Recent Windows 7 Installation

[MavetheGreat]

Hello! This is my first ever post regarding a computer issue.  I can almost always find answers to my issues from other people's posts, but in this case after several days of searching, I'm biting the bullet and submitting my own. 

Thanks in advance for any and all help and advice.

First of all, my computer is a Dell XPS 400 which I purchased around 8 years ago and customized with a few different pieces.  My board is chipset i945P/G and my processor is an Intel Pentium D CPU 2.80Ghz.  I am using 4x1 GB of DDR2-SDRAM at 266 MHz.  For a long time the computer ran off of an 80GB SATA150 HDD (Maxtor 6L080M0) and I used a WD (WD2500JS-08MHB0) 250 GB drive as a slave.  I then obtained a Hitachi (HDS5C3020ALA632) 2 TB drive and subsequently was able to get Windows 7 for free as a student through Microsoft's DreamSpark program (good for 2 years).  So I decided to install Windows 7 on the current slave drive (Western Digital - 250GB), move all my music and video files to the Hitachi 2 TB drive making that the slave, installing a system partition to the new Windows 7 drive and eliminating the relatively small 80 GB Maxtor.  That turned out to be more complicated than I had anticipated, and after running the new system for a couple weeks, I have noticed two issues I need help solving:

1) The computer has short freezing spells that last between 15 and 60 seconds.  This happens every 15-30 minutes and typically when I am using a browser of some kind (but not always).  I initially thought maybe Windows 7 just takes that much more in the way of resources to run and my computer is getting bogged down, but I'm not sure that is the case, and I'd love to solve it.  Its fair to say I multi-task and have quite a few programs running at once (Chrome, Firefox, iTunes, Excel are common).  I have tried to cut each of those programs out to narrow it down with no luck.  The freezing seems to happen regardless.  The only times it never freezes is if I am playing a game on an emulator or something like that.  It may in fact be freezing in the background, but I have no evidence of that. 

2) The second issue has been becoming more frequent.  Often times if I am away from my computer for several hours (usually over night, yesterday it happened just from being away from home for 6 hours or so), I return to see my computer at a DOS screen saying it can't find a drive in the SATA 0 spot.  This is the Western Digital drive slot.  I check all the cables, nothing seems to be out of order, so I reboot and it is fine.   I don't even know what happens in between to get the computer to that screen, that's just how I find it.

Those are my two issues.  Neither of them every occurred before switching to Windows 7.  Any thoughts? 

I recognize that my stuff is old and that lack of resources or old equipment could be the answer, but I don't have the money to buy anything new, so I am trying to exhaust other troubleshooting options before giving up.

-Mave

PS - Hopefully this is in the correct section!

[jason2074]

Have you tried running a hard drive test? The DOS version is much more preferred then run a Quick and Extended Test. Please post the log results by following this link. Check also thermal events and drivers/bios update just in case.

[soybean]

In addition to what jason said, have you looked at Task Manager to see whether a particular program is gobbling CPU resources when these freezes occur? 

To get a reading on temperatures in your computer, you could try http://www.cpuid.com/softwares/hwmonitor.html.  How many fans do you have in your computer, besides the CPU fan and power supply fan? 

How many browser tabs do you typically have open at one time?  The impact of websites on CPU resources varies widely depending on Flash content, heavy use of javascript, etc. 

[MavetheGreat]

Jason, I have begun the process you recommend, but I'm struggling to create the DOS boot disk.  Western Digital's instructions don't go into detail there.  I can see there are instructions after googling it, but there are many.  Is there one set you'd recommend?

Second, will this process provide me the opportunity to check the thermal events and drivers/bios or is that separate?  If separate, can you point me in the direction of something to test those?  I see soybean gave a link to the thermal piece, I'll run that now.

Soybean,

I have studied task manager as well as a latency test during the freezes.  CPU consumption goes strangely quiet during the freezes. 

In addition to the two you mention, my video card also runs a fan, but it seems to struggle.  I'm not sure if it is only running as fast as it thinks it needs to, or if it is just not working well...

As for browser windows, I typically have several open.  A couple pages on espn, three different email accounts, and blazersedge.com for another.  I'm sure they are heavy on flash, etc but it is no different than what I was doing while using XP.

I'll post my results of the CPUID stuff shortly.

[MavetheGreat]

So I tried the CPUID Hardware Monitor, but it isn't all like the screenshots on the download page.

I would submit a screen shot, but I can't see how to do that.  Basically it just shows my computer name with no tree structure under it.  It appears to be monitoring nothing.  I'm wondering if my hardware is too old as I don't think it is listed in their compatibility chart.

Frustrating that I can't get any of the help ideas on here to work.

[jason2074]

Let's try this instead.

Download Speccy and then install the program.  To post and publish a snapshot of your PC.
. In the Menu bar, click File -> Publish Snapshot
. Click Yes > then Copy to Clipboard
. On your next reply, right-click on a empty space and click Paste on reply box then click Post.

[MavetheGreat]

Jason2074,

I've been away for the Holiday weekend and just now got to your suggestion.

By the way, the intermittent freezing seems to have maybe stopped.  I went through a rigorous process to be sure I had all up to date drivers, and that may have solved it.  However, the drive continues to fail (temporarily not read by the system).

Here are the published results: http://speccy.piriform.com/results/010lcLSy3p6tTQPGg3p6opc

It looks like heat could be the issue.  Not good.  I'm not sure how to solve that.

Also, it seems funny that heat would only cause a problem at night, or after long periods of inactivity.  The problem has never occurred while I am sitting at the computer.


David

[MavetheGreat]

By the way, I was able to run a scheduled hard drive check disk upon the next bootup and no bad sectors were found on the drive.

[patio]

You have a TON of unneccessary background processes running...you need to get them under control...
I suggest Startup CPL from Mike Lin...do NOT disable anything if you don't know what it is...Post back here 1st.

NOTE: A re-boot is required after neccessary changes...and dis-abling any startup service does NOT affect the app involved from running properly.

[MavetheGreat]

patio,

I'm really not comfortable disabling anything since I don't know much about any of them.  Which section were you looking at of the report?