Windows7 Stops Responding in Odd Way

I have Windows7 Business x64 installed on my computer and for some reason randomly after the computer being on a long period of time (24 to 72 hours), I come back to it and can no longer open any programs. It also seems to have a problem writing configurations files back to the hard drive when I close programs. I'm not sure why. I completely re-installed Windows7 on another hard drive and am having the same issue. The symptoms seem indicative of hard drive failure but I'm sure my drives are fine. Even the event log isn't helping me out here. It's been doing this for months.

I leave the system on, come back to it, and can't even shut down, I have to use my physical reset button to restart my computer. That being said I can still open the programs that are already running, look at what they're doing, and so on. So Windows isn't completely frozen. Does anybody have ideas on this?

 

Can we get some more information from you please?

1. Make and model of the computer
2. Approximate age of the computer
3. Do you receive an error message an any point after the error has occurred?
4. How old are the hard drives, and what make and model are they?
5. What brought you to the conclusion that there are write problems? I am not saying you are wrong, I am just trying to find your reasoning.

 

Two drives, same issue. have you diagnosed the drives with the makers free tools yet? Switched out the data cables/changed ports? Have you tested your RAM yet? Use Memmtest 86+ to test those sticks.

I'm running W7 Ult and I found that the Power Options were hanging my machine when going to hibernate or sleep. I clicked on 'high performance' and changed the settings to never do anything. I'm not sure if this is your issue but worth a try if after your above diagnostics give a clean hardware state.

 

Does sound hardware, leaning because you have freshly installed on a different HDD...test it up and see?

RAM errors will cause funny things, I had an issue recently where allocated space failed. Removed the stick and the system was ok again, although I am still short one stick out of three, LOL :cool

 

Motherboard: Gigabyte GA-X48-DQ6
Processor: Intel Q9650 (Core 2 Quad, 3GHz)
RAM: 4x2GB G.Skill DDR2-1066
Hard Drives: Segate & Samsung 500GB, WD 1TB, WD Raptor 74GB
Hard Drive Controller: Intel ICH9R (ACHI)

OS was originally on a RAID 0 array of 2 Raptors but thinking that might have been the problem I did a clean install on the Samsung drive. The problem didn't go away, and I am not overclocking. My system is well cooled, and I am running a CoolMax 1200watt power supply. What lead me to the conclusion it might be the hard drives is two-fold. One: The event log showed a hard drive controller error for 4 drives, however I have come to find out that has to do with my SD (etc..) card reader and not related to this problem as it was happening before I even got that. Two: I have seen things like this happen before when a hard drive was failing and the system would continue to run but anything related to hard drive access like starting a new program or closing one (i.e. the program writing it's configuration back to disk for next startup) simply stopped working. The event log isn't showing anything relevant to the problem at this point. I have swapped my SATA cables out, and changed the ports I'm using around and will see if this fixes the problem, but I'm skeptical at this point. I never had this problem in Vista but when I upgraded to Windows 7 this problem started showing up, and I didn't change ANY of the BIOS settings or hardware when I updated to Win7 (with a clean format/install).

 

OH! The computer is approximately 2 years old and the Samsung and Seagate hard drives have both checked out fine by disk check utilities. The fact that this started happening after I updated to Windows7 also leads me to believe it's possibly a Windows problem if not the hard drives. I read somewhere power settings could be causing it but I've got everything in Windows set not to put the disks into stand-by or go into low power for anything.

 

Clean install both on my old RAID array, and when Win7 started to do this, I reinstalled cleanly on my Samsung drive.