Long lags after leaving my computer

Hello,

I am having an annoying problem on my notebook. I am running Windows 7 Home Premium x64. My specs are;

Sony Vaio E series notebook

M460 CPU
8 Gb Ram
120 Gb Sandisk SSD
ATI HD 5650

An external 5.1 Creative sound card (USB)

-And a 2TB 3.5" hard drive constantly hooked up.

My problem is, I leave the computer on its own for some time, while browser, music/video player, e-mail client vs. normal applications are running, because I need to go outside or due to any reason.

When I get back after some time, I press a button to active the screen (I do not use any sleep or hibernation mode, or HDD switch off timeout. My PC constantly works), I get the screen but after a few seconds my pc freezes. The mouse also. It responds to nothing for an unspecified amount of time. I press buttons, move the cursor, try to click things but the screen just freezes.

After some time (which varies in every freeze like this) my notebook starts to respond and act normal.

Interesting thing is, during a freeze I press the Windows button, and when the freeze is over, the notebook jumps up the start menu. It's like it freezes but also records the given commands during freeze.

I tried setting an animated screensaver, but no difference. I return to the notebook, I press a key and it freezes again.

The freezes go on or varied times, from 30 seconds to several minutes.

Another interesting thing is when I leave a torrent program on, I don't encounter such freeze.

It also happened right after a clean Windows restore.

So, any help appreciated. Thank you.

Sorry, my bad. What I meant was windows recovery. Restoring to factory condition.

So any ideas from anyone that might help me?

Inertia said:

-And a 2TB 3.5" hard drive constantly hooked up

It also happened right after a clean Windows restore.

These are the two things that caught my eye.

Try unplugging the external HD and see if it happens. If it does, try also pulling the external sound card.

If it happens after a clean restore, it's likely a hardware problem. My first guess is the external HD is "sleeping", and having trouble waking up. But that's just a guess.

Thank you. I am having slight lags due to that sleeping external HDD. But not this long. I mean sometimes I leave the computer on its own for, like 5 hours and when I get back it takes ages for the lag to end.

But I will try these suggestions.