System Freezes When Copying Large Files Between Drives

I am having a problem when copying large files in Windows 7. (By 'large files' I mean my steamapps folder, which is around 30gb but it hangs pretty early on the bigger 1gb+ files.)

After about 30-60 seconds of copying large files from one drive to another the file copy hangs, and then eventually everything else hangs until it all grinds to a halt. Cancelling the file transfer does nothing except change the window to notify me that it's cancelling. The only way I can regain control of my computer is to restart it with the reset button on the case.

When I first installed Windows I had this problem when copying files over the network, upgrading my network drivers fixed that. This problem has only recently been affecting me, possibly a little over a week. Having said that though, it's not often I try to copy large files.

I like to think I have a decent knowledge of computers and what not, but this really has me stumped.

Things I have tried:

• I have 4 hard disks in the machine, and I've tried various different combinations of which drive to copy from and which drive to copy to, just to see if that is the problem, so unless all 4 hard disks are broken, I don't think I can blame the drive.
• I read somewhere that virus scanners and firewalls have the potential to interfere, and so I uninstalled Zone Alarm, yet the problem still occurs.
• I've tried the SFC /SCANNOW thing but that doesn't seem to have helped.
• I've tried to get new motherboard drivers from the ASUS site, which I've now installed, but they didn't help.
• I've tried changing my PSU, which didn't help.
• I've tried running WD drive tools to check the drive for errors, and the SMART test, and they all passed.
• I've tried tearing my hair out, but that only hurt! :)

Other information I can think of, is in the Event Log at the time of the freezing it writes numerous events with EventID '11', Source 'Disk', which says "The drive detected a controller error on \Device\Harddisk0\DR0" and the device listed changes depending on which drive I'm trying to copy.

I've read the "how to ask for help" thread but if I'm missing any important info, either here or on my system specs page, (or done anything wrong in general) please let me know.

Please let me know if any of you have any ideas! :)

I had a similar problem when I went from Vista to Windows 7. File transfers would grind to a halt and freeze the system. In my case I only needed to bump up the NB "north bridge" voltage one notch and everything worked perfectly again. I have seen this work on more than a few systems over the last year and a half. Windows 7 seems to put more load on the memory controller and chipset for some reason.

chev65 said:

I had a similar problem when I went from Vista to Windows 7. File transfers would grind to a halt and freeze the system. In my case I only needed to bump up the NB "north bridge" voltage one notch and everything worked perfectly again. I have seen this work on more than a few systems over the last year and a half. Windows 7 seems to put more load on the memory controller and chipset for some reason.

I've had a quick look in the bios, at the settings, which I've always had set to auto in the past, there is "North Bridge Voltage" which I can set to Auto / 1.25v / 1.40v / 1.55v / 1.70v and "North Bridge Voltage Reference" which I can set to Auto / 0.67x / 0.61x.

Any suggestion on what to do? I've never tried upping my NB voltage before. Do I need to change the reference too?

RST101 said:

Same knid of thing was happening to me but it was when copying to/from flash drive, the drive would freeze. Tried anything and everything but the only thing that sorted it was a bios update.

I'm not saying you should do the same because the bios can be tricky to update and is potentially a system killer. Plus it's probably something else.

I'm just sticking my nose in

Any suggestion is a welcome suggestion! I'll keep it on the back burner as a "last ditch effort" thing! :)

Capt.Jack Sparrow said:

Hello !!

I guess it's also worth to run a Hard Drive Diagnostic since you got errors in Event Viewer referring to Hard disk. check this link for instructions HD Diagnostic

Hope this helps,
Captain

Cheers for that, I'll give that a go later too, it can't hurt.