System periodically freezes while downloading.

Hi,

I've been searching all over the internet for possible solutions and tried many of them but no luck so far, the system keeps freezing when a download is active ( Steam game download/update, download through browsers, torrents etc. )

I'm on Windows 7 ultimate 32bit, and even tried re-installing it, updating all of the drivers, running chkdsk a few times, changing the torrent clients and some other possible solutions found out there but like I've said the problem still persists.

The freezes are sometimes about 10 seconds long, and during that time the download stops, and resumes after the unfreezing, and it occurs again in a short time.
Sometimes it all freezes completely and I can only move the mouse cursor, then I usually have to restart it, although occasionally it restarts by itself, and there have been a few BSOD's , where there's some kind of dump and it goes up to 100%, then restarts.

-For more info about the system , I've also run the Diagnostic tool.

Ztruker said:

What anti-virus are you using? Perhaps it's interfering?

I'm using Avira, tried turning it off and it did nothing :/

Ztruker said:

How does it behave if you boot to Safe Mode with Networking? If better then something is starting at boot that is causing the problem.

Advanced startup options - XP
Advanced startup options - Vista
Advanced startup options - Windows 7

Use msconfig to determine what is causing the problem

These are good tutorials on using msconfig in XP, Vista or Windows 7:
How to use msconfig in Windows XP
How to use msconfig in Windows Vista
How to use msconfig in Windows 7 and Windows 8

Click on Start then Run, type msconfig and press Enter.
Click on the Startup tab (for Windows 8, the Startup tab has a link to open Task Manager/Startup tab. Use that.), record what is currently starting then click the Disable All button.
Reboot and see if it runs better.
If yes then use msconfig to enable several items at a time till you find the culprit.

If no, start msconfig and click on the Services tab.
Check the Hide All Microsoft Services box, record what is currently starting then click the Disable All button.
Again, do a regular boot, see if it runs normal.
If yes then use msconfig to enable services till you find the culprit.

Once you've found the culprit, uninstall it or find out how to eliminate it from your system. Simply disabling it in msconfig is a temporary fix at best.
Enable everything else you disabled.

Thanks for the suggestion, I tried disabling both like you said, and it's still freezing in safe mode and normal mode, well thanks for trying to help, if you have any more ideas I'll try them, if not maybe there's a problem with some computer component

Ztruker said:

I wonder if your internet connection is being saturated, between what you are doing and what other people on the same node are doing?

8mbit is a fairly slow link.

Have you tried with other browsers, IE, Firefox?

Is there a particular time of day this occurs?

You are using the onboard Ethernet connection so it might be worthwhile picking up a Gigabit network card to install and try.

I was using Firefox, then I thought it was maybe causing the crashes so I changed to Chrome, and I tried IE and Opera as well and it was still happening with all of them

About the internet, 8mbits is the max speed that I'm paying for so the download speed usually goes up to 900kB/s - 1MB/s, but since this has started happening it doesn't have the time to reach that speed as it freezes and after each freeze the download starts again until the system crashes.

By the way I wanted to ask if there are any softwares that work on Windows 7 that are good for testing hard disk, RAM and other components as I'm not sure whether is it a Windows problem or a computer anymore

Layback Bear said:

How about your ISP is limiting your download.
Also have you run and security scans? Torrents is one of the best ways of getting infected.
Have you installed all your Windows Updates?
Did you have any of these problems before Windows 7 Ultimate 32-bit was installed?

On speedtest.net, most of the time the result is a few points beyond 8 megabits , and the upload is always around 0.5mbits which is the max speed that I'm paying for unfortunately
Since I couldn't download some stuff that I needed from my computer these days due to this problem, I downloaded with the laptop which is connected to my router with wireless connection and the speed on it was around 1MB/s , that's the speed I've had before there were any problems.

I've mentioned in the first post that I re-installed the windows cause I thought that it might solve the issue maybe, there were no infections before according to Malwarebytes, Spybot s&d and Avira, and I scanned again after re installing and they still don't show any infections

I got this Windows 7 maybe 4-5 months ago, before that I was on XP, and until now there were no problems with Windows 7
There are no important updates left for now, I installed all of them except for the language packs, there were some errors while downloading and installing them, maybe cause of the crashes, but I think I got all of them now

Here is a tutorial you can work through for troubleshooting.
It includes links for Hard Drive and Memory testing utilities.
It also has instructions for getting help with a BSOD.

Troubleshooting Steps for Windows 7