Intermittent hanging with no CPU usage but 100% HDD

[Ironhead]

WD green drives were the culprit.

I recently upgraded my cpu/mobo/processor/ram/video card/Harddrive (1TB WD black). I put a fresh copy of 7 on the black drive. The old drive's install still had the problem, the WD black does not.

WD Green drives are definitely the culprit! I took my WD Green out, put a Seagate in and reinstalled Windows. More than two weeks in, I have not experienced the "freezing" issue even once.

 

[pdoth]

Yup.....ditto to all the above. My problems have been going on for 2 months now. tried all the above...no luck. Most of the time my freezes occure approx every 40 - 50 min and last for 40sec - 1min.
No BSoD
Mouse still moves but does not select
Not application specific
Firfox does seem to suffer most with - "Not Responding" page loads. (is there a link????)
Keyboard doesn't work, so can't open Task manager to look at services etc.

Then, after freeze, all back to normal until the next freeze in 40 - 50 min time.

Has anybody got closer to a solution yet????????????

 

[huma79]

I just want to say thanks for the posts about this. I've been having this EXACT same problem for months, and it's been driving me nuts trying to figure it out. I've tried everything under the sun to fix the problem. I suspected that it was a hardware issue since everything else was ruled out, I just wasn't sure which device was at fault. I, too, have a WD Green drive (500GB), so i'm convinced after reading this thread that it is the cause of all the freezing. I'm going to be purchasing a new HDD this weekend for sure!

 

[Ironhead]

I just want to say thanks for the posts about this. I've been having this EXACT same problem for months, and it's been driving me nuts trying to figure it out. I've tried everything under the sun to fix the problem. I suspected that it was a hardware issue since everything else was ruled out, I just wasn't sure which device was at fault. I, too, have a WD Green drive (500GB), so i'm convinced after reading this thread that it is the cause of all the freezing. I'm going to be purchasing a new HDD this weekend for sure!

Please come back and let us know if a new HDD fixes the problem. I can only speak for myself and say that it was the WD Green HDD that was causing my problem. If more people report having this issue with WD Green HDDs and then report that changing to another make and/or model of HDD fixes the problem, then we can say that the issue is definitely being caused by the WD Green HDDs.

Although, it's a pretty safe assumption, seeing as at least 3 people in this thread were having random freezing issue and have reported that swapping out the WD Green HDD fixed the problem.

 

[huma79]

This weekend I bought a Seagate 500GB drive and all my problems went away!!!! I cloned the Windows installation, which means NO other software or hardware was changed other than the WD Green drive. So I can 100% confirm that the WD Green drive was to blame.

On another note, it seems to work just fine in Linux (Ubuntu). It looks like these WD Green drives are not fully compatible with Windows.

 

[huma79]

There are many other discussions about this problem:

http://www.sevenforums.com/performance-maintenance/62776-hdd-freezing-periodically.html

http://www.sevenforums.com/crashes-...mittent-hanging-no-cpu-usage-but-100-hdd.html

WD5000AADS frozen in windows xp - Western Digital Community

WD Caviar Green - slow performance - Western Digital Community

Xp problem With WD5000AADS-32MB Cache - Hard-Disks - Storage

ASUSTeK Computer Inc.-Forum- WD5000AADS + P6TD Deluxe = 15sec Freezeups

https://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?pid=712746

Problem with WD5000AADS in Thomson HD box - AVForums.com

 

[Lee K]

Same issue..

I had this issue with an Intel SSD an tha nvidia nForce motherboard.

WHat fixed it was turning off Native Command Queueing on the ATA channel that the SSD was connected to.

Symptoms, randomyly (sometimes during boot!) program I was using would freeze, then after several seconds or longer the mouse would also freeze, harddrive light on solid.

To fix, go to the device manager, then to your ATA ports. Then on the ATA port for your root drive (There will be several ATA ports listed) On "Port 1" or "Port 2" tabs, uncheck "Enable Command Queueing".

Problem solved by getting a new MB, Ram and CPU! Nothing wrong with the HDDs, figured it was the MB and chipset (nVidia) on that old board. Doesn't play well with SATA and SSD drives.

For my SSD this actually speeded things up a little, but on a rotating drive it might slow it down a little.

Turning off NCQ on the SSD port (Was not necessary on my secondary drive) absolutely stopped the issue dead.

Enabling AHCI mode on my newest computer and using an intel G2 SSD did not require this fix (nor is it even an option int he device mamager for the AHCI driver)

Same issue, I figured that it was linked to my SSD or a motherboard issue... (maybe bad caps?) The HDD light stays on but really no other clues to the freeze(s).

Giving this a try I hope this is going to do it.. other suggestions were to do a clean boot... I'm trying both..

EDIT: first re-start after trying the device manager fix, same issue but has run fine after this... keeping fingers crossed...

Problem solved by getting a new MB, Ram and CPU! Nothing wrong with the HDDs, figured it was the MB and chipset (nVidia) on that old board. Doesn't play well with SATA and SSD drives.

 

[qquizz]

Possible fix

I know this is an old post but this exact issue recently happened to me, and it is the first hit on google with the issue's keywords, so maybe this will simple action will help someone with this very frustfrating issue if you don't have one of the "Green" drives mentioned here on this thread.

Unininstall Adobe Flash and Java
Download and install latest Adobe Flash and Java

Worked for me like a charm