Windows 7 freezes

[Jimmy_Banana]

Wow my Norton 360 expires in a few weeks - Norton is poor? What? Why?
Is there a free antivirus you guys recommend?
And by the way, I literally HATE drivers, I have had so much damn trouble with them, it feels like thay are always coming back to haunt me. Looks like I may be tackling them again soon

 

[yodap]

JimmyB How you B?

There are 3 free av's that many members on this forum like.

!- MSE (Microsoft Security Essentials) Maybe the easiest to deal with.

2- Avira Antiver (free version). I use this on 2 computers and like it a lot. There is 1 pop-up a day when the new definitions are downloaded with the free version. (The cost of a very good anti-virus program.) If you choose this one there is a hack to eliminate the pop-up if it get's annoying.

3- Avast Anti-virus. I have very little experience with this one.

When the time comes you will need the Norton Removal Tool to uninstall your current AV properly.

When you're ready check back.

 

[Kalario]

I have used Avast for the last 3 years, no issues.

 

[TrainableMan]

I literally HATE drivers, I have had so much damn trouble with them

Without drivers your computer wouldn't be much more than a paperweight. If you think of it like a human language then your CPU speaks chinese and a logitech mouse speaks dutch and your Microsoft keyboard speaks French and your AMD video card speaks English. Each driver is like a translator which allows the devices to speak with the CPU. Without the translator NOTHING would get done. The problem occurs if you put a translator that speaks English and German in to try and communicate between your mouse and CPU - none of them understand each other. And just like languages every few years we add new words to our vocabulary and you need to update your driver to be more efficient. Also if you pop in a new Spanish speaking keyboard well, of course, you have to get a new driver for translating that.

So yes, finding the right driver can be difficult, but without it nothing communicates properly.

 

[Jimmy_Banana]

Thanks for the info guys, as I was eager a few hours ago, I installed AVG free as I have used it before without any problems, then I uninstalled Norton.

Report: So far (a few hours) the freezes definately seem less frequent, I was becomming extremely excited then alas I was hit with a big freeze. Definately less frequent, but now it feels like everything is hanging a little, it feels as if there is going to be a freeze, but processes only hang for a few seconds then get on with what I paid them for
There was a large post in this thread outlining steps to take in problem locating beginning with a virus scan and dust clean - can anyone direct me to what page or post number that was please?

Cheers

 

[yodap]

Oops, bad move.

You will be best served to unload that POC! Sooner than later. Or get 2x4 and start whacking yourself with it because you will feel less pain doing that than dealing with AVG.

BTW, can we assume you have a 64bit system?

 

[TrainableMan]

Jimmy, I think I've said it before in this thread but when it reachs 55 pages I figure people just skim the info so I will mention it again. Download Process Explorer and keep it running in a window off to the side of your screen so that when you do freeze up you can see what process is using your CPU.

 

[Jimmy_Banana]

Gees so AVG is bad and NORTON is bad? I must say (aside from freezing problems and power hungry devouring which is beyond me) neither have ever caused me any problems - at all :/
I am on 32 bit, it is better for the software I use.
MrMan thanks I will do that now and post back when I have some more info, but I don't know if I will be able to view the window once a freeze is taking over. Cheers.

 

[TrainableMan]

All Anti-virus programs slow down your computer, some just worse than others. And some that worked fine in XP don't work as smoothly in W7.

I currently use Norton IS and though it is only a 32bit application (meaning I have next to no protection if I use a 64-bit browser instead of 32-bit) it seems to work with minimal impact on my system but some people have experienced problems. Because of the number and variations of drivers out there an incompatibility with one person may not be for another.

If you are in this thread then changing out your current AV software for active scanning with MSE (Microsoft Security Essentials) and passive (manually triggered) scanning by Malwarebytes is a good test to see if it is your AV software. You can find links to these programs on our freeware utilities page.

 

[Jimmy_Banana]

Ok thanks I will try MSE, it will work like a normal anti virus right - I mean, will I be protected like I would with Norton360?

Anyway, I opened up a whole bunch of stuff and forced a freeze and captured an image of Process Explorer for your perusal. Apart from the many programs opened and "Record" (my music software), does anything look strange?

 

[TorrentG]

Make sure you use the tools for both Norton/Symantec AND AVG, in safe mode:

AV Uninstallers - Windows 7 Forums

Reboot and install MSE.

 

[TrainableMan]

Was that picture actually taken during a freeze? Because I see under 5% CPU utilization. When I had freezes I was hitting over 50% utilization.

I'm curious, does it only happen when you are running your torrent application? or only when you are running AudioDG?

When you say freezes, what is freezing? The mouse stops responding? Windows open slowly? Browser refresh is slow?

 

[Jimmy_Banana]

During this freeze, all that happened was Windows Media Player froze for a short time.
It does not stop happening when torrent is not running or my Music software is not running, if that is what you mean by AudioDG - otherwise what is that?
This is good I feel like we are at least getting somewhere.
Definitions of freezing on my PC:
INTERNET EXPLORER: it can happen at any time, even just opening it and going to hotmail or something, but more often it tends to be when I have multiple tabs open. During the freeze that round loading circle next to my cursor shows up and spins, the tabs will not work (cant change to other pages), nothing on the actual pages will work as there is no response to mouse clicks or typing, sometimes the page will become white and dulled out in this colour for a time. Youtube videos seem to lose the visual (freezes) but audio continues, unless it is a more severe freeze. During this I hover my mouse over the taskbar and I have the option to open things so it is not like a system freeze. It is usually impossible to minimize IE during this.
MEDIA PLAYERS: Always in WMP, however my other media players have similar freezes. I am at the point now where I pretty much can not listen to a 3 minute mp3 without a freeze >: ( Video will play perfectly then at any given moment will freeze for 1/2 a second, play for 1/2 a second and repeat this process continually at its leisure until it freezes for multiple minutes - sometimes the screen will go white inside the media player. I have access to my taskbar but can not minimize the media player or access any of its functions.
SYSTEM: Less common than the above, but becomming more frequent. Usually I have access to the pinned programs on my taskbar. Say I want to open a folder in my C: drive, I will open it and sometimes it shows nothing and just takes a loooong time loading, the green bar that normally flies across the top goes very slowly. This is totally random as sometimes it can open in a split second. The same goes for my other drive that does not have Windows.

 

[chris_k]

Hi Everyone,

I'm the new guy. This thread is top of Google when I searched on windows 7 freeze.

I just put together a pretty amazing machine for my CAD work. My company actually is all ubuntu linux, but there are a few programs in house that require windows. Rhinoceros 3D CAD is one of them. A project I'm working on brought a core 2 duo to its knees, which brought me here.

MSI nVidia motherboard NF750-G55, AMD 2.4G X6 cpu, 4G RAM, and a nVidia Quadro fx3800 card. This system rocks! But Rhino doesn't. All my rendering is choked to one core at 100%, which swaps between the 6 cores. And takes a minute. Other than these occasional moments of waiting around, this computer screams and I have 40 or 50 hours of CAD work on it.

So now I'm trying something new... Read up on overclocking and picked up a AMD Phenom II X2 560 Black Edition and the identical part number of 4 more G of RAM. And a huge cpu fan. Taking the incremental approach, I just want to boot the machine up with the new toys before dorking about with overclocking. Cool, it works, starting to set things up like the 3 more fans, blah blah blah. The BIOS finds and unlocks the other 2 cores, turning my X2 3.3G into a X4 3.3G. Sweet. Just like the internet said. On and off a bunch of more times and then I'm waiting while it installs a windows update.

Start up ... and is the first time I see the safe mode screen. It offered to try to find and fix the problem. I let it (takes about 15 minutes) and it wanted to do a restore. No. And then started up like normal... Get on the Net (using chrome), going to research a little...

... aaaaaannnnnnnd Freeze! Always happened within 3 or 5 minutes of starting. Never sooner, never later. (until this time right now). On and off LOTS of more times with hard shutdowns. The most common occurrance I could link it to was resizing a window. It seems I almost always resize windows...

On my drive home from work with the computer, I changed the BIOS to "DCT Unganged Mode" Disabled which I interpreted as use the two 4G RAM sticks as Dual channel. Since adding the 2nd RAM stick to my motherboard, this is the 1st time I have booted and it didn't freeze.

I'll report more if I can glean anymore anecdotal evidence while now embarking on overclocking...

 

[chris_k]

here's a crash...

Well, here we go! I am on my 2nd overclock. CPU multiplier was 16.5 at start, then 17, and now 18. CPU clock is 3.8GHz

I saw the post a few back about Process Explorer and I had it running, always on top ... so I took a picture of the frozen screen. Oddly, after quite a while, the mouse responded to input, but only for a moment then it locked up again, so I hard reset.

nVidia monitor was up there, so I went ahead and uninstalled it. More news as it happens... while I seriously doubt that it was causing the freeze issue, I did remember occasional pop-ups about a missing DLL or some such, that probably was related to it.

Yaaay,
Chris

 

[chris_k]

Interesting screenshot. A window popped up and said something crashed. So I fired up the event viewer (also mentioned in this thread) and some text from the details.

explorer.exe crashed ...? If anyone wants the full XML from the event viewer, I can put it up too.

So, I'm just trying to help ... if I'm too chatty, someone let me know to shuddup.

 

[Jimmy_Banana]

Excuse me, hello.
I have a bit of a more serious problem now. A day or two ago I removed Norton and installed AVG as a temporary attempt to see if this was causing freezing issues. I now have a very badly running computer, I am very deep in an assignement and I need to have multiple IE tabs open and everything is moving very slowly, it runs fine and at normal speeds also, but things like closing a tab cause a temporary freeze every time. Something is not right. As I am extremely busy I must ask that some of you knowledgeable people take a look at this image and see if it screams out anything in particular to you, I have not seen thins before. Please dont give a biased opinion due to me using AVG at the moment, if there is something that needs to be done immediately please let me know. It either looks like this or the right CP Usage box spikes intermittently on it's own not reflecting the left box:

 

[clifford_cooley]

Please dont give a biased opinion due to me using AVG at the moment

I'm sorry but that's all the advice I can give, biased or not. I used AVG for a day or two and had a similar experience. If you un-install AVG, I think your system will go back to normal, what ever that was before you installed anyway.

 

[Jimmy_Banana]

Ok, changed over to MSE, will report later on progress.

 

[Jimmy_Banana]

Just as a quick update, the new problem is completely gone.