, constant.(Doesn't exceed 60, whatsoever).
I am on the verge of tears. Please tell me what to try next?
Is it really an overheating problem? I mean can overheating lead to hangs of the kind I've described? Also, my BIOS is on pretty much its default settings: non-AHCI, ACPI enabled, etc etc.
Another peculiar thing: Sometimes, my BIOS takes AGES to identify my HDs. Like even upto a minute :/ And at times, it's instantaneous.
VERY weird, ehh?

I have a 450W power supply, btw.

icoola77 · 05 Aug 2009

Hi muth56, and welcome to Sevenforums.

What you could try :

- Install the latest Intel chipset drivers
http://www.station-drivers.com/telechargement/intel/chipset/intel_inf__9.1.1.1015(www.station-drivers.com).exe

- disable indexing and windows search, because windows may be busy indexing the contents of your hard drives

- remove additional hard drives and leave just the one where windows 7 is installed, if it runs ok, add another disk and see if the problems return, im guessing the smaller disks are older and may be damaged, but to isolate the one(s) that are problematic, you will have to test one at a time.

-Buy a couple of computer case fans and install them into your computer case so that they blow cool air over the disks.

That's all i can think of right now, but if i think of something else i will post it.

Hope this helps.

RootAdmin · 05 Aug 2009

probably unrelated, but recently i had an i7 motherboard that's onboard LAN was screwed up and it would freeze explorer for around 3 min when trying to open anything networking related, replaced motherboard, couldnt get it to happen again.
worst part was even with onboard lan disabled in the bios it would still freeze.

the onboard lan became screwy after it overheated. they left all the pc's in the office on, but turned off the ac because no one would be there over the july 4th holiday, i'm in texas, it was 108 the day they called me. they're lucky the only things that were damaged were a router and one of the 4 pc's in the office!

muth56 · 05 Aug 2009

Hi guys! And thanks for the replies! :)
However, I'm sure it's nothing to do with indexing since it happens COMPLETELY out of the blue.
Also, rootadmin, thanks for the feedback, but my LAN-card seems to be working fine O.o
This is truly stumping.

I just touched one of my HDs and nearly burnt my finger. It is SOOO hot :S
Also, I ran SeaTools on each of them, so rest assured, the HDs are fine. Don't know about the setup, though. Do I need to change some BIOS settings for Windows 7?

icoola77 · 05 Aug 2009

You could also try and change Power Options, i think the default profile is Balanced, so try setting it to High Performance, and go into advanced settings and make sure that "Turn off hard Disk after " is set to Never.

Oh and if you have AHCI enabled (because of Sata drives) then you could also try installing Intel Matrix Storage Manager.

Intel releases official Windows 7 graphics, chipset and AHCI/SATA drivers | Windows 7 Center

Of course, first and foremost, make sure you have the appropriate drivers installed for all your hardware, meaning : chipset, graphics card, audio, lan/modem etc, and try to find the latest drivers if possible, particularly drivers that are made for Win7.

RootAdmin · 05 Aug 2009

after re-reading your original post, it sounds like the HD is faulty, even if its reporting as A-ok, there must be something amiss in it.
My personal laptop was used and had been dropped a few times. originally it would randomly not see the hd and be unable to boot, but if it did see the hd, it would boot fine and act as if nothing was wrong other than being slow opening certain programs, replaced the hd, haven't had one problem with it since

also check the cable to the HD, kinks are bad! dirty connections are bad!

icoola77 · 05 Aug 2009

He mentioned that the hard drives are very hot to the touch, which should not be the case in normal circumstances.
Perhaps when he disassembled the computer for cleaning and then put it back together he did not connect hard disk cables properly.

Also muth56, how much free space do you have left on the partition where windows 7 is installed?

harpua · 05 Aug 2009

The hard drive should not be that hot. Are all the drives that hot or only one? Sounds to me like the too hot to touch drive is defective. Perhaps W7 should be installed on another drive and the hot one pulled from the system. Be interesting to see what happens if the super hot one is removed from the system?