Windows 7 Freezes

[HawkAgent]

I've recently reformatted my HD and installed Windows 7, since then I've been getting freezes at random moments. Sometimes I can use the PC for many hours straights without problems, however sometimes the freeze happens just few minutes after boot. The freezes look like this: I can still move the cursor, but when I click start or if I want open a new program nothing happens, however when I was running MFC when freezing and it was still playing a video, I can still watch the entire video without problem, I can even rewind back to watch it again, also I can still move the MFC window.

Hence, I suspect this occurs due to HD failures? Any tools out there that I can use to check that?

Thanks in advance!

[Tripredacus]

It sounds more like a program is taking priority over Explorer. What kind of resources do you have?

- Hard drive free space

- total memory

- number of processes (look in task manager)

[HawkAgent]

It sounds more like a program is taking priority over Explorer. What kind of resources do you have?

- Hard drive free space

- total memory

- number of processes (look in task manager)

Thanks for the reply.

I have one HD, partition 1 (C:) has 7,50GB free space out of 20 GB, partition 2 (D:) has 178 GB free space of 278 GB

I have 2 GB RAM

Number of processes according to task manager including firefox and MSN: 44

[Tripredacus]

There are many programs you can run to test your hard drive. Certain drives have specific tools available, such as SeaTools for Seagate, WD Tools for Western Digital. Take a look at your Event Viewer and see if you have any suspect errors or warnings in there.

[ldb]

I've recently reformatted my HD and installed Windows 7, since then I've been getting freezes at random moments. Sometimes I can use the PC for many hours straights without problems, however sometimes the freeze happens just few minutes after boot. The freezes look like this: I can still move the cursor, but when I click start or if I want open a new program nothing happens, however when I was running MFC when freezing and it was still playing a video, I can still watch the entire video without problem, I can even rewind back to watch it again, also I can still move the MFC window.

Hence, I suspect this occurs due to HD failures? Any tools out there that I can use to check that?

Thanks in advance!

Check to see that you have the latest drivers for your hardware. I would suspect display drivers. Can you ctl/alt/del and bring up task manager after a freeze? If so, you can usually end the program that may be hanging the system. It does not always come up immeduately.

[cluberti]

If you were having HDD I/O blocking, you'd start backing up IRPs, and that video of yours would probably have hung (especially when rewinding). Given what a HDD failure or lockup does to Windows, your symptoms don't match.

I'm with other posters, this is much more likely a driver issue, although I would wager it isn't a video driver issue (again, the video example seems to dispel this - you would likely have seen artifacts and ghosting). What has been installed on the system, driver and software-wise, above and beyond Windows 7?

[sammyagain]

I've recently reformatted my HD and installed Windows 7, since then I've been getting freezes at random moments.

Install the Intel chipset and storage drivers. I was having this same issue until I did that.