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Desktop freezes

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micker377

micker377

Technical User
Jan 15, 2003
3,864
US
Often, when going from Windows Explorer to Downloads, or Utilities sub folders, and back to the Desktop, the Desktop freezes. I just get the little circle, and then a "popup" saying that "The program has quit". Then I am given a choice of "Shutting down the computer", or "restarting the desktop". I choose "restart", and the computer restarts the Desktop.

160 gig hard drive, 4 gig of memory.

I monitor the CPU, memory, and resources (on separate monitor), and nothing changes - except I have to wait and restart the Desktop every couple of minutes!
 
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Is this a laptop or desktop? have you checked the heatsinks & fans? thermal paste? memory? hard drive? check the board for bad caps? Is this a unit that had a different OS? are there new drivers? have you checked the windows logs? going to need a bit more help to find the problem....

List the model,make. Or complete specs if this is home built.

List what you have tried, so we don't go over the same steps.

Have there been any hardware or software additions before this started happening?
 
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Some general things to try.

See if System Restore will get you back to a restore point before your problem with Explorer, OR try the System File Checker.

How to repair the operating system and how to restore the operating system configuration to an earlier point in time in Windows Vista (or 7)


Try Safe Mode (Do you have this problem in Safe Mode?).

Advanced startup options (including safe mode)


If you cannot reproduce the errors in Safe Mode see if you can further isolate the cause.

How to troubleshoot a problem by performing a clean boot in Windows Vista or in Windows 7


Try running ChkDsk to check your drive for errors. Right-click your Drive icon/ Properties/ Tools/ Error Checking. Try it first by not checking either box (Read-only mode) to see if it flags any hard drive or file problems. If it does, start by ticking both boxes, in any further rerun.

The hard drive manufacturer will have free diagnostic software that is bootable, or that may even run from within Windows, that will thoroughly check the condition of your hard drive.


How to Use the Memory Diagnostics Tool in Vista



See how many unsigned drivers you have running on your machine. This article will guide you on the instructions but all you have to do is type sigverif in Start Run.

How to identify unsigned drivers using sigverif utility in Windows Vista

How to Generate a System Health Report in Vista and Windows 7



Create another user and see if they have the same problem as your current user.
 
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Sorry, and here I am the one who usually asks for more details! I guess I'll quit doing that. (Surely you can read my mind! <grin>)

Desktop, Win 7, home brew, no temp changes. It has been doing it for a while, so I don't want to do a sys restore. I did do a memcheck - all OK. I did this reluctantly, as I did a MS memcheck a month ago, and it took 3 tries with sys restore to get it to boot properly again.
Did a full Chkdsk last night one terabyte drive - took hours! (four file errors found... corrected)
Been OK so far today, just have to wait to see if it's fixed.
 
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There is something to be said for splitting your drive into several smaller Partitions.
 
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No joy - it just happened again! I downloaded a program. Went to install it, and my Desktop froze up. That's how irregular it is! Maybe I'll just wait for SP1.
 
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Update: just noticed that "Sysyem Maintenance" just popped up the warning to run Chkdsk again! I guess I'll check my H.D. DATA cables, and run Chkdsk tonight!
 
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Maybe you have a more thorough look at the hard drive and try the manufacturer's diagnostic software?
 
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And when you do a chkdsk, run chkdsk with the /r flag. It will require a reboot and may take some time.
 
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I was having the exact same problem as the OP... I tried many different approaches to fix it but the only thing that finally worked was to turn off fast indexing on the hard drives.

There really isn't much difference in speed when looking for something especially when you take into account the desktop isn't freezing and explorer doesn't have to be restarted every 30 minutes.....

If you can read this, thank a teacher. If you can read this in English, thank a veteran!
 
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I know it's not supposed to happen, but as you have plenty of memory, Windows has probably allocated a large pagefile for virtual memory, and I wonder if it has become fragmented? Likewise a hibernation file will be at least the size of your installed memory. Together, that is probably 10 GB of your disk space gone.

If windows has to write significant amounts of data to these files, and has to also write to several places on the disk, normal performance will be held up.

PageDefrag:


is one remedy, but IMO there is a better way. Pagedefrag can mean slow startups, and occasionally freezes itself.

I turn off hibernation, as I am not going to lose that much storage for a feature which is little better in energy savings or time than standby, on my hardware.

I create a small swap partition, a little larger than the installed memory - my 2.5GB installed RAM is supported by a 3GB partition for the page file. It can be done by the windows disk management console if you have sufficient space at the end of the drive - shrink the main drive by about 5GB in your case and then change the virtual memory to no paging file on your system disk, and a windows managed page file in the swap partition. Unless you are video editing, writing large dvds, have big Databases running, you will never need that much, even for a full memory dump.

The beauty of this is that it never needs attention again. If you multiboot into different versions of windows, they can all share the same swap partition, just overwriting the existing pagefile.sys.

Indexing has always been a pain in Windows, I turn it off whenever I see that indexing is enabled. All the stuff I need to sort thru is on external storage anyway.


 
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BBB: Smart O.K.
PRYPhx: Ran chkdsk /r. twice - error comes back in a few days.
PRYdenian: I'll give that a try, it was ON for everything. I turned off all.
Flyboytim: I do a page defdrag once a month.

The reason I haven't responded to you all, is that Tek-Tips just sent your responses to my e-mail for the first time since I posted this problem!
 
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Update: unplugged, and plugged back in, all H.D. connectors (SATA). Seems to have "fixed" any "Maintenance" problems. Still have the "lock-up" of the Desktop problem. It seems to occur when I go to any place on the H.D. with a large ammount of DATA (My Documents, etc.). When I return to the Desktop, is when it locks up. The next step is to see if Tuesday's MS updates helps or hinders!

Did a full backup just in case!
 
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