Windows 7 freezes

[GerryLP]

Hi all. Not to bore everyone with all my details, but I'd like to pose a potential solution to the "freeze" problem and get feedback on if it worked or not.

My interest lies in the fact that a friend from Microsoft doesn't believe my solution "solved" the problem. Yet there is no other explanation from the folks in Redmond.

Okay-the setup. Dual core AMD X64, 1 gig memory, initially started with Biostar on-board video but upgraded to this from NewEgg: SAPPHIRE 100252HDMI Radeon HD 4550 512MB 64-bit GDDR3 PCI Express 2.0 x16 HDCP Ready CrossFire Supported Low Profile Ready Video Card

Freeze problem both with on-board video and new card.

Turned off aero, still froze.

Plugged in a formatted drive that worked on another computer, still froze (worked on the other PC just fine).

FINALLY-the solution. In an obscure post, as well as an "event viewer" alarm about Kernel-Pwr that was dismissed by MS friend, I changed the power profile from "balanced" to "high performance".

Lemme just restate the fix (for me, anyway): I changed the power profile from "balanced" to "high performance" and no freezes at all, even running youtube videos, etc.

Oh-I also tried installing a D-Link PCI ethernet card. Still froze while watching youtube vids.

Well, good luck everyone. Hope to hear back with some good news!

Dale

No. I am experiencing screen freezes with the power management at performance. New Win 7 install, though.

GerryLP

 

[nevica]

I really recommend Paretologic Health Advisor. I have had the same issues you are having. I had a problem with drivers and Paretologic fixed all of these.

 

[TrainableMan]

I never heard of Paretologic Health Advisor but I see they do offer a free scan; do you use the free portion or do you really need to pay for the real edition to get any value?

 

[nevica]

Yes, you will need to pay to have your comp cleaned.

Just for your info, On a new installation of Windows 7 64 bit I found that I had problem with frequent blue screens and freezes. When I ran paretologic Health Advisor I found that it cured all the problems. Hope this helps.

Nevica

 

[TrainableMan]

There are too many good free products like CCleaner, I would never pay for that.

 

[Santent]

3 days ago i made a complete new system and was experiencing all of the same problems everyone else is having.. random system freezes (anywhere from about 1 to 20 minutes after boot up). Here are my specs:

Motherboard: ASUS M4A79XTD EVO 790X AM3 RT
Graphics: EVGA 012-P3-1470-AR GTX470
PSU: ANTEC| TP-750 750W RT
CPU: AMD | PH 2 X4 965 3.4 ghz AM3 RT
Memory: 4g x 2 | GSKILL F3-12800 CL9D-8GBRL
HD: 500G | WD WD5002AALX %
OS: Win Home Premium 7 64-Bit OEM
Case: Antec 900

Everything went perfectly, I installed windows just fine.. booted up for the first time just fine. The first drivers i installed was for the motherboard (which inluded drivers for the LAN / Display ). I installed the Display driver.. knowing i was going to be deleting it later for my Video cards driver. Later this would prove tedious because i couldnt get the Driver CD for my video card to recognize that my card was even plugged in. I had to uninstall and disable the driver, restart.. go to NVidias website and manually download and install the Video Card Driver.
The reason i tell this story is that i thought this was the issue to the freezing. I thought something had gone wrong in the drivers for the Video card somehow. I am sort of ranting with no purpose, so let me get down to the point.

Here are the things i tried to do to fix this freezing problem but with no success:

Updated the Drivers for the following:
Video Card, Onboard Lan
Updated Windows 7 (i also ran that patch a few pages before this).
Changed to High Performance and disabled anything reducing power / hibernating.

This left me with 1 option, the ram. I am using DDR3 1600 Mhz ram. On further exploration into The jumper free settings in BIOS i found that the voltage was set to Automatic, along with the RAM Speed. I changed the Voltage to 1.5v for DDR3, and the speed to 1600. 3 Days later i am yet to have another freeze. Ive been playing games forever and i also left youtube running for about an hour last night.

SO, WHAT FIXED THIS PROBLEM FOR ME?
Changing the RAM speed and voltage in the BIOS.

(Go to BIOS Settings, Power > Jumper Free Configuration > Somewhere in here)

Hope this helps someone fix this problem, it sure does make your day amazing to fix this crap!

 

[johnbunion]

This worked for me

I tried everything to fix the freezing problem.

Dont ask me why this worked but....

After installing Internet Explorer 9 the freezing problem completely disappeared and my computer is back to running at full speed again.

Note, I dont mean that it is just the browser which has speeded up, the whole system is now fantastically smooth and fast.

 

[existme]

@johnbunion I think you are right. I reached the same conclusion, maybe IE9 fixes lsass problem. The only problem is that i don't know why I cannot install IE9 on some systems...

 

[Super Sarge]

IE 9 is only for Vista and W7 not for XP

 

[existme]

@Super Sarge All of them are 7... and this thread is for 7 freezes as I remember

 

[Super Sarge]

Yes the forum is W7, however being a member on many different forums, I have seen questions asked that were not applicable to thread or forum

 

[WillyDiddly]

Freezing started with SP1

Ok so for me, it all started with installing Win7 service pack 1.. I wanted to install it, but I was getting an error message saying that it was unable to install the SP.. to make a long story short, I had to repair the Win7 installation from dvd, which allowed me to install the damned SP1.. undergoing all the trouble to install the SP, when I was done I realised that the system started freezing. Completely dead like after hitting with a hammer on the head.. the screen freezes, mouse freezes, keyboard doesnt respond to caps lock switch... it's just completely frozen, I have to restart the PC, and then it freezes again.. there is a certain system to the freezes, cuz it always freezes twice (tho lately it started even 3 times) in a row... So the solution seemed to be clear - uninstall the SP1..I did so, everything seemed to be fine..but the other day 2 windows updates popped up, so I installed them and welcome back, the freezing was back again.. so i thought i'm gonna delete the updates and solve the problem.. deleted first one, still kept freezing, but then i started uninstalling the 2nd one, but what do you know, right in the middle of uninstalling it the pc froze..i had to reboot and after that, the update was gone from the list of updates, tho clearly still not uninstalled completely as it didnt have time to finish the uninst.proces .. didnt know what to do, win update popped up another like 7 updates.. so i was thinking "ok since lot of people are having this issue, maybe the updates will fix it again" so i installed all of them, as they were labeled as important anyway...
well the outcome is: I keep on getting freezes.. it always freezes more than once, i restart the computer, and get another freeze, restart again sometimes its ok for the rest of the day, sometimes I get another freeze.. and at the top of the freezes i started getting a BSOD ...
So I'm pretty sure the freezes are related to WinUpdates...
If anyone has a solution it would be great...

 

[Jimmy_Banana]

...ok since lot of people are having this issue...

I hear that! Where is the damn service pack to fix this horrible problem?

 

[waarez]

I've been experiencing the same problem many had. My system was starting to freeze after W7 ultimate 64 bit started up. The moment my desktop showed, everything was irresponsive. I could open task manager and browse through my disks but that was it. I couldn't open any program or installed software.

I tried out a lot:

- Restoring W7 to earlier point (this helped but I had to do this almost everytime I rebooted my computer)
- I tried to find something out of the ordinary in my startup files when I booted in safe mode. This had no result.
- AVG tune up, malwarebytes, cc cleaner, nothing helped.

What did SOLVE MY PROBLEM:

- As someone else already mentioned on the forum: Install Internet Explorer 9,
so I googled internet explorer. Downloaded it for Windows 7 Ultimate 64 bit and installed it (did this in safe mode). I then restarted my system, it did some automatic updates while starting up due to the install of internet explorer 9. Everything worked again!

I'm very thankful to all of you working out several solutions! The mods are doing a great job aswell! Keep up the great work.

 

[akilby]

Thanks for your suggestion about changing the power mode to High Performance (not Balanced which is default) I have a Dell E6510 Laptop, W7 64. Since I had this workstation, I've had the freeze problem. NO ONE in our division has a laptop that is their only workstation, so couldn't get any sympathy there..... IT was less than helpful ("I never saw that!"). Although I believe this is a bug that either Microsoft or Dell (whoever is responsible) needs to fix, at least I have what may be a good workaround. I've been running for 3 days since I made the "adjustment", NO FREEZE ! Thanks again for the tip.

 

[Jimmy_Banana]

I have a solution to this problem after two years of freezing, which has killed my important workflow many times (and now my tower has a small dent in it).
I have scoured the internet and there is a good chance your problem is your anti virus software, even something like MSE.
SOLUTION:
You will need: 2 computers.
One of your computers will be online and have anti virus software installed, and the other will not be online and it also will not have an anti virus program installed. Anything you download, you scan, then transfer to your offline computer. Work from your offline computer, watch movies listen to music and anything else that requires you to work uninterrupted, do this all on your offline computer.
Your online computer is now your "sh*t" computer, and it always will be no matter what anti virus you have installed if it has a live scan feature. Get used to it. Buy a cheaper computer with 2 or 4Gb RAM and enjoy the loveliness of the speed it gives you.

 

[TrainableMan]

I have scoured the internet and there is a good chance your problem is your anti virus software, even something like MSE.
SOLUTION:
You will need: 2 computers.

That is more of a work-around than a solution.

Unfortunately there can be many causes to freezing and that is why there are so many solutions that work for some and not for others.

For custom built machines it is very often RAM incompatibility or voltage/timing settings and generally accompanied by BSODs.

Sometimes it may be as simple as setting the power options to maximum performance and disabling options like "allow the HD to sleep/hibernate".

Yes, your computer must have enough CPU muscle to run your AV software because they ALL slow the machine to some extent. But AV software varies greatly and what seems to slow one machine works pretty well on another so you may need to try different manufacturers,

Some machines are just too old; they do not have the processing speed to keep up with today's higher demands. I remember when PCs first became common in business we would depreciate them over 10 years, today the lifespan of a computer is probably 3 to 5 years.

Many people with slower internet connections also don't realize the difference between their computer being slow and their internet connection being slow. If your bandwidth is under 3Mbps then this could mean your computer is not responsible, it may be your internet connection. If it is only videos or music from the internet but things play fine from your harddrive then this may be the issue.

 

[Jimmy_Banana]

Yes I completely understand the way in which my puter is freezing and it aint the internet, matter of fact the puter in question has been offline for almost 6 months. For the computers lifespan (2 years) it has randomly frozen at an average of 20 - 30 times a day.
This is a solution for me, just wish I had of come to this conclusion earlier, my lovely puter is running lovelili.
I want to say thank you, to all the friendly people here who are always willing to help and share information.

 

[Digerati]

For the computers lifespan (2 years) it has randomly frozen at an average of 20 - 30 times a day.

That's not random, that's a chronic problem, clearly an indication of hardware - either heat related, bad RAM, flaky PSU, leaky capacitors, bad motherboard, failing graphics, foreign object under motherboard, bad attached device, any number of things - which is exactly why it is so hard to troubleshoot - troubleshooting is done by eliminating possibilities. And when there are 1000s of possibilities, that can take some time.

A 2nd computer is not a fix. You still have a computer that is freezing.

"Freezing" is a symptom for just about anything that can go wrong with a computer (regardless the operating system used), and it is as descriptive of the problem as saying to a mechanic over the phone, "my car won't run".

I say, "over the phone" because like troubleshooting computers over forums, we cannot touch, feel, smell or see first hand, what is going on. This greatly limits using our experiences to quickly narrow down the possibilities.

That's why I really don't like this thread. It is fine for "general discussion" but each real problem should handled in its own thread. Of the nearly 1 Billion Windows computers out there, each and every one became a unique, individualized machine within the first 10 minutes after being turned on the very first time. Networking will be different. Security software (a biggie) will be different. Desktop settings, email, resolutions, productivity software, you name it - no one wants to be exactly like everyone else.

The beauty of Windows has always been how highly customizable it is - so every computer user CAN have a unique system. But that flexibility clearly has its downside too.

 

[fisherman2876]

Win7 Freezes

I've traced my issues to an old P5 motherboard with on-board video. ASUS is not supporting Win7 specifically. In my case the on-board video drivers are Vista compatible but since ASUS no longer supports this MB with Win7 there is no updated drivers. The driver compatibility issue is the video driver, causing crashes with I use my Logitech web cam.
Windows tells me specifically it was the video when it recovers. Maybe this will help or perhaps someone has a suggestion for me. Just recently did a fresh install of Win7 on this old MB, so haven't tried compatibility mode yet.