Solved Windows 7 periodically Freezes.

[Indianatone]

I just looked at my WER Service and it is set to manual. You can get to it by Admin Tools, Computer management Services.

 

[Tweakit]

My WER Service was also set to Manual. I just set to "Disable." I'll have to see what the result is.

 

[gregrocker]

You should NOT have to stop any Windows services to get proper performance.

Work through these Troubleshooting Steps for Windows 7 to cover all baseshttp://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials/220165-troubleshooting-steps-windows-7-a.html

 

[Indianatone]

I noticed you have a TV tuner in the PC? Is it possible that is the cause, saving a recording?
Other than that you should follow Gregrockers advice.
System Explorer System Explorer - CNET Download.com
has an icon which when enabled will show hard drive writes.

 

[Tweakit]

Gregrocker and Indianatone,
Thanks for your suggestions. I figured that I shouldn’t have to turn off WER Service so to have done that is more of a Band-Aid than an actual solution. I’m going to run with it off for another five days or so. If I get no freezes in that time it will tell us that the problem is related to WER Service and that knowledge should help with the debug. Then I’ll work through the troubleshooting suggestions gregrocker made though many of them have already been done. Yes, I do have a TV Tuner on this machine but I’m not doing any recording with it and the Freezes occur when it’s off. WMC periodically updates the programming guide but that is not causing any known problems. I have verified when the Freezes occur that the programming guide is not being updated so I don’t think WMC is the problem. I’ll keep you posted but it’s probably going to take a while to plow thru the list gregrocker submitted. Thanks again for the suggestions.

 

[Indianatone]

You are very welcome, good luck. May be when your memory issues were giving you grief it messed with windows so don't be surprised if a clean install with good memory settings will fix it
Good Luck.

 

[Tweakit]

Problem solved

OK, I'm happy to say that after nearly three years of living with an expensive computer that periodically freezes, the problem is now solved! After heading down countless dead-ends, many tests (including testing the Velociraptor C: Drive), many driver and other updates etc, etc I became increasingly suspicious that the Velociraptor System Drive was the culprit. Yes, very insidious especially since no errors were ever logged.
Using the Windows 7 backup software, I imaged the Velociraptor Drive and then restored the image to different hard drive. Bingo! The system works fine now. Very stable and I've never seen the freeze problem or any other problem since the hard drive change!
BTW, this is not the first time I've found a difficult, intermittent problem was the result of faulty hard drive. Hopefully this finding will be of some value to others. I'm marking this thread as "Solved."

 

[gregrocker]

Glad to hear it.

Did you run the HD maker's extended CD scan on the HD to ascertain its condition? It was one of the Troubleshooting Steps for Windows 7 in the tutorial I linked you six months ago.

Western Digital Data Lifeguard CD ISO (extract first)

 

[Tweakit]

Gregrocker,
I ran Data Lifeguard v1.24 found here:
http://support.wdc.com/product/download.asp?groupid=612&sid=3&lang=en
I ran all of the non-destructive sata drive tests and found no problems. Of course this problem was very intermittent and sometimes did not show itself for a few days in a row so if the problem wasn’t there when the test was run then the test may not have found it. Also, I rather doubt that the drive issue was a platter media issue but more likely an electronic circuit issue. It appears the drive never made errors but rather became unavailable during a “Freeze” event. This could explain why no errors were ever logged during a Freeze making debug more challenging and testing less conclusive. This is in part why I choose to rule out the Velociraptor drive by using an imaged drive in its place as described in my last post.
Anyway, it’s really nice to have this thing working properly! Also, thanks for the tutorial link. I’ve saved that in my tool kit!
Tweakit

 

[gf1234]

Similar problem resolved slightly differently

I had the same issue - seems to have gone away after archiving old error reports.

Full thread is here: http://www.sevenforums.com/performa...ort-freezes-accompanied-4624-4672-events.html