Windows 7 64 AND random hangs

I have a 6 cpu network having win 2000, XP pro, Vista business and windows 7 64.

My I7 win 64 system has some strange glitches. It does not crash or blue screen but it does suffer from freezes. These freezes can be unstuck by uses the alt-tab or control-alt-del. It seems that just by switching to another task will unfreeze the current one.

Some software causes this on a more consistent basis.

1. Office 2003
2. Office 2007 sp2 with all the updates.

Office apps will freeze as if they are using up 100 percent of the cpu yet if I monitor the cpu usage or the app it will show normal usage and the app will not be shown to be "not responding" So even though the app is not responding windows task manager will show all is well.

The mouse always remains functional but clicking anywhere on the screen results in nothing. If I leave it alone for a few minutes it usually unsticks itself. Or if I alt tab or control -alt -del that seems to unstick the applications.

I had a issue with a canon all in one printer in which the app would hang on launch.
The fix was traced to a url for msn that is built into every win 7 install.

C:\Users\username\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Windows\Network Shortcuts\

go here and delete the "my websites on MSN" shortcut

no idea why this causes mp navagator to fail in win 7 64 but it does.

I see lots of people complaining about hangs in windows 7 but I see very very few fixes.

Any idea why windows 7 freezes without showing excess cpu usage or anything out of sorts from task manager?

thanks!

You might want to monitor them for latency a free latency monitor can be downloaded at http://www.thesycon.de/dpclat/dpclat.exe /some video latency has been discussed at length with nVidia and to a lesser degree ATi. I realize you are speaking of multiple platforms here but your systems specs are empty and if anyone is going to be able to help you at all satisfactorily I'd fill in the most problematic system.

fishnbanjo said:

You might want to monitor them for latency a free latency monitor can be downloaded at http://www.thesycon.de/dpclat/dpclat.exe /some video latency has been discussed at length with nVidia and to a lesser degree ATi. I realize you are speaking of multiple platforms here but your systems specs are empty and if anyone is going to be able to help you at all satisfactorily I'd fill in the most problematic system.

I updated my specs. I had only listed i7 and win7 64 because I have been searching the net and find that it does not seem to be system specific but OS and possibly cpu type specific.

I have found others with similar issues but just complaints and no fixes.

The computer is very usable and only certain apps cause the hangs. ie. Firefox never hangs.

On my other systems if a app hangs the task manager usually will show 100% cpu utilization. Not so in windows 7 on multicore system. A freeze is difficult to debug with the standard windows tools. Something is causing it to not respond.
It happens with or without hyperthreading on.

Prime95 and graphics torture tests have not shown any chinks in system stability.

I'll check out the software you mentioned and maybe it will shed some light. thanks for not giving the standard answer "Just format and reinstall windows" :)

RAJOD said:

I have a 6 cpu network having win 2000, XP pro, Vista business and windows 7 64.

My I7 win 64 system has some strange glitches. It does not crash or blue screen but it does suffer from freezes. These freezes can be unstuck by uses the alt-tab or control-alt-del. It seems that just by switching to another task will unfreeze the current one.

Some software causes this on a more consistent basis.

1. Office 2003
2. Office 2007 sp2 with all the updates.

Office apps will freeze as if they are using up 100 percent of the cpu yet if I monitor the cpu usage or the app it will show normal usage and the app will not be shown to be "not responding" So even though the app is not responding windows task manager will show all is well.

The mouse always remains functional but clicking anywhere on the screen results in nothing. If I leave it alone for a few minutes it usually unsticks itself. Or if I alt tab or control -alt -del that seems to unstick the applications.

I had a issue with a canon all in one printer in which the app would hang on launch.
The fix was traced to a url for msn that is built into every win 7 install.

C:\Users\username\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Windows\Network Shortcuts\

go here and delete the "my websites on MSN" shortcut

no idea why this causes mp navagator to fail in win 7 64 but it does.

I see lots of people complaining about hangs in windows 7 but I see very very few fixes.

Any idea why windows 7 freezes without showing excess cpu usage or anything out of sorts from task manager?

thanks!

Quick question. Are you using "homegroup"?

I tried the latency program. While its a nice app it is not very specific. My latency is around 100, I can get it to jump to 600 via loading some programs and its only high during the load very briefly.

Now I have to get the hang to occur. Maybe it will shed some light.

I have recently tried out tune up utilities 2010 and have been running it in turbo mode. In this mode it shuts off un needed windows background processes. Under this mode I can't seem to get the apps to hang. So it points to a windows background process.

No not using homegroup. Have it set up to use "mygroup" All network devices show up and are working fine.

Spoke too soon. Office 2007 apps still cause freezes. Not sure why

Good to hear from you Captain!

Thanks your suggestions are what needs to be done to debug the issue.

I'm new to win 7 but have been into computers since 1980.

The freeze is very strange. The entire windows desktop acts as if it were a background pic. The mouse is fine, but everything including the taskbar is not clickable, drop down menus are non functional.

I can alt tab and view the various applications that are open but if I let go of the control-tab it will go right back to the frozen app.

When I hit control-alt-del to bring up task manager everything unfreezes and it works fine. So just opening task manager unfreezes the system. I don't kill any apps.

I have looked at the apps in task manager and process explorer. Even though the system is frozen the history and live view show them to be taking up near zero cpu cycles.

I looked at DPC latency checker and found no issues even though the system was frozen.

If a service is frozen is there a way to see it? They don't show up in terms of cpu usage in task manager.

Just trying to figure out what is actually going on while its frozen. Even if I do find the app I like to try to understand what is actually going on.

It seems their must be an application or debugging tool that will be able to show what in the system is actually frozen.

Thanks for the help Captain, I'll report back when I nail it down.

Solved !!!!

Man this one took longer than it should have.

Even when I disabled all start up apps the freezes persisted.

I ran a memory check - nope
I ran Office diagnostics - all 21 tests were perfect
Ran spyware and AV checks. - found one but it was not the issue

It was my favorite program launcher app. Its called Control runner. I love it and now can't use it in 7
They list win 7 as compatible too.

Control Runner | An advanced program launcher for Windows | MomSoft. Utilities and office productivity tools for Windows and Microsoft Office

I sent a email momsoft to see if they can fix it.

I disabled apps in OfficeIn but they still loaded. I reloaded it and it said they were disabled for startup yet they still auto ran. I disabled from the admin tools

Thanks for the Help!!

Give control runner a try if you have XP or vista