Ron Schenone

A Reader Needs Help – Freezing Problem After Clean Vista & W7 Install

Posted by on Oct 1, 2010 | 7 Comments

A reader by the name of John posted this comment to an article asking for help:

I am having a very similar problem as those described here, but with a twist.

I am running Vista on a machine I built myself. When I do a fresh install of Vista, I will get random freezes to the point where nothing but a hard restart will solve it.

I’ve done all my due dilligence; I’ve ran Memtest and everything checks out. Prime95 finds no problems. All drivers are latest versions downloaded from component manufacturers instead of using Vista drivers. Airflow is good, hard drive checks out, temps are ok. Nothing to roll back to since this happens after a fresh install.

Some days it doesn’t crash at all. Other days it feels like it’s happening every five minutes and I have to press the reset button. The mouse, keyboard, monitor, everything becomes non responsive. Nothing shows up in the event logs after a freeze other than that windows was shut down incorrectly (due to my hard restart).

Here’s the kicker: After about 2-3 weeks, the freezing stops and never happens again. It only begins again the next time I have to reinstall Vista (which has been 3 times in 2 years for various reasons).

I’m at my wit’s end with this problem. Why does it only happen for 2-3 weeks after an OS install?

It happens on Windows 7 too, so I am presuming this is a hardware or BIOS issue.

Any ideas?

I responded:

Hi John,
The next time you install Vista or W7 try downloading all updates from Microsoft and see what happens.
It could be that after an update is applied it fixes the freezing problem. Just a guess. If the problem
didn’t go away after 2 to 3 weeks like you stated, I would guess bad RAM. But since it goes away
after 2 -3 weeks I’m guessing update. :-)

I’m going to post your question on my blog and see what other answer we receive.

Comments welcome.

  • http://wp3.lockergnome.com/nexus/theoracle/ the oracle

    I’ve seen this on a few systems that are fully updated right after the base OS install. After looking on a few machines that did this, I surmised that the system was simply doing its first few optimizations with the drive, as the system gets “overloaded” doing housekeeping.

    The key was that the hard drive light was on constantly – which was why the system seemed to freeze. If there is no hard drive light, or it is extremely dim, as some HP and Compaq machines have, as well as some cheap cases, you might not see that the drive was being hammered.

    I put this one to an “expert” ( that is not a slam, I simply cannot remember what his official MS title was) and he said that could be true, as some systems are prone to this type of problem. It usually happens when the system is new, but can also happen on the same systems when the machine has not been shot off for days, and will take minutes, instead of seconds, to shut down, as all the proper housekeeping chores of the OS have not been done in the machines idle time.

    When I have been plagued by this (that is, I knew the problem was going to appear) I would install a few things, then do a defrag, reboot, and continue with other software installation. In every case where this had occurred, it took care of most of the bad behavior.

    • http://wp3.lockergnome.com/nexus/blade/ Ron Schenone

      Thanks Marc,
      Makes sense.
      Regards, Ron

  • http://wp3.lockergnome.com/nexus/theoracle/ the oracle

    BTW, this is not supposed to ever happen, what with Microsoft’s OS’s being fully pre-emptive and multitasking, so they should not, but they do.

    I have never seen this type of behavior on a system that was not running a Microsoft OS. (Linuxes, OS/2, BSDs, etc.)

  • Buffet

    DUMP THAT RUBBISH and INSTALL XP – problem solved!!

  • Dick

    Random problems like this are a nightmare. However, what The Oracle said about excessive hard drive activity leads me to my old stand by with mystery problems. The Power Supply. Swap it out if you have a spare and see if that helps. They sure cause weird problems when faulty. Marginal voltages when current demand is higher is typical of PS failure.
    Good Luck

    • http://wp3.lockergnome.com/nexus/blade/ Ron Schenone

      Thanks Dick. PS are a pain when they act up and are hard to diagnosis.

  • leftystrat

    Try several boot cd’s and/or a live linux cd to see if the system still freezes or if it detects any other issues.

    It does sound like an OS issue though.