Windows 7 Intermitant Freezing

[garthbartin]

I used to have windows xp. While using it my computer would occasionally freeze up for a second and then go back to normal. It usually did this about every 10-20 seconds. If I jiggled my hard drive SATA cable the problem would go away and then come back about 1 to 2 weeks later and I would just jiggle my hard drive cable again. I repeated this several times until I installed Windows 7. After installing Windows 7, the freezing happened much much more often and while it was freezing and for a few minutes after, my internet would die. I couldn't make it go away by jiggling my hard drive cable. I cleaned out my computer and the freezing lessened a lot, but, after a while, it came back just as bad.i reinstalled windows 7 and it didn't help at all. Eventually, I discovered taking out one of my RAM sticks lessened the problem a lot, but I ran memtest and it found no errors. I tried plugging my hard drive cable into a different SATA port and the freezing went away for an entire day. When the freezing came back I used a new SATA cable and the freezing didn't go away at all.

I've thought back to the time my computer first started doing this and I can think of any trauma that could have occurred, except for perhaps when I took my computer to a friends house it got a little bumped around, but not much and I think that happened after the freezing first happened.

Any help would be greatly appreciated, my computer has barely been usable for almost a week now.

My computer's specs:
Nvidia 9800GTX
core 2 duo 2.80 ghz processor
4 gigs dual channel DDR2 OCZ RAM
530 watt power supply
XFX nForce 680i LT SLI Motherboard
HITACHI 1TB SERIAL ATA HD 7200

 

[Mitchell_A]

OK, so to get this straight:
You're experiencing the problem more in Windows 7 and your internet drops off?

 

[Saltgrass]

Well, according to your post the SATA connector is having a problem. Sata connectors can be fragile. I would suggest you try getting a new SATA cable and using it.

Hopefully a intemittent SATA connector did not corrupt your Win 7 install.

 

[garthbartin]

Yes. I have not tried reinstalling xp, but I'd very much like to avoid that I don't think that'd fix this.

The internet does die.



I've switched SATA port and connectors and it hasn't fixed the problem.

 

[Mitchell_A]

Could it actually be a hard drive fault? Try swapping out your HDD for a while to see if that makes a difference
As for the internet problem, let's take it one step at a time

 

[Saltgrass]

I've switched SATA port and connectors and it hasn't fixed the problem.

So you have replaced the cable????

 

[garthbartin]

I've replaced my SATA cable and it still freezes.

I switched the HD but the only other hd I had was a 6 year old one that used a ribbon like cable and it gave me a bluescreen.

 

[Mitchell_A]

Could you borrow one from a friend?

 

[Saltgrass]

It may be the case that even though it looks like moving the cable helped, it still could be something else. Heat problems are sometimes responsible for erratic behavior. If you system is older, other things might be failing, like was suggested.

Make sure all you fans are clean, which means getting the gunk off the leading edge of the fan blades.

 

[Mitchell_A]

It may be the case that even though it looks like moving the cable helped, it still could be something else. Heat problems are sometimes responsible for erratic behavior. If you system is older, other things might be failing, like was suggested.

Make sure all you fans are clean, which means getting the gunk off the leading edge of the fan blades.

I second that.

 

[garthbartin]

Ran a heat monitoring program and everything is around 110 degrees. All my fans are clean except fro the video card's, it has really really skinny blades with no room from one to the next so I can't get the dust out of it.

Is there any program that can test my HD? I can't really borrow an HD because I live in a tiny town and most of the people here are "consolefags." Also, the friend who usually helps me out with computer stuff is out of town and I don't know when he'll be back.

 

[Saltgrass]

You might be able to get a hard drive test program from the manufacturer.

I know I was using a hard drive that as far as I knew was fine. I used it to install Linux and got red flags about all the bad sectors.

Is there anything in your bios about SMART capability?