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#1
Computer freezes completely when using uTorent, IDM etc.
I know similar problems have been reported on this forum and all over the web, but still I would like to share my experience and hear others' opinions about it, as in this case, maybe the problem starts from the NIC.
System:
MB: ASUS M5A97 R2.0
CPU: AMD FX 4100 Quad Core 3.60 GHz
RAM: 8 GB (2x4GB) 1866MHz
GRAPHICS: ATI Radeon 4850 HD
HD: 2 TB
NIC: (Integrated) Realtek PCIe GBE Family Controller
OS: Windows 7 Enterprise 64-bit
The problem:
Computer becomes completely unresponsive; no BSOD, no error dialogs nor any sign of computer being informed about it's own unresponsiveness, it simply won't do anything and won't obey to any keyboard command. The only option is hard reset, after which everything works fine before next freeze.
Time between log-on and freeze varies.
I don't know how to describe the problem more clearly, please ask if anything is unclear.
The story:
I built this computer about a month ago. Very soon, I started to come up to abovely described problem 2 or 3 times a day.
At first I assumed it had something to do with watching videos online with Google Chrome as several times the crash coincided with youtube or similar websites running on one of the tabs. I also uninstalled Internet Download Manager as some would complain it was crashing their browsers (but obviusly that's a different problem and has something to do with its broswer integration feature, which I had disabled anyway).
Later I was convinced (by this thread: http://www.tomshardware.com/forum/11694-63-windows-freezes-randomly-bsod) it was not chrome but my ATI graphics card that crashed the system. I reinstalled the ATI driver software and disabled ULPS (which was recommended in the same thread).
The problem disappeared, but as I had taken several steps I never really new which one helped; until this week.
Recently I started using uTorent and the freeze problem returned. At firts, I reduced max number of active downloads to 1, then I set up a virtual machine for running uTorent and similar software there. Nothing helped.
Conclusion:
Now I am more than convinced the problem is tightly linked with how the NIC communicates to uTorent, IDM and similar software. And the experience that even the virtual machine won't help, makes me believe the problem lies on the hardware side.
Further tests confirmed that freeze occurs nearly every time I use this kind of software and deos not occur without it running.
It won't hurt to mention that recently I downloaded quite a large file (about 9 GB) directly with Chrome downloader without a problem.
I also tried to disable task offload according to this guide: http://www.windowsreference.com/networking/enabledisable-tcp-task-offloading-to-nic-in-windows/ though I don't really remember where and why I was recommended to do so.
PS:
No, all my drivers are up to date and yes, I download a lot : )