Strange Kind of Freezing

[DaveLembke]

So my electron sipper build just recently became unstable and trying to pinpoint the cause. The strange thing is that Windows 7 event log shows no problems. Memtest86 shows no memory issues with the RAM. Crystaldiskinfo shows no problems with SSD drive health. Voltages are all solid with no problems there and computer is powered through a battery backup so I know its not a problem with dirty power. Temp of the APU is a healthy 41C so its not a thermal issue.

The system boots fast and no problems but the longer the system is running the more prone it is to have these freeze ups where you see the Windows 7 pointer turn into a blue ring and the hard drive light stays on solid and you mouse pointer will move the ring around on the screen so its not completely locked up tight, BUT pressing CTRL+ALT+DELETE the system doesnt respond to. I have forced the power off with power button to reboot it and then everything runs ok for another hour or so, as well as sometimes it works its way out of the hung state if I wait long enough.

Here is the list of hardware:

Motherboard: GA-AM1M-S2H http://www.gigabyte.com/products/product-page.aspx?pid=4937#ov
APU: Sempron 3850 Quadcore 1.3Ghz
RAM: 4GB (2 x 2GB) Corsair DDR3 1333Mhz
PSU: Corsair CX 500 ( 500 watt )
Drives: 90GB OCZ Agility 3 SSD
          : DVD-RW SATA

Running Windows 7 64-bit Home Premium. System is a clean build with correct and latest drivers. Updated drivers that were out of date and no fix to issue.

I have run lengthy benchmarks on it to stress it and they all complete without issues. Battered the SSD drive with Read/Write cycles and it didnt show any performance issues.

Its kind of frustrating that this one doesnt stand out as to the direct cause. Im hoping that its not the main board, but its really strange that there is no trouble in the event logs for this freeze up condition to point me in a direction of what to check out.

Tempted to use Macrium Reflect and clone the SSD to a available HDD I have to see if this would fix the issue since its odd that the hard drive LED stays on solid during this freeze up condition, which might indicate an issue with the SSD. However a drive acting like this should be raising flags in its S.M.A.R.T data log. Figured I'd throw this up on here to see if anyone have any other ideas on what to try before cloning the SSD drive to a HDD and disconnecting the SSD to see if that is the fix.

[patio]

OCZ SSD diagnostics

[BC_Programmer]

You could try Control+Shift+Escape as well; I've found that to be a more reliable shortcut to get to task manager when a system is under load. (I don't even use Control+Alt+Delete anymore since I only used it to start task manager anyway!

Another option could be to use Resource Monitor and have it list programs sorted by disk activity. (On the disk tab, in the  "Disk Activity" section you could sort by "Total B/s") and at the very least you should get an indicator on-screen about what executable is accessing the disk so heavily. It will even list the filename. Of course since the system is unresponsive and freezes when the issue occurs it would make sense to make sure all the data will be visible (eg. without resizing columns or scrolling)

[DaveLembke]

Thanks guys, will try that out tonight