windows 7 freezes

[Epic621]

I am not a computer person so I don't understand a lot of what ppl are talking about... but I just bought a brand new Dell Studio XPS with an Intel Core2 Duo processor and Windows 7 freezes all the time - sometimes 15 times a day. Help!

your first mistake was buying a Dell. I don't know if they still do it, but they used to ship their machines with RAM that was a slower speed than the motherboard specs.

 

[clifford_cooley]

your first mistake was buying a Dell. I don't know if they still do it.

Seeing that you don't know what Dell does now, I can only assume you don't know if buying a Dell was a mistake. My first thought was that this is common not only to Dell but to all name brand PC makers.

 

[quix]

My Dell XPS m1330 has no issues whatsoever with windows 7... It's my custom built desktop that had the freezing issues.

 

[Epic621]

Seeing that you don't know what Dell does now, I can only assume you don't know if buying a Dell was a mistake. My first thought was that this is common not only to Dell but to all name brand PC makers.

I don't know about that, My HP laptop has all of the right hardware, the Dell desktop and laptop my wife had BOTH had the wrong RAM, not to mention every Dell desktop at the last company I did IT for. You get what you pay for.

 

[Epic621]

I wouldn't be surprised if this were the answer. Everyone search "Machine Throttling". I haven't had a freeze since my reinstall, but I have had a host of new problems with Windows explorer crashing and MSI based installs failing, but this fixed it. I really wouldn't be surprised if it were related.

 

[Nibiru2012]

When I worked for Fry's Electronics for 4 years, over 60% of the computers that came in for repairs were DELL! This in Austin, TX Home of Dell Computers!

Pretty sad state of quality if you ask me. Our techs constantly complained of the really poor grade of hardware Dell used.

 

[Epic621]

See, Niburu knows what I'm talking about. Dells are like the Yugo's of computers.

 

[newcomputerfail]

Well, I was running well for a couple days.

I woke up today, and I have had to restart my machine over ten times.

I find it very odd that it only happens SOME OF THE TIME.
My computer has become a middle-aged wife. It only wants to please me SOME OF THE TIME.

I have, unfortunately for Microsoft, narrowed my problem down to the Windows Services. Whenever I run in Safe Mode (where I am, now) or when I recently restarted negating the bottom half of computer services, all was well.
WORKSTATION (as mentioned in the other, bigger thread) and PREFETCH do not interfere or cause freezing for ME, as I disabled them but still had freezes.

I guess I'm going to play the same boring, tedious game that the gentleman in the other thread played:
Slowly moving through the list of Services, disabling one at a time.

SIGGGGHHHHH.

 

[arondee]

I've taken quite a few computers to Windows 7 at work that operate just perfectly but not at home. I have 2 PC's with Win 7 at home, 1 works just great with Win 7, the other is a Gateway Laptop MP8708 and Windows 7 freezes on it all the time. When I'm typing, sometimes when I move my mouse wrong, all the time when I'm doing something memory intensive like using Lightroom or photoshop. It freezes for about 30 seconds to 1 minute, I can move the mouse around but it looks like a spinning circle and then it magically unfreezes. It slows me down so much throughout the day. I have all the newest driver updates for my PC, I just switched the laptop from Balanced to High performance as suggested and we'll see what happens. I can't stand this OS anymore, I may have to take a day or two to get myself back to XP. This laptop worked perfectly on Vista and on XP and I reformatted when I went to Win 7. I've got a bachelors degree in CS so I know what I'm doing, but I can't for the life of me figure out what's wrong with this OS.

 

[Epic621]

@arondee: I think most of us here are suffering from a total freeze, a hard lock. When my system freezes (it did today for the first time since the reinstall) it does NOT recover. Today when mine froze, it was idle. I walked away and when I came back, it was locked up.

 

[newcomputerfail]

@arondee: I think most of us here are suffering from a total freeze, a hard lock. When my system freezes (it did today for the first time since the reinstall) it does NOT recover. Today when mine froze, it was idle. I walked away and when I came back, it was locked up.

Agreed. Mine is a total lock.
Also, it does commonly happen when idling.

After this full day of Disabling various Services, I think I have found MY culprit:
Windows Update.

When I enable it, it causes the freezing. This may only be for me - who knows.
I'll update on this thread as new developments arise.

 

[Epic621]

After this full day of Disabling various Services, I think I have found MY culprit:
Windows Update.

It figures. I think we will all be able to trace our issues back to a windows process or service one way or another.

 

[Epic621]

ok, so on a lark, I decided to troubleshoot compatibility on every program that I am running on my machine. Guess what. They are ALL incompatible, including Outlook 2007. Windows 7 wants them all to run in compatibility mod with XP SP2. Now I know these programs are a little bit older, Adobe CS4: XP SP2, Google Chrome: XP SP2. Before I know it, I'll have every program and app I own running in compatibility mode with xp. I could have saved myself $140 and stayed with XP. Ridiculous. It freezes and seems to be compatible with NOTHING, Sorry, just had to vent and I know most of you in this thread already feel my pain.

 

[Nibiru2012]

I find a lot of these statements about freezes, lockups and not compatible puzzling. I am using MS Office 2007; no problems. I am running every program I ever used on XP Pro with no problems. The ONLY program that won't run is Window Washer.

I have never had any freeze issues, lockups, or BSOD.

I did a clean install of Windows 7 and I think this is the difference. Now I know that about 20% of users are experiencing the "DVD drive not showing" issues. That has now been shown to be an adjustment to the registry settings.

I will admit when I built this new system I'm using now, I did have a few issues at first because of a new motherboard and my first time using SATA drives. Tweaking the BIOS settings were a lot of trial and error for me, after a couple of days though I figured it all out and then re-installed Windows 7 and it runs like a champ.

One thing I have learned many years ago is just because during the OS installation some drivers were automatically installed. Most of the time drivers need to be updated with the latest versions available. Also, some drivers need to be actually installed through the Device Manager rather than just running the executable. I have found that to be true with the Intel Info chipset drivers and AHCI drivers.

 

[Epic621]

Just to clarify, I'm not running these programs in compatibility mode. If I follow the recommendations of the compatibility trouble shooter then I would have to. Just try running it on any ms office 2007 app and it will tell you it is not compatible. as far as the drivers, I too have installed them from the device manager as I have had similar experiences. But I'm still getting freezes, mostly when the machine is idle, for no apparent reason. I've already done the services check and there is no clean cut answer there because what is causing it today is not what causes it tomorrow. One day I'll turn my computer on and there will be an update from microsoft and my computer will reboot and never freeze again, I hope. But for now I'm going to grasp at any straw I can. I don't know about the rest of you but I view each problem like a game. I don't go out looking to get a virus but if my machine becomes infected, my mind set is "alright, bring it, then." If there is a malfunction or a crash, I will find the answer, no matter how long it takes. It might come from one of you or from somewhere else, but if I don't try everything and give every piece of information, every little change that occurs or even the most mundane of experiences, I might miss out on the answer. You guys might see something, that I don't or something that I post might get you guys thinking a certain way that will give us a clue that could lead to the answer. So if it seems like I'm just posting something that seems unrelated or unnecessary, I apologize but it is part of my process.

 

[Epic621]

Is anyone using Zone Alarm or any other third party firewall?
Edit:
Nevermind that, even though when I installed their free firewall to check compatibility it caused a freeze I've moved on to what I think may be a solution. Anyone running cool and quiet or Q Fan, or both. Disable them. If I am right, they are causing the instability by automatically adjusting voltages on a bios level causing windows to become unresponsive.

 

[newcomputerfail]

Is anyone using Zone Alarm or any other third party firewall?
Edit:
Nevermind that, even though when I installed their free firewall to check compatibility it caused a freeze I've moved on to what I think may be a solution. Anyone running cool and quiet or Q Fan, or both. Disable them. If I am right, they are causing the instability by automatically adjusting voltages on a bios level causing windows to become unresponsive.

That's a good idea, about the cool and quiet disabling. Why is the green movement so powerful? Why do I care about using extra electricity, if it means my machine will run properly (or at all). University is making me even MORE cynical. Didn't know this was possible. NO. I WILL NOT RANT. WILL NOT.

Anyway...

This post will also serve as an update so anyone who cares will take note that disabling Windows Update has made my computer run perfectly smooth.
I feel like the programmers at Windows are all sadists - or perhaps they hate those who are not Windows programmers.

 

[Epic621]

That's all right. It froze a little while later, while idling any way. I'm going to buy a Mac. This shit is annoying and has consumed the better part of 2 months. I'll try disabling windows update and if that doesn't work than I'm going to buy a Mac and to hell with windows.

 

[newcomputerfail]

that's intense. you must really hate this OS.

on my front, disabling windows update worked just fine, for me. in fact, with the advice taken from this thread, i have managed to also set up a Torrent program without freezes, anymore.

so, personally, im doing alright.

goodluck to the rest of you.

 

[quix]

that's intense. you must really hate this OS.

on my front, disabling windows update worked just fine, for me. in fact, with the advice taken from this thread, i have managed to also set up a Torrent program without freezes, anymore.

so, personally, im doing alright.

goodluck to the rest of you.

That's great to hear!
I wasn't expecting this to be the workstation service like it was for me, but rather a service corruption due to a windows update.

Want to go about trying to fix it?
%systemroot%\\system32\\wuaueng.dll is the relevant .dll file.

Now, to fix the service:
After you've tracked down the correct .dll file, locate it in windows explorer, change it's permissions so you can modify the file (do this by opening the properties of the file, and in the security tab's advanced page, first change ownership to yourself, then give yourself permissions to modify the file). Once this is done, you can rename the file to <filename>_CORRUPT.dll. Now, as far as your system is concerned, the file is MIA and the only fix is replacing it with a copy from the repository.
Click Start, type in cmd and right click the icon to run it as Administrator.
In the command prompt window, type sfc /scannow
This will run a system file scan and discover the missing/corrupted file, and then repair it by getting a clean copy from the repository.

Once this is done, go back to Start, type and run services, then find the faulty process and enable it. Restart your machine and see if this fixed your problem.

sfc is a windows system tool, so don't worry about running it. If it doesn't find any corrupt/missing services then it just doesn't do anything (actually, if you don't rename the file so it cannot find it, it still won't do anything...)