Solved Computer freezes completely when using uTorent, IDM etc.

[mixeiljibuti]

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 : )

 

[centaur78]

Well thats a looooong story

In short it would really help if you could use this tool to post all the files here..

We will have a look

 

[mixeiljibuti]

Here you are

 

[centaur78]

There is only 1 dump file... as per that ... it refers to your display driver as the fault..

Please update it from here

Let me know your feedback

 

[mixeiljibuti]

Thank you for quick response.

I have the same driver already installed and as I mentioned, re-installing didn't help.

By the way, I managed to freeze my PC again since my last post. This time the only active software was notepad++ and Google Chrome with about 10 tabs (with a live streaming video on one of them) open.

Tomorrow I'm testing with my network cable unplugged and will post what I will come up to.

 

[boohbah]

i use the laptop to dl via bittorrent ,i had the exact same issue a while back, what worked for me was finding an updated wireless driver ,despite selecting update drivers it wouldn't find a newer one, i searched and found newer ones, manually dl'd and installed .
not sure what driver you would need if you are hard wired but this fixed it for me,

 

[mixeiljibuti]

As it seems now it had something to do with the flash player. I cleared flash player cache and disabled the flash player plug-in built in Chrome. So far only one BSOD and no freezes. I ll keep testing and post here whether it helped or not.

EDIT: Well, the flash player problem described above in this post was not a (at least not the only) problem in my case as I have experienced several freezes since I took those steps. However, these steps helped some other people so I'll just leave them here.

What helped me, was running the attached file after every log on (via windows task scheduler):

 

[LeoNe]

I have an Asus P6T motherboard, 3Gb Ram(yeah I know ) , Intel Quad at 2,66 Ghz.
Windows 7 64bit Pro .

Just registered to inform you that I had the same problems with the same Network card .
Realtek Gbe Family 8168 .

After weeks of scavenging forums and posting threads and getting both clever & stupid answers
( dont trust that whoever posts an answer in free tech support really knows anything beyond
" oh, this must be a virus " or " update drivers ! " ) ,
I solved the problem .

Maybe it helps you too .

I tried everything, from updating drivers to tampering with routers and advanced properties like Offload Sum etc .
I even changed paged fault memory to secondary drive only .

Nothing worked . After 20-60 minutes of torrent downloading , everything froze.
Another hard reset , one too many and something would go bad very soon .

While reading this post , I had an insight of turning hard disk index service off for all drives ( C:\ and D:\ ) .
That didnt work either BUT then
I downloaded lastest utorrent client , changed default download directory to secondary drive D:\ , transfered all my incomplete downloads and torrent files there , with indexing off , and voila !
I ve been downloading for 24 hours straight !

I dont know if it is indexing combined with a secondary drive ( Not C:\ ) and the latest utorrent ( 3.3 ) , but it works .

So I think it is either a bad SATA cable or something to do with multicore & 64-bit windows 7 together with indexing , something of those above doesnt work good with 32-bit torrent clients ...

I have a laptop with 32bit XP service pack 3 , and downloading there to C:\ drive with indexing ON is no problem at all .
Everything works fine for days .

P.S. Your batch file didnt work for me , but thanks for posting it .
I ve tried to set every Offload Sum to Off through Advanced Properties of Realtek Network Driver , but didnt work for me .
I hope the above solution helps , those hard resets are gonna get the best of your system at some point ...
Good luck .

 

[gregrocker]

Some have problems with Chrome so you can try another browser. Anything that's installed Google is also pernicious spyware so I'd avoid it.

Work through these other Troubleshooting Steps for Windows 7.

 

[alexl125]

I'm having the same problem, though mine has reaches a little farther than just uTorrent. Whenever I leave my computer idle to have it download games through Steam, Origin (EA's version of steam), anything on uTorrent, Desura, or Arc my computer will completely freeze and I'll have to do a hard reset to bring it back up. I've checked all my drivers and they're up to date, I had unknowingly fixed the problem at one point, then after an update through Windows Update it started up again.

I've run the SF Diag tool and my results are attached below, any help would be appreciated

 

[hawkie1961]

Bit torrents freezing computer on win 7

I've had this problem for a while on both my desktop and laptop. Have done tons of searches, tried most of the fixes but nothing worked. Investigating a bit further, I found that all my machines that displayed this behavior were using Atheros wireless and on board lan connections. I downloaded and installed latest drivers, no luck. So, thinking it maybe a problem with these connections, I installed a spare netgear wireless n usb adapter and disabled the Atheros wireless adapter on my laptop. Success! . It has been running my client [deluge], without a freeze for the past 4 hours. Not sure if this will help anyone else but it worked for me and I thought I'd share it. Thanks and have a darn fine day.