Windows 7 Windows not responding

[Doors7]

My computer often freezes and becomes unresponsive. I can move the mouse and the UI is responsive to varying degrees, but even if anything loads, it takes ages. I usually have to resort to forced shutdown.

I do not think it is a hardware issue, since Linux runs flawlessly.

I checked the event viewer and it seems the freezing is associated with the error "The device, \Device\Ide\iaStor0, did not respond within the timeout period.", since EV is absolutely flooded with them from around the time of the freeze.

This problem has plagued my computer for quite a while and no matter how hard I try, it won't go away. The problem is present even in safe mode. I tried several different anti-virus scans and quick scan returned no results (I am unable to complete the full scan because all programmes freeze at certain point when searching the D: drive). Chkdsk seems to hang on a portion of disk for an extremely long period, then blue screens and restarts. I also updated Intel Rapid Storage technology outdatedness of which caused similar issues for some people.

I have 64-bit Windows 7. My computer (Lenovo G580) has 4GB RAM, 2.4Ghz processor, 750 GB HDD and integrated graphics.

 

[patcooke]

I'd try a full check of your hard drive - not using chkdsk but downloading a test utility from the drive manufacturer.

 

[Doors7]

So, I switched my power saving mode to maximize efficiency and the problem seemed gone as I didn't encounter any freezes for the rest of yesterday. I ran full system scan and it progressed much further than before, but the computer froze again after 8 hours. I ran the Lenovo official disk check and it returned errors at Targeted Read Test and SMART Short Self Test.

Can this be fixed or do I need to format/replace the HDD?

UPDATE: Event viewer no longer reports iaStor error, but says that disk has bad blocks. Freezes I encounter are mostly not permanent any more, but last only a limited period of time. They are still frequent and quite annoying.

 

[Doors7]

Nevermind, the problem is fixed after I left chkdsk running through the night.

 

[patcooke]

Thanks for the feedback.