"Not responding!"

I have the same problem and surprise! it's a gateway that is less than one year old. After being transfered between 3 different off-shore support reps who all told me the same thing, I seem to have no option but to go buy my own harddrive.

Do not buy a gateway.

I has the issue with Win 7 Ultimate (updated as of 9/23/10) where all programs would
frequently show "Not Responding". The task manager would show over 90% idle. The
hard disk LED would be on solid the entire time the system was in this mode.

I tracked this issue down to my C: being stored on a Western Digital GREEN hard
drives in a RAID 1 volume. The drives would occasionally spin down to conserve energy
and would then require up to 30 seconds to get the disk subsystem operational again.

I copied my C: (RAID 1 volume) to another RAID 1 volume that had Western Digital
Black drives using Acronis Disk Manager (w/ Copy NT Signature) and removed the
RAID 1 volume with the GREEN drives.

After reboot, no more "Not Responding" messages.

While I have not read ALL of the responses in this 'thread' I just wish to add my 'bit', even at this late date.

I acquired a 'new' computer, with Windows 7 Ultimate, in late 2009. While I had NOT transferred to it most of my applications by April 2010 (due to the pressure of other activities) at about that time I started to receive an increasing number of 'Not Responding' messages. I left this in abeyance while going on a holiday in mid year but, when I returned, the problem was as bad (or worse) than ever!

Eventually, I reformatted the hard drive, re-installed Windows 7 and then also installed Windows XP as a dual boot on the same drive. The 'Not Responding' problem was, if anything, WORSE with the XP installation than with the Windows 7 installation.
Obvious conclusion: - there is something wrong with the hard drive.
Actually, I had two 1tB hard drives, so I copied the operating systems file images from one to the other. The problem was just as bad on the second hard drive, if not worse.

I did a little checking, using 'HD Tune' on "Ultimate Boot CD for Windows" (Ultimate Boot CD - Overview) and found that while both hard drives would gradually decay in their transfer rate there were MANY dramatic NIL responses for MANY seconds (minutes?) on both of them!

(I can recommend the Ultimate Boot CD software. It is free but you need a copy of Windows XP, from wherever you can get it if you do not own a copy yourself. to create a CD. Also, if you include ALL of the options, you may exceed the capacity of a CD - so you may need to use a DVD.)

Now, both of these defective hard drives were 1tB Western Digital hard drives.

In October, I copied the operating systems file images to a new 1tB hard drive (Seagate) and, to date - no further problems. (The second hard drive has (of course) also been replaced - with a Seagate.

[Does anyone want a pair of (cheap) 1tB Western Digital hard drives?]

I read a article either linked on this site or OCAU from a french hardware site where they post failure rates amongst other things on large capacity HDD's (1Tb etc) and its very high and surprise surprise WD lead the way...
so after reading this thread it sort of bears out the claims made there.

I solve my 80% of programs not responding by removing Firefox 3.6. The latest update to that version made things worse.
I don't really know what the Mozilla folk are up to but lately Firefox is getting slower and slower and causing masses of problems. it seemed to take forever to start and close
Once removed all my "No Response" problems disappeared.
For the first time in 5 years I have preferred an alternative to Firefox, namely Chrome and Opera.
The proof of their panic shows up in version 4. No longer are they the leader but all of a sudden they are playing catch up.

My attention has been re-drawn to this thread by the recent posting by whoozhe.

I cannot comment on his/her 'solution' because I habitually use the Opera web browser.

However, after my post of 17 December 2010 detailing the 'cure' I achieved by replacing the WD Hard-drives, I have recently encountered another (?) "Not-Responding" problem with Windows 7.

To put this in perspective, although I am retired, I do undertake some consultative work involving MS Excel Macros. Last week, I was requested to amend an Excel macro and the macro concerned involved running an analysis and comparison of two large Excel data files with an output derived from the two of them - plus an 'Error' (if any) file.
The macro had been written several years ago using Excel 2003 and Windows XP.
I programmed the updates required and attempted to run the macro on my 'new' updated Windows 7 PC.

Because of the size of the files involved, I was expecting the macro to run for several minutes - with notations of what the macro was doing being displayed in the "Status Bar". However, when attempting to run the macro in Windows 7, after a few seconds each time "Not Responding" for Excel was displayed.

I ran this macro several times in Windows 7 and each time I received the same "Not Responding" indication BUT each time the activity indicated in the "Status Bar" was different!
Eventually, I allowed the system to run until the "Not Responding" indication disappeared - whereupon I found that the appropriate files had, actually, been created!

As noted in my previous post on this topic, I had installed a Dual Boot with Windows 7 and Windows XP on this computer. Therefore, after renaming the files previously produced, I ran the same Excel macro on the same data under Windows XP. The Excel macro ran as I would have expected over several minutes giving all appropriate indications on the "Status Bar" during the process.

A comparison of the files created under both Windows 7 and Windows XP indicates that they are both the same and, therefore, 'correct'.

Hence, there appears to be a problem with ‘Windows 7’ in that, when things get busy and complicated, it generates a “Not Responding” indicator until the activity is concluded.

As one might imagine, I am not happy with this. While I think I may see ways of getting around this – by going back to Windows XP for verification - I do hope that Microsoft is paying attention to this thread and can institute procedures to fix this manifest problem.