W7-U 32bit freezes my laptop for 20-30 seconds then resumes, any ideas?

It's weird as it's intermittent and doesn't log any events when it pauses. And when it pauses any program that's running i.e. FF3 or a game will just stop for 20-30 seconds then it resumes. I don't multitask alot so it'll happen if FF or Explorer is running or if i.m playing Solitare.

Oh another weird thing is that the HDD light will come on solid and the cursor turns into the spinning blue wheel and when it resumes my HDD light will go out and I get my cursor back.

OK it's on a Dell Vostro 1500 with the following specs:

T5270, Nvidia 8400mGS, 160GB HDD, 3GB of ram, Sigmatel audio. I've tried reinstalling the OS with and without the Intel Chipset drivers and downloaded the Ricoh memory card drivers. I downloaded the latest Nvidia drivers directly from Nvidia and they are displayed as International.

I don't have this problem with this laptop while running either Vista 32 Premium SP2 or XP Home SP3 only Windows 7 Ultimate. Any ideas what.s causing this problem???

 

Why are you using a 32-bit Operating system when:
1- You PAID 4GB of RAM which you lock down to ~3GB.
2- You PAID for a 64-bit CPU and decide to not use it. You could have gone with a Celeron or a Pentium M of similar performance.

What a complete waist of money. That's like buying a F1 car, and driving in in schools zones where the max speed is 30Km/h. Complete wait of money.. Yes, I said it once more.

Anyway, you problem is a lack of drivers. Download and install the latest drivers for your the hardware inside of your laptop. If you have already done this from Dell drivers, then go to the hardware manufacture website and look there for newer versions. Also, make sure you have the latest BIOS, and HDD firmware.

Also, check your Windows Experience Index, refresh it, and what is your score for each component?

 

I recommend chkdsk for errors.
If you have filesystem errors it will fix it.
If you have badsector run the harddrive OEM diagnostic tool to redirect the bad sectors.
If you have too much of bad sectors if under warranty RMA it if out of warranty then consider replacing it.

 

I came across this little jewel. http://derek858.blogspot.com/2009/01/windows-7-intel-sataahci-lockups.html

I installed the latest Intel Matrix drivers and made the necessary changes in the registry. I hope this fixed it.

 

Reformat is your answer to everything, unless it's a hardware problem.

 

It's definitely NOT a hardware issue as the laptop passes all diagnostics, and the problem doesn't appear while running XP or Vista. I've also reformatted the drive countless times for this issue with no luck.

I think those drivers could be the magic bullet because before I installed them I was generating a disk error in the event log when inserting a 16GB USB flash drive. Once I installed the new Intel matrix drivers the disk error has gone away.