Intermittent hanging with no CPU usage but 100% HDD

huma79 said:

I just want to say thanks for the posts about this. I've been having this EXACT same problem for months, and it's been driving me nuts trying to figure it out. I've tried everything under the sun to fix the problem. I suspected that it was a hardware issue since everything else was ruled out, I just wasn't sure which device was at fault. I, too, have a WD Green drive (500GB), so i'm convinced after reading this thread that it is the cause of all the freezing. I'm going to be purchasing a new HDD this weekend for sure!

Please come back and let us know if a new HDD fixes the problem. I can only speak for myself and say that it was the WD Green HDD that was causing my problem. If more people report having this issue with WD Green HDDs and then report that changing to another make and/or model of HDD fixes the problem, then we can say that the issue is definitely being caused by the WD Green HDDs.

Although, it's a pretty safe assumption, seeing as at least 3 people in this thread were having random freezing issue and have reported that swapping out the WD Green HDD fixed the problem.

fseal said:

I had this issue with an Intel SSD an tha nvidia nForce motherboard.

WHat fixed it was turning off Native Command Queueing on the ATA channel that the SSD was connected to.

Symptoms, randomyly (sometimes during boot!) program I was using would freeze, then after several seconds or longer the mouse would also freeze, harddrive light on solid.

To fix, go to the device manager, then to your ATA ports. Then on the ATA port for your root drive (There will be several ATA ports listed) On "Port 1" or "Port 2" tabs, uncheck "Enable Command Queueing".

Problem solved by getting a new MB, Ram and CPU! Nothing wrong with the HDDs, figured it was the MB and chipset (nVidia) on that old board. Doesn't play well with SATA and SSD drives.

For my SSD this actually speeded things up a little, but on a rotating drive it might slow it down a little.

Turning off NCQ on the SSD port (Was not necessary on my secondary drive) absolutely stopped the issue dead.

Enabling AHCI mode on my newest computer and using an intel G2 SSD did not require this fix (nor is it even an option int he device mamager for the AHCI driver)

Same issue, I figured that it was linked to my SSD or a motherboard issue... (maybe bad caps?) The HDD light stays on but really no other clues to the freeze(s).

Giving this a try I hope this is going to do it.. other suggestions were to do a clean boot... I'm trying both..

EDIT: first re-start after trying the device manager fix, same issue but has run fine after this... keeping fingers crossed...

Problem solved by getting a new MB, Ram and CPU! Nothing wrong with the HDDs, figured it was the MB and chipset (nVidia) on that old board. Doesn't play well with SATA and SSD drives.