Windows freezing for a while then recovers

Hi everyone,

Recently I reformatted my alienware, and re-installed with all the previous drivers (A03, nvidia 197.xx (sorry forgot), all other chipset drivers in the correct order). Everything is identical to my previous setup.

However I now have a major issue where my windows would just freeze for a while, and I'll hear the hard drive spin-up and make a "click" sound then go silent. The window I was in would then not respond but every other program/window/start button still responds UNTIL I click on them and then they stop responding one by one.

At the beginning I thought it was a lock up and force restart a few time. After the third time I decided to wait it out and surprisingly windows came back to life again after 2-3 minutes. I tried isolating programs down to only MSN and Chrome and the freeze still occurs when I'm browsing/chatting. Also tried Chrome only or Firefox only and still freezes sometimes.

I have a few guesses about what may be wrong and please if anyone has any ideas let me know.
(1) HDD broken? But this Alienware is only just over a year old.
(2) Driver issue? I've tried heaps of nVidia drivers that people recommend.
(3) Registery issue? Tried using ccleaner to clean any useless registry.
(4) HDD going to sleep randomly? I don't know how to disable this if that's the case.

Thanks!

 

I had your same settup before getting my R2. Its the graphics. Try using the Dell drivers and the older chipset drivers from the Dell site.

 

If you hear your HDD spin and click, it's his way of telling you he's sorry about everything and will always be with you in your heart wherever you go.

 

Hey LOL? ehahahaah

Mine makes hissing sounds every so often. Sometimes its soo often its like once every 30 secs to a minute.

Cheers.

 

hi, i have a similar problem, mi w7 recently format freezes about 1- 2 mins randomly, but always in every season, but only when i use the aw to navigate on web, or on msn, never playing...

it's sure this freezes are caused by the nvidia display drivers? i have the 260.89 drivers for my sli gtx 260.

what drivers are the recommended for our AW m17x r1.

thanks a lot! i hope i will fix this because its a !

 

Oles chiefs, Yeh its most likely the Nvidia drivers causing the freezes unless you have a underlying hardware problem that we don't know about. They will be hard to detect. So most likely driver issues.

Try 260.99 WHQL. A lot of people are having great success with it atm.

As for recommended some are using P06 dell drivers with great stability where as others are having driver issues no matter which driver. Its hard to say which one is recommended as its soo all over the place atm with different peoples systems unfortunately. Even when a system has exactly the same specs as another one one might be installing Nvidia drivers and running perfectly fine whereas the other is having all sorts of freezing bsod and driver issues.

You'll have to test a bunch of driver out chiefs until you find one that works well and is stable for you.

Cheers.

 

check your dvd drive-if is faulty might happend that windows lost dvd drive and freze

 

thanks for the replies guys!

@Turmoil: Yep I've just installed an older chipset (v2.05), the nVidia driver was recommended by another user as like the most stable... I'll change it if this chipset still freezes. Thanks!

@marceldomingu: OH YEAH I forgot to mention that if I turn on the computer just to play games it never freezes in-game, only when browsing and msn.

@reborn2003: I'll try 260.99 WHQL if things freeze up again with an older chipset driver. You're totally right about driver experience varying between users, funny enough I used to have great success with 257.21.

grzesmaster2: Thanks for the suggestion, I tried loading and unloading a few DVDs and seems to be fine even when controlled by OSD. Is there another way I can check this?

 

hi guys, i installed the new 260.99 drivers and i feel no more freezes, but sometimes the nvidia driver stop working when i put a video on full screen and the screen goes black randomly whe i use msn or web...

i try to put the older chipset drivers... but i'm tired... why our expensives aw works worse than a simpler laptop...

 

now running older chipset v2.05 and older nvidia driver 257.21, let's see the results...

 

Mine has been freezing to black lately, or the display driver crashing. However, it seems to be isolated only to when I play Minecraft. That being said, I'm guessing it's an issue with it. I may test these drivers though.

 

After testing for two days, I think my problem has been fixed. Chipset driver v2.05 was the savior.

@marceldomingu: Chipset is the biggest issue, 260.XX drivers are terrible and crashes heaps. Stick with a 197.XX or 257.21 and you should be fine

 

For me, it seems like I'm crashing when browsing (and by crashing, I mean Windows recovering from an NVIDIA normal mode kernal issue, I believe) or using anything with a significant amount of java in it. Any thoughts?

 

mine was freezing, Crashing etc

I upgraded to the 260.99 drivers and it has ben good so far

 

Just did the same, looks like it fixed my issues as well.

 

i still having problems... freezes and black screens, i find a "solution", when i use the aw to navigate and msn, i put the aw in save power mode (fn+F7), and with this mode, the laptop works fine... at least for the moment...

 

I had same problem and just gave up after trying all kinds of diff drivers.. my beauty is now completely lonely in a dell depot stuffed among little kids like inspirons and lattitudes waiting for a nutty tech guy to go wild on it with bolts and hammers since he has no clue what to do with such a delicate and esthetically mindblowing piece of art.

I have already assumed position to do a microscopic and thorough check on it for when it returns to safety..

Stay safe little one...

Edit: And after reading specs of posters here we can safely assume graphics, yes

 

hi guys, anybody still having probs with the new release of nv dirvers and the stable chipset drivers?

i'm thinking to do another clean w7 install and follow the correct order to install the drivers ... i'm not sure if i did this correctly

regards

 

I've had to change drivers on this R2. 260.99 seems unstable, and I've had the driver stop responding and the system freeze during gaming a few times. Hopefully the Dell ones will be better, though they don't seem to support CUDA.

Can't comment on the chipset as thankfully I'm back on Intel hardware!

 

i'm thinking to format and install win vista, because when i purchase the laptop at 2009, it has vista with w7 coupon, and i remember i haven't problems with m17, what you think about this?

 

Just some suggestions I hope you guys don't mind. With new drivers and such do you install them as they are release? My suggestion would be to NOT to unless you know they are ok after testing. If you are going to use them, make a backup image of your drive prior to any changes and prior to testing. This is the proper way of testing out the new drivers, especially video and bios.

Stay with drivers that you know are stable for your configuration no matter how old they are. Unless you "need" to change don't.

 

I am having this issue as well and I have the ATI video. It always occures after a period of inactivity (20+ minutes). System freezes asoon as I try to launch an app. This behavior just started so I am falling back to earlier restore point to see if it is a Microsoft patch causing the problem.

 

yesterday, i downgrade mi w7 to vista, and i put the dell w vista drivers, and the problem remains... now i just re-install the w7 with the older stable drivers except the graphics driver, let's see the results...

 

I finally figured this out. After scanning the event logs after each one of these hangs a pattern emerged where a threatfire service was logging an error in the log before each hangup. This is part of the spyware doctor/pctools suite, which turned out to be a real POS. Ive replaced it with free Avast and have been running without the problem. I am pissed I paid a premium for a service that caused me untold hours of grief and debug.