System intermittently freezing for a few seconds at a time?

[Mike Fishcake]

A bit of a long winded one this, but big karma points (and a kiss from Jesus) for helping me with this issue...

My PC keeps intermittently freezing for about 5 seconds at a go. Completely stops responding. No mouse response, no keyboard response, the HDD light on the case stays on constantly and if there's any sound playing, the sound "sticks" as well.

Problem is, it doesn't do it all the time. I first noticed it after installing the drivers for my Belkin F5D7000 wireless NIC, so I did a system restore to an earlier point without the drivers and it hasn't done it for a week or so. However, it started to do it yesterday again. Booted XP up from cold after it being off for a few hours and it took ages and ages to boot (at *least* twice as long as normal). On the Welcome screen of XP, it froze. then carried on for a while. It then carried on freezing for 5-ish seconds every half a minute or so. But after a reboot, it froze just once more then carried on working problem-free for several hours.

Turned it on this morning and it's frozen about 3 times in the last half hour as well.

It doesn't do it when I'm doing anything particularly system intensive; it could be booting up, it could be idle, it could be when i'm on the web, it could be when i'm video editing.

It could do it from cold, or it could do it after the system being on for hours.

It could do it every 30 seconds or so, or it could do it every 30 minutes or so.

At first I thought it was a temperature problem, because whacking up the fan speed seemed to solve it for a week or two. However it's back now, but not as serious as it was before.

Things to note:

- The system isn't OC'd.
- My system spec is under "my system" over there <<<< Plus there are 2xIDE and 1xSATA in there, 1x Lite-on SH17AS SATA DVDRW drive, 1x Belkin Wireless NIC (no driver loaded at the moment) and a Thomson Speedtouch 330 USB ADSL modem. Mobo is Rev 1.0.
- Under the Task Manager "Performance" panel, the CPU usage history for the first core shoots up to 100% CPU usage after the system has frozen.
- Whilst the system is in the frozen state, the HDD light stays constantly on.
- The Gigabyte Easy Tune Hardware Monitor sees VCoreA as anything between 1.220 and 1.340, which can vary within seconds. 3.3v is 3.320, 12v is 11.920, CPU Vid is static at 1.320. CPUZ reports "Voltage" as anything from 1.168 to 1.328, again varying within seconds.*
- The system temp is 34 degrees, the CPU temp is 33 degrees and the GPU temp is currently at 50 degrees.
- I've stress tested the system with SiSoft Sandra, found nothing
- Ran Memtest86+ for a couple of hours, passed several times
- I've ran several extended tests on all the HDDs
- I've virus/spyware checked it
- It can happen at any point; from idle to 100% CPU utilisation, running any programs.
- I've disabled several things in MSconfig.

If anyone has any suggestions on anything to try, or knows of any issuse with any of the above components, I would be most, most grateful.

Thanks in advance

* FWIW, what's the difference between CPU Vid and VCoreA?

[Howard]

I reckon it's a knackered hard drive, they do sometimes stall the system if they're trying to read/write from bad sectors.

It could also be software-related, i.e some system service/process hogging all the resources for a short time. I used to have it happen with LCDC, so I just uninstalled it.


Reformatting might be a bit of a drastic step at this point though.

Check the system/application event logs after it's done it, see if you notice anything suspect.

[chrestomanci]

Sounds like you have a dodgy process that is eating up all your CPU time.

In the task manager, go to the processes tab, and add collums for CPU time, usage and priority. If you sort by usage, you should find your dodgy process, probably running at realtime priority.

[Nigelz]

You could also try running perfmon, adding in devices like CPU, HDD throughput etc, that should give you an indication of what is causing the problem.

[Mike Fishcake]

I reckon it's a knackered hard drive, they do sometimes stall the system if they're trying to read/write from bad sectors.

I have run diags on all the HDDs, but I may stress test them all a bit more.

Check the system/application event logs after it's done it, see if you notice anything suspect.

Good point... Hmmm... just checked and at around the time I logged in yesterday and got the freezes, I got an error in the event log saying

The driver detected a controller error on \Device\CdRom0.

For more information, see Help and Support Center at http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/events.asp.

It's not done it yet this evening though...

Sounds like you have a dodgy process that is eating up all your CPU time.

In the task manager, go to the processes tab, and add collums for CPU time, usage and priority. If you sort by usage, you should find your dodgy process, probably running at realtime priority.

Had a look there - there doesn't appear to be anything monstering out the CPU at the time it happens. Strange.

You could also try running perfmon, adding in devices like CPU, HDD throughput etc, that should give you an indication of what is causing the problem.

Perfmon? Will give it a go...

Cheers for the advice so far

[Clunk]

Dear Mr Fishcake,

Could be a problem with the god awful jmicron controller. Have you updated to the latest bios for your DS3? If not, do it now! Grab the latest drivers for the jmicron controller.

My DS3 was exhibiting the same behaviour right before it died of jmicron failure.

Also, have a look if there are any conflicting IRQ's, if I remember right, the DS3 puts almost everything on a couple of them.

[this_is_gav]

Happens with my old ASUS A8R32-MVP Deluxe (now at work) for no reason at all - not a few seconds, but around 1 second. Very annoying when racing online.

[Mike Fishcake]

Clunk - aha! I'll give those a go and then keep an eye on how it behaves for the next few days.

Ta