Windows 7: Periodic freezes in my system

This is something real strange. I used windows xp for several months, and never had these periodic freezes, like from every hour on from the last time i last restarted windows the system does a small freeze. I noticed this because everytime this happens and i am capturing tv, there is always 1-2 dropped frames, and also when i am hearing music i notice a small freeze also. For example if i restart the computer at 8:30am, then it's garanteed that at 9:30am, 10:30am, 11:30 am and so on, always have this freeze. But that's not all, everyday when the clock goes to midnight exactly, there is a bit longer freeze of exactly one second, everything freezes, it's the audio, mouse cursor, and of course, tv capture, in which i get about 10-20 dropped frames.

I already tried EVERYTHING i could think about to fix this and absolutly NOTHING fixes this! This happens since i used windows vista, and now windows 7. In windows xp i didn't had the one hour freezes, but i start to have the midnight freezes a few days after windows xp is installed.

Now i absolutly need to fix this, because this is getting my tv captures de-sincronized, and i don't want to go back to windows xp just because of something so stupid as this...



I have tried so many things already to fix this, that i prefer that you guys do suggestions and then i say if i already tried that or not.

Welcome to the forums, sorry you are having problems... a couple of things come to mine... Are all your drivers up to date? Check the device driver section of your computer properties page and make sure ! The fact that you were using it for XP means that its been around the block a few times, and the fact that its happened with several different OS's suggests a hardware problem..

Next.. enter event viewer into your search box and navigate to the application tab and see if there are any critical errors or warnings.. take a screenshot and upload it if there are... we will go from there...

It's something that's starting and running with your PC. Start menu search box, type msconfig.exe, hit enter. Go to startup tab and post a screenshot.

well... this happens as well even when i do a clean install of windows 7 ! I mean, i tried to just install windows 7. I haven't even connected to the internet yet, to see if this was the problem. And EVEN like this, it still does the freezes...

So you see, i have tried this a few days ago and i already installed all the programs i use, you still think it's necessary to post the msconfig list of stuff that's running even tough when i did a clean install it already had the problem ?

About the drivers, well, even after all the driver updates i installed, the latest ones from everything i had, it hasn't done a single effect in the problem. ( i mean i did this now, not at the time i tested the freezes in the clean install)

About the event viewer, believe me, i have searched it many times and haven't found anything special happening at each hour the freeze happens, i even use a Process monitor and i did a very extensive analysis in ALL running processes even when i did the clean install, and still at the time of the freezes i find absolutly nothing unusual, no hard drive activity peak, no cpu usage peak...

I also had tried to deactivate ALL the system tasks in the task scheduler and still nothing changed!

Sorry if my english isn't perfect, but my native language isn't english, i am from portugal

note : the 1 hour freezes NEVER happened in windows xp, only the midnight freezes happened in windows xp, but it's only after a few days of use, strangely.

What could be helpful in your situation is to run the capture software on high priority. Like this, it should record continuously without dropping frames because it will basically own the CPU and I/O. If your HDD is not the greatest, consider using the lossless Huffy video codec to capture to. That will cause less demand on the HDD than uncompressed.
In any case, keep the HDD defragmented as much as possible, especially before going to capture.

The software program itself already sets it's priority to HIGH when capturing. Indeed this was enought in windows xp but in windows vista and windows 7 i noticed a lot more dropped frames when using the pc, so lately i always set it's priority to REALTIME and it worked quite well the problem it's still not enought for those periodic freezes, since i still lose 1-2 frames each hour, i noticed that this is EXACTLY when the "system uptime" in the task manager reaches 01:00:00, then 02:00:00, then 03:00:00, etc.

Also it's not a problem of the HDD, i tried making a RAMDRIVE and i did a tv capture in there and it captures very well without dropped frames most of the time, but it STILL drops those frames when the freezes happen, so this is clearly not a HDD issue, and it's also not a issue of programs i have currently installed since in a clean install this always happens too.

Now for the system specs you see in my profile, it's absolutly not normal to have such freezes, specially when in windows xp i never had them, expect the one at midnight which is a bit stronger than the 1 hour periodic ones.

Couldnt be the tv card I dont suppose... barring any other possibilities, it sounds like a classic case of gremlins....

Hum... i tought of that, of being a problem of the tvcard... unfortunately i don't have any other to test this, but that's strange because besides that it captures perfectly well all the time... Oh by the way i almost forgot to say, sometimes, rarely and seemingly at random, in some of those 1 hour freezes, it does NOT drop any frames at all. I suppose that the freezes sometimes are stronger than in others. But it's not normal that in windows xp i never had these problems at all.

Oh by the way there's something very very weird about the midnight freeze (which is always stronger since i get about 15-20 dropped frames and the freeze lasts one second) : it does NOT happen if i change the clock manually, even if i change it in the bios before starting windows ! This is amazing, i don't know how is this possible but during the day i tried to change the clock to 11:55pm and then i waiting for the midnight... and NOTHING happened! Then i did the same again, but this time i changed the clock in the bios itself, and still couldn't reproduce the freeze. Then i just quit this, and later when the clock naturally reached 00:00 there is was the freeze! This is amazing... it's a curse i say lool

And yet another very strange thing : it also drops 20-23 frames EXACTLY when the captured video time reaches 01:23:33, always ! This also never happened in windows xp.

Its a gremlin I say...

Yeah either that indeed

No but wait... it's not a tv capture card issue because this happens even when not capturing, as i said the midnight freeze is very noticiable, even the mouse cursor freezes and if there is any sound playing, it will freeze too for one second at 00:00. Not too sure about the one hour freezes tough since it's most noticeable in the tv captures because of the dropped frames indicator but i think i also noticed a very small freeze in any audio that is playing at the time that small freeze happens.

I guess no one has idea to what the heck is this, right ? I almost knew this would happen, because i really tried everything it was possible to diagnose this (including extensive process monitor activity) and absolutly nothing worked. I even tried without the sound card enabled in the bios (which is a onboard one) and this still happens.