Vista Freezes randomly
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- I recently purchased a new Dell PC. It came with a Vista upgrade offer. The PC worked fine under XP. When they sent the Vista disc I preceeded through the upgrade and everything went fine. However, now at random intervals, the PC will freeze for up to 30 seconds with nothing happening, no cursor movement or anything and then just as suddenly free up and work fine again. This seems to happen at random intervals. Anyone else having a similar problem?
Answers
Good news, it looks like the problem is solved !!!
Indeed, after reporting the problem to Dell Europe, I was called by a technician who told me that a solution had been found and how to fix the problem. He kindly assisted me on the phone during the whole process.
(This fix applies to a Dell Dimension 9200 with two hard disks in RAID 0 on SATA ports 0 & 1 and two CD drives on SATA ports 2 & 3)
What I had to do was move the CD drives from SATA ports 2 and 3 to ports 4 and 5. If you open your computer, you will see two orange cables coming from the CD drives to connectors on the motherboard. Two other free connectors are located underneath. You just have to disconnect both cables and connect them into the lower set of connectors.
After this is done, when you restart the computer, you have to go to the setup (F2 at startup) and change the status of the SATA ports 2, 3, 4 and 5:
Drives
SATA-2 set to OFF
SATA-3 set to OFF
SATA-4 set to ON
SATA-5 set to ON
You can then save and leave the setup. After you restart, the computer runs smoothly.
I did this about an hour ago and didn't experience any freeze yet. I guess the "30 second freeze syndrome" is history now.
Addendum: now it's 5 hours later and everything is still fine. Operation successful !
All Replies
Hallo
I have just the same problem with a brand new DELL Dimension 9200 and Vista Ultimate. I did all the hardware checks with the Dell utility. There seems to be everything ok but Vista freezes randomly for about 30 seconds as in your case. It then suddenly free up and works fine again.
Did you find some solution for this problem? I'm very disapointed.
- I have exactly the same problem. Just installed the upgrade (Vista Home Premium) today over a perfectly working clean install of XP. Vista seems to work fine, but locks up every few minutes, just as you describe. The freeze is always for about 30 seconds. I haven't seen any patterns yet as to what initiates the freeze.
- p.s. My machine is a Dell XPS/Dimension 410/9200 with NVIDIA 7900.
- Also i have the same issue, PC is a Dell 9100 with a Intel Duo 6600 processor. System works perfectly execpt for hanging up for 20 seconds at random times. After that the system works again. OS is Vista Ultimate
- Mine too. Dell Dim 9200. Solid as a rock running XP, installed Vista when the disc finally came (in place upgrade, not clean install). Install went very smooth and I get a random freeze-up for about 30 seconds. Tried reinstall - same thing. OS is Vista Business 32. Core 2 Duo 6600@ 2.4GHz, 1GB RAM. This is really annoying! Any thoughts that a clean install will make difference?
- I have exactly the same problem. My machine is a Dell Dimension 9200 with a Core 2 Duo E6600 2,4GHz, 4GB RAM (by the way, Windows shows only 3GB, while in the setup I can see 4) and a 256MB Nvidia GeForce 7900GS graphic board.
The computer came pre-installed with a French version of Windows Vista Ultimate and I experienced the problem as soon as I started it, before installing any other software. I updated the graphic drivers, replacing version 7.15.10.9746 (dated 12/07/2006) by 7.15.11.65 (2/10/2007), but it didn't make any difference.
The interval between freezes can vary from one minute to more than an hour, with no apparent pattern, except that it looks like it occurs more often early in the sessions (but maybe it's just by chance). The only consistent thing is that the duration of the freezes is always 30 seconds.
I really hope Dell will do something about this, because it is quite unbearable. - Same problem here.
Yesterday I got the upgrade disks from Dell and ran the utility. No reported software conflicts, just a couple of apps that would be temporarily uninstalled. Vista Home Premium went on fine. computer is a Dimension E520 with 2 gigs of RAM.
Can't reproduce a freeze, it seems random. If a video is playing, after the freeze its zooms. Performance is fine otherwise, but this is a serious problem. The machine worked perfectly with XP Media Center edition. Same problem here with a new Dell XPS running 32-bit Vista Home Premium. Have narrowed the problem down to the hard drive setup (two 250GB SATA in Raid 0 configuration, creating a 500GB "C" drive). When the freeze occurs, the hard drive light goes solid for the duration of the freeze. Freeze is most evident if you're watching video - screen pauses, then plays catchup in super fast forward w/audio syncronization off for a period.
When watching a video on my external USB 2.0 hard drive, or my NAS drive, there are no freezes: It only happens (and truly randomly at that) when accessing the local raid drive.
Would LOVE to hear about a fix. It's killing what would otherwise be a great new Vista user experience.
- Ive been on Dell support chat on and off for about 8 hours now. When the thing freezes, it kills the chat session and I have to start over with a new rep. Happened 7 times. Finally I borrowed a laptop and have been waaiting 9 min 52 seconds for almost an hour to get back in to report on the HDD diagnostic they asked me to run. NO ERRORS. Sometimes my HDD light is on during the freeze, other times not. If I press NumLock, the light goes out but pressing again it wont come back on. I've spent about 12 hours total on this problem - who do I send the bill to 8). Heh. This machine had passed the entire battery of diagnostics on the utility partition.
- Ok, they told me to do a clean install. That is wipe the drive and install from scratch. Did anyone have the freeze that installed from clean? What a huge waste of time.
- That sounds like a typical cop-out from Dell. But, let me know if it helps and I'll do the same!
I have the same problem.. grr....
Dell XPS 410
4GB of RAM and 2 HD in raid 0
When I received my brand new PC on March 9th, I started it and experienced the freeze after just a few minutes, before I installed anything and even before I connected the computer to the local network and Internet. So, if the cause is a software problem, it must come from something pre-installed by Dell. In this case, it is their job to find out what it is and they should let us know what we have to uninstall in order to get rid of this very irritating problem.
Another possility would be an issue that has to do with the graphic board. It looks like whenever a graphic board is mentioned by users who have the freeze syndrome, it's always a Nvidia. Does anyone with an ATI board have this problem too?
Question to PKJR: I also have 4GB of physical memory, but Windows Vista reports only 3. Is it the same for you?
I have gotten to the point where they are having me put XP back on. This morning, I started by wiping out the bootstrap with DEBUG. I reinstalled Vista and it still did it. I havent used that in a while! It has to be Vista/hardware voodoo, the machine never hiccuped with XP! Maybe the slow format will make a difference?
Good news, it looks like the problem is solved !!!
Indeed, after reporting the problem to Dell Europe, I was called by a technician who told me that a solution had been found and how to fix the problem. He kindly assisted me on the phone during the whole process.
(This fix applies to a Dell Dimension 9200 with two hard disks in RAID 0 on SATA ports 0 & 1 and two CD drives on SATA ports 2 & 3)
What I had to do was move the CD drives from SATA ports 2 and 3 to ports 4 and 5. If you open your computer, you will see two orange cables coming from the CD drives to connectors on the motherboard. Two other free connectors are located underneath. You just have to disconnect both cables and connect them into the lower set of connectors.
After this is done, when you restart the computer, you have to go to the setup (F2 at startup) and change the status of the SATA ports 2, 3, 4 and 5:
Drives
SATA-2 set to OFF
SATA-3 set to OFF
SATA-4 set to ON
SATA-5 set to ON
You can then save and leave the setup. After you restart, the computer runs smoothly.
I did this about an hour ago and didn't experience any freeze yet. I guess the "30 second freeze syndrome" is history now.
Addendum: now it's 5 hours later and everything is still fine. Operation successful !I decided to try this on my Dell DM061/E520.
Have now been running for over 2 1/2 hours without a freeze.
On my machine the 2 orange cables were on SATA 1 and 4.I moved 4 to 5 and 1 to 4 to keep the drives in order.
Went into setup and reset the switches.
SATA 2 and 3 are not available to me, unless they are on the bottom of the motherboard.
This sure beats Dell's suggestion to reinstall Vista.
In Event viewer, Expand Windows Logs, Open System and look for errors with IAStorV. If so, this may be relavent to you.
Make sure you shutdown and turn the power off. Push the power button for 10 seconds or so to drain reserve power before opening the case.
Addendum: Replaced this cable swap fix with a BIOS and Firmware update for Phillips DVDROM on April 2nd and still have no freezes as of April 15th.
I am going to give this a try, i have same system, but only one hard drive, any suggestions for something to do differently?
gobirch@shaw.ca
- I checked, and i have errors with IAstorv, event 9, but it doesn't say what action to take, or if it is relevent.
Gord, if you are having those errors and have a Dell Dimension with 2 CD/DVD drives, look at this post which dealt with a Dell 9200:
http://forums.microsoft.com/technet/showpost.aspx?postid=1358943&siteid=17&PageID=1
Mine is a Dell DM061/E520 with 1 Hard drive and 2 CD/DVD drives.
What I did was shut the machine completely down and opened up the machine and looked for the 2 orange cables. Mine were on SATA-1 and 4. I moved them to 4 and 5 just to keep the drives in order. You may have to turn the cable to get it to reconnect. After moving the cables, restart, go into setup by hitting F2 on the boot screen, scroll down to drives, enter to expand the list, scroll to 1, enter, reset 1 to off, repeat for 4 and 5 to set them to on. When all done, ESC, right arrow to exit and let it reboot. I did this yesterday and have now been without freezes or IaStorV errors for 27 hours now.
- I just bought an XPS 410 with the same issue. If you have this popup when you boot up your system then the following might fix your system. It fixed mines (So far...)
Here's the popup message at boot.
"driver blocked due to incompatibility A driver is installed that causes stability problems with your system" The driver in question is for a Sonic Solutions DLA driver.
I contacted Dell and they gave me a fix. Here are the steps (Sorry for the formatting):
"For the freezing issue we need to do the following steps: Clear MSCONFIG startup and Non-Microsoft services before applying the patch. Download the patch from http://docs.roxio.com/patches/d2d3290.exe Save it to the desktop. Click the Start Pearl. In the Search window at the bottom, type MSCONFIG and press <Enter>. On the Startup tab, click Disable All. Click Apply. Click the Services tab. Put the check in Hide all Microsoft services. Click Disable all. Click Apply. OK, reboot. Apply the patch. Reboot. - Sorry guys. But this did not fix the freezing issue. My computer randomly froze up today. Going to contact Dell again.
I had this same problem with my Dell E520 after intalling Windows Vista Home Premium. Started about 3 weeks ago. Dell techs via chat, phone and email have been working with me but without success. They tried remote access and cleaned out my temp files, changed my startup programs, and cleared cache without success. Their final solution was to have me reformat my hard drive and reinstall Vista but I held off because I have some one-time software install on my PC and would lose them. Dell would not take responsibility for other software. After much frustration, I took the advice from another tech forum site. I have been running for 3 hours without a freeze. On the motherboard, I moved orange cable from SATA 4 to SATA 5 and cable from SATA 1 to SATA 4. Rebooted the system and went into setup (F2) and reset the switches to ON for SATA 5 and OFF for SATA 1. So far so good. This is the longest I have been running Vista without a freeze. Before, my system was freezing every 3 to 5 minutes for 20 to 30 seconds.
Good luck.
Actually, it was whiporwill's solution that I used. I just realized it was not from another tech forum site. It works!
- I dont have a dell and dont have SATA CD/DVD Drives. But I am having a similar problem. It freezes a couple of times a day for maybe a minute. Not sure what to do.
Look through some of the posts on page 2, but let me tell you of my experience. My problems started on the 5th when I installed Vista. I also went round and round with Dell. Had checked memory, hard drive, updated BIOS, cleared NVRAM, updated video driver, etc., and in some cases done some of them twice..... Was to the point that they told me to reinstall Vista, although I was really ready to go all the way back to XP. On the next page, I found Brakham's post which gave me something to try and for now it has fixed the problem since the 23rd.
First, open the event viewer, expand the Windows Logs and check System and see if you are getting errors that refer to IaStorV. If you see those, this may help.
You will find some of this in the later posts as well.
Make sure that you shutdown and disconnect power before opening the case, then push the power button to release reserve power. Also make sure you maintain contact with the machine so that you don't get a static charge.
My machine is a DM061 / E520 with 2 CD/DVD drives running Home Premium. While this is not the same as Brakham's post, I decided to give it a try. My two orange cables were on ports SATA-1 and 4. I moved those to 4 and 5 just to keep the drives in order. 2 and 3 are not available, unless they are on the bottom of the motherboard. You may have to rotate the cables to get them to connect. Just look for the right pattern. When you have that done, restart. At the boot screen, hit F2 to go into setup, tab or scroll to drives, enter to expand, scroll to SATA-1, enter, right tab to set it to off, enter, repeat this for 4 and 5, except set to on.
Restart and see if this fixes the problem. Hope this helps.
Addendum: Replaced this cable swap fix with a BIOS and Firmware update for Phillips DVDROM on April 2nd and still have no freezes as of April 15th.
Dimension9200:
I swapped out with known good RAM (1 GB, 2 DIMM). It still does it. So its not the RAM.
- OK, I found that reference in my sys log and made the cable swap. I moved the top mounted (1 blue socket/2 black socket) blue and top orange cables to the bottom (5/6) I'm now at 0.5 hours without a freeze up.
- Have you checked the posts by Brakham in this forum? He solved his on a 9200.
I'm convinced at this point - it looks like that's the fix. I've gotten through the rest of the work day with no freezes since moving the SATA connectors. I gotta express my loathing and pity for the dell service people. Maybe now I should just keep the case open and going and see how long it takes for them to figure it out...heh.
Nice job guys, thanks!
- If you haven't found a solution, check some of the posts on page 2 in this forum. Here is a quick link. I think you find the answer you have been searching for. http://forums.microsoft.com/technet/showpost.aspx?postid=1358943&siteid=17&PageID=1
- Check some of the later posts in the forum. I think you find the answer you have been searching for. http://forums.microsoft.com/technet/showpost.aspx?postid=1358943&siteid=17&PageID=1
Brakham wrote: When I received my brand new PC on March 9th, I started it and experienced the freeze after just a few minutes, before I installed anything and even before I connected the computer to the local network and Internet. So, if the cause is a software problem, it must come from something pre-installed by Dell. In this case, it is their job to find out what it is and they should let us know what we have to uninstall in order to get rid of this very irritating problem.
Another possility would be an issue that has to do with the graphic board. It looks like whenever a graphic board is mentioned by users who have the freeze syndrome, it's always a Nvidia. Does anyone with an ATI board have this problem too?
Question to PKJR: I also have 4GB of physical memory, but Windows Vista reports only 3. Is it the same for you?
Yes the same for me it reports as 3GB
- Great news. I've changed my config as suggested by Brakham, CD drives to SATA 4&5 and everything is working OK now, no more freezes! Thanks guys.
- I did the same thing to my E250 yesterday afternoon. Ever since upgrading to Vista I have experienced the same 20 second freezes as described in all these posts. I waited for a few days until trying the cable switch and bios settings.
Summary: no more freezes at all. If I had called Dell and tried uninstalling and re-installing to no avail I might have lost my mind. - If you haven't checked the forum lately, please do. I think you may find your solution.
Despite this workaround, I would still like to know if the motherboard, or whatever the root cause is, compromises performance in any way. Besides - what If I had enough HDs that I needed to use all the SATA connectors? What would Dell do?
I moved the connectors around this morning and I get the freeze back with the DVD drive in SATA1. Has anyone gone through all the possible combinations and concluded if it is just one particular port?
- That is a great question and might help me understand why my computer is having the problem even though it is not a Dell and does not have SATA DVD drives. What does this means for using the other ports? I am actually having trouble using those ports. I am trying to add some data hard drives and in come cases the drive will just disappear until I reboot. There is something wrong with this bridge.
At this point I've tried a few more combinations and it appears that the two top ports, one with the blue connector and the black one next to it, are linked to the problem. Right now I have the C drive back in the blue one and I had one freeze so far. I'll give a little more time before I condemn that port too. If I only use the the four SATA ports on the other side of the MoBo power connector, SATA2 through SATA5, it seems OK. But what does this do for people who are using RAID functionality??? Or just have a lot of drives? Why is the one port blue? just for ease of chinese assembly? Or does if have special Hybrid Hard Drive functionality? HHD is supposed to really enhance Vista performance. Oops, there was another freeze, looks like the C drive needs to go back to SATA5...
Chrisbe, do you have a part number on that MoBo? Mine has a Dell part number painted right on it, but there is a sticker that doesn't look like Dell, its a different color and has a red mark on it, presumably a QC mark. The number on is this:
0WG855-70821-68S-034D
***UPDATE***
Still getting freezes - now I think its also the order in which the drives are connected. SATA5-HD, SATA2-DVDReader, SATA3DVD Writer= freeze up.
***MORE UPDATE***
It appears that its the order that DVD drives are in, or some combination of both issues. Ughh...
*** EVEN MORE*** I switched the order that the DVD drives are in and it works fine again - I was getting worried. Now I have SATA2-DVDWriter, Sata3-DVD Reader, SATA4 C: drive. Don't have time to try all the combos now....
- I am using the new Asus P5B Premium Vista Edition motherboard.
Brackhams fix has worked for 2 hours, I have dell E520 1 gb ram, intel core duo 2.66 pro. will update tomorrow to let you know how fix is doing. Thanks again Brackham.
24 Hours later and not 1 freeze-up. if you have a dell and this problem, Brackhams fix is the anwser.
I have no IaStorV errors in the event log. My machine is Dell Precision 380, and it still freezes quite ofthen. But I suspect it has to do with handeling the two internal discs.
Greetings, Rasmus
Dell forum on memory reported as less than 4 GB. Found this on the Dell website. http://support.microsoft.com/kb/929580/en-us
- This is the identical problem that I am experiencing, to the T. I am going batty trying to get help. i like Vista but it is not worth this freezing issue.
- I want to thank you for your help I followed your suggestion and I have not experienced a freeze up for 2 hrs. Awesome you save me from many more hours of frustration.
Perfect, that worked. Thanks indeed.
Thanks a bunch! I had the same problem since upgrading to Vista Pro last week. Dell support told me that I must have screwed up the upgrade installation somehow. They recommended that I backup my personal data, and call them back so they can walk me through a fresh install (i.e. wiping off my HD and starting from scratch). I was doing just that when I saw this forum. I couldn't believe this solution would work, but I also saw this article that points to the same thing:
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2007/03/28/dell_vista_raid/
It took me a whole 10 minutes to switch the cables.... I still can't believe the solution actually worked. Needless to say I am quite grateful to have saved many hours of work, and a ton frustration, as most probably a reinstall would not have resolved this problem.
I have a Dimension 9200 (same as XPS 410 in the US), with only *One* hard disk, and two DVD drives. The DVD drive cables were on ports 1 and 2 (HD on 0). I moved them to ports 4 and 5 as described before. It's been already over 12 hours of no freezing. I am quite sure it is solved now (my computer was freezing every 4 or 5 minutes before).
Also, I was getting a windows error in regards to DVX-I before at boot up and while performinmg some operations. Haven't since it since. Now I have to resolve a couple other minor issues, and I am set to go.
- What type of system do you have?
My system is Dell Precision 380 Intel Pentium 4 Processor 531 with 2 GB RAM and 2 SATA Hard Drives - all SATA drives non-RAID, 2 drives configuration.
However, occasionally when booting I get this error: "Drive 5 not found: Parallel ATA, PATA-1 (PRI IDE Slave)"
I just press F1 to continue, and Vista 64 Ultimate starts as normal. But quite often the computer is paralyzed, it freezes for a minute or so.
Is there a cure for this?
Thanks so much for all the help! It works great now!
Brakham wrote: Good news, it looks like the problem is solved !!!
Indeed, after reporting the problem to Dell Europe, I was called by a technician who told me that a solution had been found and how to fix the problem. He kindly assisted me on the phone during the whole process.
(This fix applies to a Dell Dimension 9200 with two hard disks in RAID 0 on SATA ports 0 & 1 and two CD drives on SATA ports 2 & 3)
What I had to do was move the CD drives from SATA ports 2 and 3 to ports 4 and 5. If you open your computer, you will see two orange cables coming from the CD drives to connectors on the motherboard. Two other free connectors are located underneath. You just have to disconnect both cables and connect them into the lower set of connectors.
After this is done, when you restart the computer, you have to go to the setup (F2 at startup) and change the status of the SATA ports 2, 3, 4 and 5:
Drives
SATA-2 set to OFF
SATA-3 set to OFF
SATA-4 set to ON
SATA-5 set to ON
You can then save and leave the setup. After you restart, the computer runs smoothly.
I did this about an hour ago and didn't experience any freeze yet. I guess the "30 second freeze syndrome" is history now.
Addendum: now it's 5 hours later and everything is still fine. Operation successful !
On 3/30/2007, Dell released a firmware update for the Phillips DROM6316 HH SATA 16x DVDROM and on 3/25/2007 a BIOS update to 2.2.1 for the DM061/E520 machines. I applied both of these this AM and restored my SATA cable connections (4 to 1 and 5 to 4) to the original factory configuration and reset in SETUP. I have now been running over 10+ hours without a freeze. My machine is an E520 running Home Premium. I don’t have any advice for 9200 users, but this might be worth checking out.
- I have reinstalled 3 times now. And still have the same problem. After reading this forum I tried moving the disk drives around. Helped for one hour. Reinstalled vista 1st time helped for 2 hrs. reinstalled 2nd time, I didn't even get to set the time before it froze. I am very upset and dell is no help at all.
- I moved my 2 SATA hard drives (Raid 0 config) from Sata 0 & 1 to SATA 2 & 3, and the freezing problem was solved. Previously I had just moved the two CD/DVD drives from 2&3 to 4&5, and that did not solve the problem. So, I think you can be confident in zeroing in on Sata 0 & 1 <-- one of these (or both) have to be the culprit.
Today, I found the solution to that darn 20sec-freeze-issue:
Apparently, the bios and (or) my Phillips DVD-ROM drive was the raison of my Dell's 9200 "sickness". I figured this by tuning into the Dell site, searching for downloads. And here they were, two downloads labeled "urgent". And the one for the DVD drive explicitly stated it's for that freezing problem.
So I downloaded these two fixes, then flashed the bios and updated the drive. Since then, no more problemos! Man, I was so happy this was the workaround, since I didn't trust my fingers to make that S-ATA drive switch.....
Hope this works for ya'll. Greetings from Switzerland
Thanks all for the posts, they were SO helpful. Sounds like Dell may have addressed the true root cause from that previous post (updated firmware for the DVD/CD drive?) but the "workaround" definately works. I also tried to simply move both CD & DVD drives only the first time, but the freeze remained. Once I put the hard disk and the CD drive onto 2&3, though... it worked fine. I would also agree that the two seperated ports (SATA 0&1) are the problematic ports. If I ever need to use all 6, maybe I'll try the firmware update/bios flash. Thanks for the help, all!
THIS IS SPARTA!!!!
- How about using the JMicron controller for the OS? My motherboard lists the following:
- Intel ICH8R Southbridge
- 6 x SATA 3.0Gbps interface
- Intel Matrix Storage Technology
- Supports RAID 0, RAID 1, RAID 0+1, RAID 5, RAID 10
- eSATA support
- JMicron JMB363 Controller
- 1 x Ultra ATA 33/66/100/133 (data transfer rate up to 133MB/sec.)
- 2 x SATA 3.0Gbps interface
- Supports RAID 0, RAID 1
- eSATA support
- Intel ICH8R Southbridge
Brian,
This has been a very interesting forum for me. Several weeks ago, I purchased an HP Pavillion d4790y with 2 DVD drives and have been baffled by the almost continuous freezing of the display, mouse and keyboard for what seems to be precisely 30 seconds. I have been keeping a log of the freezes and I found that the 'freezes' finally disappear after an hour or so-- That first hour had also 10 incidents of this freezing, and after that the problem just went away! I also noticed that the DVD drives were being polled (green lights were flashing for no reason). I decided to manually open/close each DVD drive today after the first freeze and the freezing problem seems to have gone away. The polling of the DVD drives seems to have stopped, but it really is too soon to tell if this workaround has really solved the problem. This has to be a Vista software problem given that there are so many different PCs experiencing this problem...
Check out the following link for the reason why you may be getting those iastorv entries in your event logs
http://support.intel.com/support/chipsets/imsm/sb/CS-025783.htm
Brakham wrote: Good news, it looks like the problem is solved !!!
Indeed, after reporting the problem to Dell Europe, I was called by a technician who told me that a solution had been found and how to fix the problem. He kindly assisted me on the phone during the whole process.
(This fix applies to a Dell Dimension 9200 with two hard disks in RAID 0 on SATA ports 0 & 1 and two CD drives on SATA ports 2 & 3)
What I had to do was move the CD drives from SATA ports 2 and 3 to ports 4 and 5. If you open your computer, you will see two orange cables coming from the CD drives to connectors on the motherboard. Two other free connectors are located underneath. You just have to disconnect both cables and connect them into the lower set of connectors.
After this is done, when you restart the computer, you have to go to the setup (F2 at startup) and change the status of the SATA ports 2, 3, 4 and 5:
Drives
SATA-2 set to OFF
SATA-3 set to OFF
SATA-4 set to ON
SATA-5 set to ON
You can then save and leave the setup. After you restart, the computer runs smoothly.
I did this about an hour ago and didn't experience any freeze yet. I guess the "30 second freeze syndrome" is history now.
Addendum: now it's 5 hours later and everything is still fine. Operation successful !My Dell Dimension Desktop 9200 cam on Monday and I'd been getting these random 15-30 second freezes. Initially, I thought they were part of the system's setup process then I realised there was some sort of error. I then scanned for viruses (which were non-existent) and installed a fresh copy of Vista Premium.
After a bit of googling (interrupted, of course, by freezes) I found this post and it seems to have worked. I fail to see the logic in it because I'm not an expert but I just want to express my grattitude. Thanks!
Got my new Dell Dimension today and was experiencing the same random freezes as described all over the Internet. Sure enough, the event viewer put it down to iaStor and of course, I was experiencing a freeze for approximately 20-40 seconds every 25 minutes (roughly). Looking at some work-arounds, I swapped the cables around to 03 and 04 and I have not had any freezes for about 3 hours now.
I hope the rest of you get your software patch for this issue soon!
- Thank you very much for this. My brand new Dell 9200 with Vista, two HD's in RAID0 and two CD drives experienced the same freezes. I was already blaming the McAfee installation or the nVidia drivers but nothing helped. I was getting very desparate and it was really starting to spoil the "fun" of having a new pc until I found this thread.
Found the entries in the log and tried Intel's suggestion of removing some entries from the registry, which didn't help. So I swapped the cables this morning. No freezes until now! Thanks a lot!
Brakham wrote: Good news, it looks like the problem is solved !!!
Indeed, after reporting the problem to Dell Europe, I was called by a technician who told me that a solution had been found and how to fix the problem. He kindly assisted me on the phone during the whole process.
(This fix applies to a Dell Dimension 9200 with two hard disks in RAID 0 on SATA ports 0 & 1 and two CD drives on SATA ports 2 & 3)
What I had to do was move the CD drives from SATA ports 2 and 3 to ports 4 and 5. If you open your computer, you will see two orange cables coming from the CD drives to connectors on the motherboard. Two other free connectors are located underneath. You just have to disconnect both cables and connect them into the lower set of connectors.
After this is done, when you restart the computer, you have to go to the setup (F2 at startup) and change the status of the SATA ports 2, 3, 4 and 5:
Drives
SATA-2 set to OFF
SATA-3 set to OFF
SATA-4 set to ON
SATA-5 set to ON
You can then save and leave the setup. After you restart, the computer runs smoothly.
I did this about an hour ago and didn't experience any freeze yet. I guess the "30 second freeze syndrome" is history now.
Addendum: now it's 5 hours later and everything is still fine. Operation successful ! - Has anyone else with a Dell E520 downloaded the bios without switching the SATA cables and stopped the freezing problem. I switched the cables and the freezing stopped. I'm not sure what will happen if I download and flash the bios now.
I have an E520 running Home Premium that I downloaded and flashed the BIOS to 2.2.1 and moved my cables back to factory location, reset the CD/DVD drives in SETUP, then applied the firmware update for the Phillips DVDROM. These changes were done on April 2nd. No more freezes as of the 8th, so the result is the same as moving the cables. I have been in contact with a guy in Canada who had not swapped the cables. He applied the BIOS and firmware update and advised me that he had gone 2 hours without a freeze.
Earlier, I had a Dell tech on the line and unfortunately, it appeared that I knew more than he did on this issue. He was still trying to look for a software conflict. I finally told him that I wanted to apply the changes and then see what happened.
- Thanks for the info Whiporwill. I also contacted Dell and they were not helpful. Was there any noticable difference between switching the cables versus going back to the factory cable location and flashing the BIOS & updating firmware for the DVDROM? I'm just wondering about performance.
- Gerbyee, it seems like the machine wakes up from sleep better, but otherwise I could see no difference in performance. So, if I am pressed for a recommendation, put the cables back and do the BIOS and firmware updates.
- Thank you very much for sharing this piece of information - found it randomly in Google, solved my problem as I seem to have exactly the same machine & was about to get very depressed about it!
Yes, this worked for me too. Bought a new Dell E520 from QVC. When I explained the problem to QVC they basically told me to take a hike....PLEASE DO NOT BUY A DELL FROM QVC UNLESS YOU ENJOY BEING IGNORED. Then after 4 hours of Dell tech. support on a telephone with a guy from Southern India, nothing was fixed. Then I saw this post.....tried it and it worked! Strange, Dell and QVC know about the problem but will just screw their customers over. QVC and Dell lost a customer for good.
Boycot QVC!!
Mark F.
Anonymous, I am just curious, which fix did you apply. The cable swap or the BIOS and or DVDROM Firmware update?
I also have an E520 that I did the cable swap on, but when then BIOS/firmware update came out on March 30, I applied that and put the cables back. Did this on April 2nd and have had no freezes as of April 15th.
- sorry people...but my mainboard has only sata1 & sata2 and nothing else.
can anyone get me a better explanation about freezing problem.
there is no sata 4 or 5 or more! in my mainboard.. - This solved my problem!
- The solution for my pc was the sata switching
- A SOLUTION IS AT HAND FOR THE VISTA FREEZING ISSUE ON DELL DIMENSION E520
The details: bought a Dell Dimemsion E520 from QVC. It came with Windows XP including an upgrade to Vista. It took a while for Vista to arrive after ordering it and it was installed. Immediately the freezing began, every day, 30 seconds to minutes.
Upon notifying QVC they basically ignored me and directed me to Dell support. I emailed QVC again, again they ignored me. Researching I discovered this forum and what appeared to be a solution! But it involved opening the unit, rewiring, bios change. So I again contacted QVC and once again they ignored me. So I tried Dell support. After 4 hours of telephone tech help from a man in south India, the machine was still freezing. And yet another email to QVC resulted in another "..someone will get back to you.." and nobody ever did. Ever.
So I opened the machine and took a chance. It worked and this was the fix:
Unplugged everything from the PC. Opened it. Depressed the power button repeatedly for over a minute to drain any stray current and/or power pack current. Grounded my hand to the machine. Located the orange cables plugged into SATA 1 and SATA 4. SATA is perpendicular to SATA 4 and 5. Unplugged the orange cable in SATA 4 and plugged it into SATA 5. Unplugged the orange cable from SATA 1, turned it 180 degrees and plugged it into SATA 4. Closed the machine. Plugged everything back in. Turned on the unit and depressed the "F2" key repeatedly to enter bios. Scrolled down to display, Selected SATA 1 and turned it to "off". Selected SATA 5 and turned it to "on". Clicked "save and exit". The machine booted and the freezing problem was gone. THANK YOU TO THIS FORUM AND MEMBERS!!
From my experience, I will advise everyone, PLEASE DO NOT BUY A COMPUTER FROM QVC!! Unless you enjoy being treated poorly. They were NO help, none. And they lied to me in an email, never responding or even attempting to resolve this situation. I saved the emails so if anyone would like to see what to expect if there is a problem with a Dell PC bought from QVC, I'll be happy to forward them. If it prevents even one person from having to go through the frustration, anger, and resentment I have toward QVC, it will be a success in my mind. I will NEVER buy anything from QVC again. My wife is a "member" and watches it but I'm working on her, and her family, and my mother, and friends, asking all of them to consider buying from local merchants or at least a company that is trustworthy. It's starting to work too! My wife has purchased a number of things locally recently instead of QVC! And we tell EVERYONE about this. I hope you will too.
Anyone who reads these emails will easily see how QVC simply turned their back on me. They took my money very quickly and when a problem surfaced they walked away. Please don't let it happen to you. Again, my advice: STAY AWAY FROM QVC. Buy from other merchants. - Right, so this is all fine and dandy for Dell systems, but unfortunately all the above issues are useless to me.
I am a technician for VoodooPC and recently my own personal laptop, an MSI Megabook with a single SATA drive started having these exact same problems. So of course, I took it to work, tore it down and rebuilt it, replacing the SATA cable in the process.
Unfortunately the freezing issue is still occuring. :/ Changing the SATA options is not an option on this Laptop's BIOS either. So no, the problem has not been solved.
I think overall Vista has an issue with SATA Controllers of certain types, or perhaps a combination of problems with SATA & IDE (Optical Drive patch from Dell leads me to think possibly IDE is somehow related).
Oh and almost forgot: We've attempted to flash the BIOS with three different versions of the flash. Only one of them works with this system at all.
Now I admit, I didn't read through the entire thread, so please don't be too mad if I missed something.
- It seems like we are in the same boat. You described exactly what is happening with my PC. Have you gotten any fix yet?
I have a Dell XPS 410, and experienced this same issue.
I have one DVD Drive, and one Hard Drive.
My DVD drive had no orange cable coming out of it, my hard drive had a blue cable coming out of it in SATA 0.
I moved it from SATA 0 to SATA 3 which is the last one on my motherboard in the hopes that this fixes my issue. I was about to rollback to XP MCE and my frustration with MS and Dell are at an all time high on this matter. I really hope this fixes my problem.
- I just put together a computer using Asus P5B "Vista" Edition motherboard. Asus does not give any clear instruction on installing Vista? WTF. I spent last 8 hours first trying to load Vista and then getting it to run properly.
I have 4 drives and one DVD ROM. I have my stand alone drive connected to SATA 1, DVD ROM to SATA 2. Three seagate 7200.10 drives connected to SATA 3, 4 & 5.
I was unable to Load Vista so I had to do these first.
You have setup RAID on the Intel ICHR8 controller you need to create a Floppy Image using the supplied Asus CD. During Vista Installation you have to put in the Floppy Image, when it gives you drive selection option you need to load Driver from this floppy before doing a format or anything. Once you do this now Vista will install otherwise it will go and halt at 49% copying files.
Secondly onces installed you will experience momentary freezes (very annoying). For this you have to go clear the Parameter registery key in two locations under
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\System\CurrentControlSet\Services\iaStorv
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\System\CurrentControlSet\Services\iaStor
And this will fix this problem - I haa similar problem with my internet connection working one minute and not working the next. I also could not connect to other PCs on the Network. Chaning my 2 dvd drives to SATA 4/5 solved the problem. Im still freezing in Vista but not as much. A co worker of mine just got a brand new Dell and he has the exact same connection issue. I suggested he take the same steps before pulling his hair out talking to Dell.
I have had the same problem with a recently purchased Dell Dimension 9200.
The problem seems to have been resolved by downloading the urgent updates for the two DVD drives (a philips dvd-rom drom6316 and a sony dv+-RW AW - Q160s) from the dell support site. There are a couple of other critical updates out there, but it seemed to be one of these two that did it.
Here is the url: http://support.euro.dell.com/support/downloads/driverslist.aspx?c=uk&l=en&s=gen
Good luck
Kevin Sc
- I spent several hours with support today and it seems to be a service causing this. I booted in safe mode with some services disabled and no lock up. We start again tomorrow trying to isolate which service.
Have a Dell Dimen E520 still freezes up after a clean install, in fact froze up while I was typing this. I am assuming this a Dell problem since that seems to be the common denominator among all of us.
- I have exactly the same system - also running Vista Ultimate and exactly the same thing happens.
It is completely random and seems to happen whatever application I use - Did you find a solution?? - I am still working with microsoft on the issue. We have tried all the test they have. they are elevating it to the performance managers. they will call me again tomorrow. I can tell you many things it is not. My issue is a hard freeze, the only way out is to reboot.
- I just checked back and found this response. Great info and extremely helpful. I wish I had known that all along. But I decided on a different route. I am using SATA I drives and my understanding is that AHCI will not benefit me. I had the controller set for AHCI instead of IDE. I assumed this was causing my problems. I reinstalled and chose IDE. Thus I am not using RAID but I am also no longer experiencing the freezing problems. Also, someone had told me that I did not have to install the drivers with Vista and that they were for XP only. I guess that is wrong. Oh well. I will keep this info close by if I choose to use RAID someday with this MB. Thanks again.
To Brakham and all who've quoted you since in other threads,,,,,,Thankyou Thankyou Thankyou!!!
I got my Dell Dimension 9200 a few days ago... It's such an improvement on my old 450MHz box (straight up
So you can imagine my worry and annoyance when this this infuriating random freezing fault showed up as soon as I'd started using it. I was already skeptical about Vista with it's frills and flashing lights, so it was absolutely getting the blame and having re-built the machine the way I wanted it anyway (Dell had decided to use the whole of one of my 2 x 250GB disks as a system partition), the Ludite in me was reaching for the XP disks. However,,,, that cable switch has absolutely fixed the problem for me (no freezes at all since) and I confess - I am enjoying the Vista experience! It's got some good additions and it's not slow on this box, so I think it may be here to stay.
Incidently; I did try flashing the bios and using the latest drivers for the two optical drives concerned and that didn't work for me. It was the cable switch that did the trick.
Thanks again to all of you,
Clive
- I have a toshiba satellite A135-S4427, bought it just this February and it came preinstalled with vista home premium and it just started freezing with the only solution beeing reboot about 3 days ago, ive been looking around and didnt find a solution so then i went through the programs i had installed at the time of the first freeze, only three: itunes, spybot and firefox, i went through and searched for issues related with each one and vista, spybot and firefox have no known issues that can cause freezes. itunes does, well not itunes but quicktime, heres the link to the page: http://lowendmac.com/fishkin/07/0410.html...then i thought it can be quicktime but mostlikely isnt...and came to the SOURCE OF THE PROBLEM: windows vista UPDATE, some of you might say no...but the thing is i reinstalled vista and didnt install any others i first updated and vuala... the freeze effect maybe this info isnt good because it doesnt explain how to fix i dont know how or which update it is, but its one of the new ones because all this time i had vista it just started 3 days ago so if any of you are computer and vista savy can u confirm if it actually is an update Thanks in advance
- u the man
......... same prob with my vista freezing, two days i have been talking to
dell
with no joy . and tomorrow they will get there software department to contact me,because thay havent a clue..........i won,t try this tonight but after talking to them .........i will ask them can i try a WHIPORWILL and see what thay say Hi friends,
this thread saved me from fresh re-install.
I had exactly the same problems as others - random "hangs" for about 20-30s. Tried to do everything, reducing size of PST Outlook file, moving data to different drive etc.
Solution was: clear the registry for iaStorV parameters, load new Intel Matrix Storage driver from Dell website and reorder cables/drives plugged in SATA1-4 (cannot move Sata0 as it´s boot device and appear message about not found boot record).
All day without any problems now. Good help and easy solution.
Thanks everybody in the thread.
Tomas
S3ViN wrote: Right, so this is all fine and dandy for Dell systems, but unfortunately all the above issues are useless to me.
I am a technician for VoodooPC and recently my own personal laptop, an MSI Megabook with a single SATA drive started having these exact same problems. So of course, I took it to work, tore it down and rebuilt it, replacing the SATA cable in the process.
Unfortunately the freezing issue is still occuring. :/ Changing the SATA options is not an option on this Laptop's BIOS either. So no, the problem has not been solved.
I think overall Vista has an issue with SATA Controllers of certain types, or perhaps a combination of problems with SATA & IDE (Optical Drive patch from Dell leads me to think possibly IDE is somehow related).
Oh and almost forgot: We've attempted to flash the BIOS with three different versions of the flash. Only one of them works with this system at all.
Now I admit, I didn't read through the entire thread, so please don't be too mad if I missed something.I think in my case it worked fine after I deleted registry parameters and loaded new version of Intel storage software...
T.
- Dimension 9100, 3GB ram. Same Issue. XP worked fine. Vista hangs randomly for 30 seconds and then resumes. Frankly, I am disapointed in vista. I would go back to XP if it wasn't for licensing.
I got this same on Vista Ultimate:
Operating System: Windows Vista™ Ultimate (6.0, Build 6000) (6000.vista_rtm.061101-2205)
Language: Polish (Regional Setting: Polish)
System Manufacturer: System manufacturer
System Model: System Product Name
BIOS: Phoenix - AwardBIOS v6.00PG
Processor: AMD Athlon(tm) 64 X2 Dual Core Processor 5600+ (2 CPUs), ~2.8GHz
Memory: 2046MB RAM
Page File: 1255MB used, 3069MB available
Windows Dir: C:\Windows
DirectX Version: DirectX 10
DX Setup Parameters: Not found
DxDiag Version: 6.00.6000.16386 32bit Unicode
Card name: NVIDIA GeForce 8800 GTS
Manufacturer: NVIDIA
Chip type: GeForce 8800 GTS
DAC type: Integrated RAMDAC
Device Key: Enum\PCI\VEN_10DE&DEV_0193&SUBSYS_82341043&REV_A2
Display Memory: 1371 MB
Dedicated Memory: 604 MB
Shared Memory: 766 MB
Current Mode: 1280 x 1024 (32 bit) (60Hz)
Driver Name: nvd3dum.dll,nvwgf2um.dll
Driver Version: 7.15.0011.5845 (English)
Vista freeze one time on 30 minutes it's very nervous!!!I had the same with my custom built rig. The rig features a MSI MoBo with a NVidia 650 SLI chipset.
Looking in the event logging I was able to loocate the error in the NVSTOR32.sys driver. The error was: eventid: 129; Source nvstor32; message: "Terugzetten op apparaat \Device\RaidPort0 is aangevraagd." (this is Dutch for: "reinitialise \Device\RaidPort0" I believe).
It seemed to be a known problem with NVidia drivers. What I did to resolve the problem was disable NCQ (Native Command Queueing) in the properties of the SATA controller hardware. Ever since the problem disappeared completely.
Hope this will also help others out as it has cost me some weeks to figure out this problem.
Cheers
- Hello guys...I "had" the same problem with vista freezing randomly or when i would install a program. I think i have the solution because my computer has been running fine playing games and having 8+ programs open. What you do is right click your desktop...click personalize...click windows color and appearance....Then click open classic appearance properties...then change your theme to vista basic...Thats It! There will be no windows aero after this
but at least the computer wont freeze! Until microsoft creates a fix for aero dont use it....It lags way to much. And like i said i have been using many programs and installing many programs without any freezez. One more thing... i purchases a dell laptop then upgraded to vista and it works fine by doing this trick. Good Luck! The native mode must be the problem. In Gygabyte p35-dq6 is working in ports 0,1,2,3 and its configurable by the bios.
so in there you must the hard disks to ports 4,6? set it to disable. The other problem with some freezes in boot off vista
is created by a rootine called isdegrated!! The time that this rootine need to terminate some times is over 30 secs!! It
was to do with some hardware checking! For exaple i was getting 3 errors and i attached a usb device and then i was
getting 3 errors/warnings! The 2 error/delay wornings they come from my 2 cdroms i've download the new firmware the
3rd device was the tech fdd drive with 7+1 card reader! The thing is microsoft trying to controll what and were are we
buying? This is facist and ohh yes i hate globalism some one must stop them. Now the problem is does someone knows
how i can find what list does this procedure runs and to add the haredware in there using an editor (hehehe) or to disable
for GOO this facist policy! Protecting from what? cheep devices? thanks but NO thanks! i need help on this and you need
help on this. Any experts on this issue?
fix and it works to all!
Back Again with a solution for all! Finaly i did! No more freezing at all and you dont need
to download drivers, firmware cables and other staff + You dont need to uncheck the
programs and the services + You dont need to undo your overclocking + It will speed up
all off your pcs just doing that + You dont need to change enviroment siple windows
is nice even with vista.
1) i hade 6 sata ii in raid 0 and 8 gb ram! The bios off to the fucking native mode fixed
the problem off from the bios the iaStor errors bacame history But you need to resntall
your windows
2) You must install the windows (i hade vista ulltimate x64) with less than 4 Gb memory
i sujest 2 Gb. After installetion you can put more memory BUT NO carefull NO more
than 4 Gb! Belive it or not the speed off the pc reduses dramaticly even in vista 64!!
the problem is that the system is trying to count the memory and even a memory check
in 8gb was too slow and the freezes came back even boot was to slow!? With vista
ultimate i dint use even the froppy disk to intsall a 3rd party driver trust me.
3) You go to the system controlled boot dialog for experts and you check the
CPUS selection radio button make it 4 if you have Quad cpu.
4) You check the maxmemory and you add there 3584 if you have 4 gb. If you have
more like me it dosent let you to put more!!
5) You press ok and you check the button saved to boot. It will tell you this is dangerus
and other staff but press ok.
6) leave the boot 30 secs ckecked it dosent efect the speed off windows load!!
6) Then you reboot.
7) you go to the experiens test and you do it (you gonna get straingly improved results)
8) that was it the freezes gone for good the speed is HUGE and all these threat
will be a bad memory you will quickly forget!
9) Now ? i have 8gb ram and i'm using only 3582 in my vista 64!! Bravo to the lamers
in microsoft! or they did it in perpose? they thinking to mutch people will buy new things they
gettinjg more money? i mean you were changing cables firmwares etc etc...
You gonna remember me in all off your life. The best things in life are free.
a final solution for all the pc with any drivers.
http://forums.microsoft.com/technet/showpost.aspx?postid=1928388&isthread=false&siteid=17&authhash=e8a46637eb34da4bafff2bd90c9119468f403d24&ticks=633212068727805238&sb=0&d=1&at=7&ft=11&tf=0&pageid=6I forrgot in the boot press F8 and select make the check in drivers off.\
Then your pc is flying
- I had the same problem with Dimension 9100 after adding other software. I discovered that it is a software issue. Roxio was my problem. It had one section that was apparently unresponsive with Vista. I deleted it. I am running fine now. It could be Dell, but it could also be another application that you use.
- Code Snippet
I forrgot in the boot press F8 and select make the check in drivers off.\
Then your pc is flying
Where do you do this? Within the BIOS, the options i have from F8 are to chose which drive to boot from.
Thanks.
This problem can be solve with the new Vista updte patch. Here's some info:
Patch: KB938194
This update resolves some compatibility issues and reliability issues in Windows Vista. By applying this update, you can achieve better reliability and hardware compatibility in various scenarios.
This update resolves the following issues:
• The screen may go blank when you try to upgrade the video driver. For more information, click the following article number to view the article in the Microsoft Knowledge Base:
932539 (The screen may go blank when you try to upgrade the video driver on a Windows Vista-based computer) The screen may go blank when you try to upgrade the video driver on a Windows Vista-based computer
• The computer stops responding, and you receive a "Display driver stopped responding and has recovered" error message. You can restart the computer only by pressing the computer's power button.
• The computer stops responding or restarts unexpectedly when you play video games or perform desktop operations.
• The Diagnostic Policy Service (DPS) stops responding when the computer is under heavy load or when very little memory is available. This problem prevents diagnostics from working.
• The screen goes blank after an external display device that is connected to the computer is turned off. For example, this problem may occur when a projector is turned off during a presentation.
• There are stability issues with some graphics processing units (GPUs). These issues could cause GPUs to stop responding (hang).
• Visual appearance issues occur when you play graphics-intensive games.
• You experience poor playback quality when you play HD DVD disks or Blu-ray disks on a large monitor.
• Applications that load the Netcfgx.dll component exit unexpectedly.
• Windows Calendar exits unexpectedly after you create a new appointment, create a new task, and then restart the computer.
• Internet Connection Sharing stops responding after you upgrade a computer that is running Microsoft Windows XP to Windows Vista and then restart the computer.
• The Printer Spooler service stops unexpectedly.
Download it here
Good LuckLet me add my thanks to all the others. I purchased my Dell XPS in November '06 and received a Vista upgrade DVD as part of the deal. I did a clean install of Vista yesterday into a separate partition I set up on the (only) hard drive.
The installation went smoothly and I now have access to either my old XP or the new Vista via a dual-boot setup. However, as soon as I began to work with Vista I encountered random 30 second freezes. Fortunately I found this thread and made the changes you suggested and, so far, no freezes. I have been using Vista continuously now for about 3 hours so, hopefully, the problem is solved.
Interestingly, my Dell manual says to connect HDs to SATA ports 0 and 1 and CD drives to ports 4 and 5, but mine was connected HD to 0 and CD drives to 1 and 2. Whoever built it didn't follow their own recommendations.
Well, here's another potential solution for those running nForce motherboards. (I'm running 680i sli with QX6700 processor and Geforce 8800 gtx on this system, Vista Ultimate 64-bit)
I had the loooong freeze issue, usually followed by the sudden disappearence of my secondary drive. It happened most frequently while transferring lots of data between the drives or downloading larger files. The problem didn't start happening until I downloaded an nVidia serial ata controller via Windows update.
Go into Device Manager and open up the IDE ATA/ATAPI Controllers node, where you'll likely find at least one NVIDIA nForce Serial ATA Controller entry. Right click on the first one in the list, select Properties, and then the various Port tabs (Port 0, Port 1, etc) and then UNCHECK the "Enable command queing" check box.Before I did this, the freeze was a constant in my life these past few weeks. Now, not a single problem--and I've been putting this rig through the ringer.
Hope this helps some poor frustrated Google one day.
All the best
but where can I disable that command queing, if I have a laptop with a intel motherboard intel82810HEM(dell inspiration 1520)
I have the same problems, but I can't do those things, which were said earlier.
Thanks to anyone, who can help me.
I have a Toshiba Satellite A135-S2276 preinstalled with Vista Basic and the same thing has happen to me
but with a twist. It is not random it started 3 days ago, it would happen after the screen was setup and
ready for input but I could not get any response from the mouse clik or keyboard input. The clock in the
task bar freezes while the clock in the tool bar continues to work. I've tried just about every thing that I
could think of short of a compleate restart because I have software that are hard to find and to copy.
I not only have this problem on my laptop but also my Compac desk top but with one difference. The
desktop is loaded with windows XP PRO. So I wonder if it might not be malware or a worm that may have
found a hole in my security. The only way that I can shut down is by tuning the computer off using
the power button or switch.
- I don't own a Dell...never have BUT on my custom built CPU's, I agree XP worked fine. My desktop freezes and my mose pointer even lags (not due to my preference of a mouse drag), my icons remain highlighted when my cursor grazes past them, and I often just press [CTRL, ALT,DEL] to get to the Task Manager and log off. Once you log back in it usually works (and its a lot faster this way than waiting on Windows to quit lagging) . Vista freezes horribly and I have a more than capable system set up. I think this is just a Vista problem since it's so new and MICROSOFT needs to fix this pronto.
AMD Athlon 64 X2 Dual Core Processor 5400+ 2.8 Ghz
3071 MB
32 bit operating system
4 GB RAM DDR2
ABIT KN9 SLI Motherboard SATA/IDE
NVIDIA NForce 570SLI Hey,
This f**king sucks. Im 18 and have jsut forked out $2k for my new DELL laptop for uni and am experiencing this very problem. My system locks up, HDD light is solid and am unable to do anything. I mash a few buttons in disgust and, after 40sec or so, the machine resumes operation. It is very annoying. At first i though it was the new nVida drivers - not so. It happens all the goddam time, moreso during games and when using WMP. I am not as technically adept with PC's as you guys evidently are, but i am of teh belief that swapping cables around inside my lappy is going to be more difficult than a PC/desktop (if not impossible)?
Can someone please reply to this with THE fix i should use and prehaps exlplain the steps a little for the not-so-informed?
My rig:
C2D 5250 1.5ghz
2 GB RAM
8600M GT 256mb
I have one CD/DVD combo drive and a single 160GB SATA HDD.
Please help!
Regards,
AL
DELL IS SHITE.
got my new dell pc a few days back and was disapointed to find that it was freezing for about 30 seconds, thankfully i chose the second option suggested here and updated my firmware with dell.. as my dvd drive was one that had a problem, i've now been using my pc for at least 24 hrs and havent had a freeze as of yet.. so i'd suggest anybody with these problems check if the firm ware needs updating.
I fixed it.. finally!
- Deleted iaStor and IaStorV parameters from registry (see previous posts).
- Downloaded and installed the Intel Matrix Event thingy (see above posts).
No freezes for 72 hours - FIXED.
Cheers guys,
A
Hi,
Had same problem with a Packard Bell. all programms started with a delay from 30 second till even 2 minutes (you can imagine, my 50% grey hair was totaly grey) after two months of miserable Vista Exploring. Also opening an Office 2003 document caused a delay of 30 seconds
Superfetch seems to work only when you have more than 2Gb of Memory and than especialy for using Adobe Photoshop (who on earth makes this connection??????).
I found on the Internet that you have to switch of the Superfetch in the MSCONFIG. After de-selecting superfetch, press apply, press OK and restart your PC and then, unbelievable, Vista started within no-time.
Ik works perfectly for the Vista Home premium version, all programs start within no time.
Hope it works also o your Dell system.
- I use an ATI board and have a similar problem but not exactly the same. I built my own PC and everything seemed to work perfectly for about 5 or 6 months, all of a suddon when i plug in my usb flash drives or my Zune or Archos, or pretty much anything into my USB ports my computer freezes up and does not free up...i need to restart it completely. Does anyone else have this issue?
And BTW i have 4gigs as well and it shows only 3.25 because i am running 32bit, if you have a 64bit OS you can see up to 8gigs...has to do with the memory allocation space, i talked to microsoft for over an hour about this. No Way around it however the left over 700megs are used as shared memory for you mobo/gpu etc.
Vista Ultimate 32bit
500Gb Sata II
320Gb Sata II
ATI Radeon X1950Pro 512Mb
4Gb DDR2 6400
Athlon 64 X2 6000+ (I have Dell 9200 with 1 CD/DVD initially on SATA-2 but now on SATA-5)
Worked for me too. My system used to hang for about 45 seconds before I could log in but after the fix the login panel appears within 1 or 2 seconds of switching the computer on.
My system used to hang at random maybe once or twice a day. The hang was never 'temporary' in that, although it seemed to recover (visually, that is), each operation I tried after the apparent recovery would cause another immediate hang. The drive light always came on at those points too and I initially suspected there was something wrong with the drive.
After the fix my hard drive seems much faster too.
A quick way to see if the boot-up problem is solved is just to disable the port(s) where the CD/DVD(s) are currently connected without having to open the pc and reconnect to the higher number sata ports. I simply disabled port 2 and rebooted and saw immediate results. With that satisfaction I didn't mind opening up the pc to physically change the port.
I think I shall switch my computer off and then on again just for the satisfation of it.
I have the some problem BUT i have a Notebook. and it does not have RAID
15.4 INCH WIDESCREEN DISPLAY (1440 X 900) + ANTI-GLARE
Processor (CPU)
INTEL® Core 2 Duo T7700 (2 X 2.40GHz) 800MHz FSB/4MB L2 Cache
Memory (RAM)
2048 MB CORSAIR DDR2 667MHz - LIFETIME WARRANTY! (2x1GB)
Operating System
WINDOWS® VISTA Home Premium (inc Genuine CD & License) (£59)
USB Options
4 x USB 2.0 PORTS
Bluetooth & Infrared Options
NONE
Memory - Hard Disk
250GB SERIAL ATA II HARD DRIVE WITH 8MB CACHE (5400rpm)
CD/DVD Drive
8x DVD±R/RW/Dual Layer (+ 24x CD-RW)
Graphics Card
512MB GEFORCE 8600GT + D-SUB + TV-OUT
Sound Card
Realtek ALC268 2 Channel High Definition Audio + SPIDIF OUT
Modem
INTEGRATED 56KBPS V92 MODEM
Network Facilities
Onboard LAN & WIRELESS 802.11N NETWORK CARD (£18)
Floppy Disk Drive
NONE
Memory Card Reader
INTERNAL 3 IN 1 MEMORY CARD READER (SD, MMC, MS, MS PRO)
Firewire & Video Editing
1 X 1394a FIREWIRE PORT
TV Card
NONE
Stand-Alone Monitor
NONE
Keyboard & Mouse
INTEGRATED 87 KEY KEYBOARD + 2 HOTKEYS
Mouse
INTEGRATED 2 BUTTON TOUCHPAD MOUSE
Speakers
INTEGRATED 1.5W STEREO SPEAKERS
Printer
NONE
Surge Protection
NONE
Webcam & VoIP
INTEGRATED 2.0 MEGAPIXEL WEBCAM
Media Center Kit
NONE
Anti-Virus
NONE
Office Software
NONE
Port Replicator
NONE
Battery
9 Cell Lithium Ion Battery - up to 6 Hrs Life (+ Spare 6 Cell Battery) (£35)
Power Lead & Adaptor
1 x UK Power Lead & 90W AC Adaptor
Dimensions & Weight
W x D x H: 355mm x 257mm x 35.2mm | Weight: 2.7KG
Additional Features
Biometric Fingertip Reader & 1 x Express Card Slot
Warranty
1 Year Return-to-Base incl 1st Month Free Collect & Return
- Hello billy,
I have same problem, please reply me if u get any solution for the problem, I am using Vista ultimate on
AMD 64 athloneX2
Asus motherboard--m2nbp-VM CSM
Thanks
P.S.Rana I've had this problem for a while, instead of rebooting,just hit control alt delete, start task manager
hit the x on the top left corner
computer back to normal, at least nothing is lost and continue on computing
this is not a dell hardware issue but a vista bug
hope this helps
If the issue is on a Sata Hard drive based systems, move the Sata 2 Controller to Sata 5 Controller - to fix it..
Rgds
Kiran T.J
MCSE - MCP
i have the same problem for a customer hehehe
i check all motherboard memory etc...
still freezing
but on 4 and 5 no problem
i return to the 1 and i find by disabling ncq
all its working good now since 1 hour
thanks for the ncq tips
vista ultimate
- First of all anyone with 1GB or less needs to go out and buy some more RAM, I have 2GB and even after stripping vista down to bare services it uses almost 1GB with only an anti-virus program and google desktop, in-fact as I type on firefox right now I am using 58% of 2GB meaning for you 1GB owners you would be getting freezing. Granted vista will realese some of its prefected data when you play games ect, but I have come to use the general rule that you need 2GB at least to have a smooth experience with vista. Now that is out of the pay, people actually having a problem related to vista and not shortage of ram, keep and eye on the task manager to see what is happening. I havn't run in to this problem, but I would suspect it has to do with poor vista drivers. Maybe try turning off DEP for all programs (set to default in vista).
exactly the same here.. I got a dell XPS 420, with 2GB of RAM.
I got the computer with vista home premium ready installed, and today (about a month from when it arrived) it froze for the first time. I didn't wait 30 seconds, just turned it off. I'm just hoping it dosn't do this every day.
- Exactly the same problem. Operation successful! Many thanks!
- Hey guys, over the past few days, my friend and I were battling to try to get Vista to install without freezing.
If any of you have tried the other suggestions in this thread and still haven't resolved your issues, you might try this:
Go into your bios and disable any CPU related power saving or automatic speed control features such as PPM or EIST (do NOT disable ACPI). Disabling PPM in my buddies q6600 quad core system fixed his problem.
Hope this helps if none of the other solutions have worked! Many thanks for steering me in the right direction!
I found there were some more recent NVidia SATA drivers available, so installed those (via Windows Update)...and that seems to have cured the '1 minute freeze' problem.
Regards
- Well I have a Toshiba Laoptop with Vista and it freezes as well but I didn't know until tonight it only does it for 30 seconds. I kept turning off my computer and as a result it crashed once, now I know it'll be only 30 seconds but anyway, I have the same problem just with a Toshiba.
- Interesting all this. I've had my Dell Inspiron XPS 1530 laptop for 3 weeks now and suddenly I got the lock up problem. I must admit, I haven't left it for 30 secs so I don't know if it's the exact same problem, but once the screen did go to black and I got an error message:
Login process has failed to create the security options dialog error with Vista
Judging by some google searches it looks like an Update from Microsoft has caused the problem, possibly corrupting the McAfee virus software I got preinstalled with the laptop. I took that off my system along with some other programs, but the freezes still occur, sometimes not for hours, sometimes right on start up. It's driving me nuts to be quite honest and I'm utterly disgusted that any possible solutions for people on here are coming from other people, and not Microsoft. It's clear that the problem has been around for a number of months now, so for Gods sake Microsoft, step up and sort it out or you're going to have a serious problem trying to persuade people to deal with you in the future.
COMPLETE DISGRACE!!! - Hi,
I guess I have experienced two or three times a similar bug :
I was just running Vista Ultimate (internet pages, mp 3 playing, ICQ) when all of a sudden all became inaccessible for a long time (20 - 40 secs). I could move my mouse no problem, but no application running was accessible.When I pressed Ctrl+Alt+Del and chose "Start Task Manager" - it did not pop up and I had to reboot. Another time I just waited untill all unfroze.
To me it is a small problem because happens rarely on my system :
Pentium HT 3 Ghz
GeForce AGP
1 GB
Regards.
There'll probably be a fix. - alright i think i found what might be causing the problem from some stuff i`ve checked out. i think it`s an I/O interface or a pci problem causing vista to freez and reload the pci or I/O interface.
I have a Ati 9800 XT and I have the same problem. I also have 4 GB physical memory and also only 3 GB is mentioned in Vista.
I think I am going to try the SATA solution, although I am not sure I have more than 2 SATA connectors.
This problem is really annoying.- Same here with my latest Alienware (which, not surprisingly, is owned by Dell)
and with latest Alienware I do mean top of the range.
I begin to suspect that the issue is not with Vista, but with Dell.
what kind of Computer-screens do you guys have? mine is a Dell... (27" flatscreen, if it makes a difference)
no it has nothign to do with your screen, i have a dell 17" monitor. i fixed the worst of the problem and the reason is because u might not have sp1 on, when it is installed it allows a full 4Gb memory read, ever since i had sp1 installed wth a fiew other updates i got manually, the freezing has gone but it still freezes, but rarely.hankypanky wrote: Secondly onces installed you will experience momentary freezes (very annoying). For this you have to go clear the Parameter registery key in two locations under
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\System\CurrentControlSet\Services\iaStorv
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\System\CurrentControlSet\Services\iaStor
And this will fix this problemAll I did to fix my freezing problems with my Asus P5B-deluxe is to install the latest 8.x Intel Matrix drivers then go into the two registry keys you mention and change LPM for all ports to '0'. It was 0 for iaStor ports but was set to 1 on all iaStorV ports.
- I found this post and having upgraded my Dell Dimension E520 to Vista Business experienced the same problem. The E520 onoy has SATA Ports 0 & 1 (usually used for Disk Drives) and 4 & 5 for CD/DVD. The original config had the HD in SATA 0, the DVD-ROM in SATA 1 and the DVD/RW in SATA 4. By moving the DVD-ROM to SATA 5 the sowftare now seems to be working fine (2+ hours).
SAME THING HERE EXCEPT might doesnt just hang !! it will FREEZE and stay that way until i turn it off ever since i bought this junky phony PC from Dell its been freezing every 3-4 months i get a Macbook Pro thursday so I will be sellin the Hard drive cause i think that may be the problem but if anyone has any tips email them to beatmaker89@gmail.comDrew,
Have you made the registry changes and installed the Intel update per the previous messages?
- Same issue here...Dell Dimension 9100, 4gb ram, Nvidia 7900 GS... I have done a clean install with both 32bit and 64bit versions of Vista on this box several times and always experience the same thing. I would love to hear a solution. The machine came with XP and I upgraded. I have a Dell Latitude D630 notebook that came with Vista and have no issues at all on it.
MLacy,
Have you made the registry changes and installed the Intel update per the previous messages?
I moved 2 HD connections from sata port 1 to sata port 2 and 5 (PATA) to sata port 3. (I have sata 0 to 3 and pata 4 , 5) So i hope this will solve the freezes? or does this fix only apply to dvd drives?
i moved sata 0 hard drive to sata 2 and pata 5 harddrive to sata 3. So you think my freezing problem is fixt now? (just moved them.. no freeze so far..)
That may help but for the 3 machines I have corrected with this issue, you only need to install the Intel Matrix Storage drivers and delete the registry keys as described in previous posts.
The drivers are the key though...
Try installing the latest Intel Matrix Storage Driver (iastor). You can find it here:
http://downloadcenter.intel.com/Product_Filter.aspx?ProductID=2101
They just released a new version in August, 2008. Seems to help.
- Thanks, just installed the latest Intel driver and updated the LPM settings in the registry per the post, seems much better now. Everyone is bashing Vista when this is just a hardware driver issue. Microsoft should be proactive in getting this info to the masses, it would cost much less that what they spend on marketing and have a much greater impact on customer satisfaction with Vista.
- hi
bought medion laptop in feb brilliant had vista home premium pre-loaded all was fine till 2-3 months ago
then froze did re-boot ok but problem got steadily worse
had to re start in safe then re-boot
over this last week every time stated up it froze could only use it in safe mode
just disabled superfetch and guess what it woks yahoo
fingers crossed but thanks
maybe u should work for microsoft - Hey I have a problem with Vista Ultimate 64 bit freezing. I have a Q6600, Sapphire Radeon HD 4850, and 4GB of ram. I believe the problem is video card related, as I have already tried resetting the parameters of:
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\System\CurrentControlSet\Services\iaStorv
Also, I do not know if this is significant but there is no
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\System\CurrentControlSet\Services\iaStor
Usually when it freezing it just locks up and I have to manually reboot the computer. However occasionally it will the monitor will display a static looking thing with a bunch of colors. This leads me to believe it is my Video Card, but I am not sure. Try installing the latest Intel Matrix Storage Driver (iastor). You can find it here:
http://downloadcenter.intel.com/Product_Filter.aspx?ProductID=2101
They just released a new version in August, 2008. Seems to help.- I have tried twice now. It says
Install Failed
This computer does not meet the minimum requirements... - Check this out and see if this helps:http://www.computing.net/answers/windows-xp/cant-install-intel-matrix-storage/171163.html
- Okay now it is working to an extent, but for some reason when I play games it freezes often.
Any ideas? - All my freezing issues have been resolved by:
1) Going into bios and switching my driver from IDE to AHCI
2) Reinstalling Vista Ultimate 64bit
3) Downloading and Installing the Intel Matrix Storage Manager
4) Setting all the parameters of iaStor and iaStorv to 0 in Regedit.exe - UPDATE:
The previous post did not work. It is with great distress I say this, but I am still getting these freezing problems. I am considering going back to XP, if this problem can't be solved soon.
Some tests of the frequency of the freezes:
Civilization 4: Every 5 - 10 minutes
Rise of Nations: Played a good three hours with out a crash to date.
Lineage II: Uncommon, but it does happen.
Firefox and Internet explorer all freeze the system up occasionally too. - The only other solution is to switch your HD and CDROM cables. Other people have reported that this has worked.
I switched both the Sata cables and the ports, however it still seems to freeze. Maybe its not a hardrive issue?
ya
Hi, I read your comment about freezing up, I am having the same problems and I have Windows Vista Basic Home(don't know what you have) and I have heard a lot of bad things about vista. I have done everything to try to get it to run faster and stop freezing up(It's horrible when I play a downloaded game and it starts freezing and everything is running super slow), I am totally "computer illerate" and you sound like you definitely know your computer techs. Could you please explain to me in layman terms exactly how to boost my computer withoug having to pay for 2 or 3 items that may not help from Microsoft. Please e-mail me at DreamOfMe2999@hotmail.com, Please Help soon, I don't know what else to do and I am spending more time on the net looking for solutions, thanks so much Cherra
- I have an HP dv6000 series laptop with 4 GB RAM running Vista premium 32 bit and NVIDIA GeForce 7150M / nForce 630M. The problem I keep having is Vista freezing when I'm watching a video on my computer. It's never happened any other time other than during video playback. It doesn't seem to matter if it's a DVD or something that's saved on my local drive. It happens randomly during playback. Sometimes not even happening at all during a video. The only solution is to restart the compute and try again. I've checked to see if I can update my driver for the video card, but windows says I have the most up to date driver available. Does anyone else have this same problem? And more importantly, have you found a solution?
I would like to say that is 100% better to do a clean install over an upgrade for many reasons. One of them is Hardware and software compatibility.
ML1004: Playing video or music will stress the bandwidth of your computer.
I had the same problem with Itunes.
My conclusion: it is an incompatibility with the board and memory.
You could a) try different brand of memory, or b) relax timing settings on your current memory if your BIOS gives access.
For example if your mem is running at 2.5-3-3-8-1 try 3-4-4-8-2
It worked for me.
- I don't know if my problem fits this, but I was having random freezing when listening to music or watching videos.
I tried a different board, different hard drives, different graphics. I even had all of my bits sent off to be tested and they all came back fine and NFF.
Anyway, after 3 months of pissing about and getting very annoyed, I randomly tried something (No idea why).
I turned off system restore in Vista.
My problems have all gone
No more stuttering music, no more having to restart all of the time, no more freezing.
Hope someone can let me know why disabling system restore fixed my problem??
Thanks,
James I only downloaded "Intel Matrix Storage Driver" and installed it. After that no lockups with my Dell Precision 380. I'm using x64 enterprise Vista with 2GB memory.
- I have the same problem, and no solution. So far the only time Vista SP1 doesn't freeze is just after installation with no additional drivers (in particular, no network). Suggestions on this nightmare would be greatly appreciated.
Windows XP ran fine on my system for months. I then installed Vista SP1 on another disk and shortly after it would freeze at random: the screen would still be there, but nothing would be moving - totally unresponsive. There was no BSOD information, and nothing useful in the event log. This would happen after no more than 1 hour.
Custom System
Motherboard: Intel DP45SG
CPU: Intel Quad Core Q9550 @ 2.83 GHz
RAM: 4 GB DDR3
Video: nVidia 8800 GT
More details: I tried...
Updating all drivers using Driver Detective as well as manually
Updating motherboard BIOS
Updating DVD BIOS
Switching SATA cable for DVD from SATA0 to SATA4 (http://forums.microsoft.com/technet/showpost.aspx?postid=1352596&siteid=17&sb=0&d=1&at=7&ft=11&tf=0&pageid=6)
Disabling Windows Indexing
Disabling system restore (from another post)
These didn't work.
I reinstalled Vista after setting AHCI in the BIOS instead of IDE. I let it run for 24 hours with no additional software installations and it did not freeze.
I then installed Kaspersky IS 2008 and the basic Windows updates and it froze after about 10 minutes. I uninstalled Kaspersky and it froze again - it's not Kaspersky. I tried Vista SP2 Beta and it froze again. I've used System Restore to go back to just after the initial Vista SP1 installation, and will now try process of elimination.
Any suggestions for:
* Find error messages in some kind of log? Nothing unusual in event viewer.
* Making it freeze? So far it's random.
* Trying to turn on and off specific system components?
Thanks. - Did you install the Intel Matrix Storage Driver?
- Cause: Vista is putting hard drive into sleep mode. When you do something that accesses the hard drive the IO call blocks for a few seconds.
Fix: Extend time before Vista puts hard drive to sleep in Control Panel -> System & Maintenance -> Power Options -> Change Plan Settings -> Change Advanced Power Settings -> Hard Disk -> Turn off hard disk after ...
- Proposed As Answer byzenith191 Friday, January 02, 2009 2:22 AM
this solution actually worked!
- I just recently solved my random freezing issue in vista that was related to "nvstor32.sys" warnings in even viewer. At the time of my 20-30 second random freezes there was always a "Warning" tied to the exact time of freeze source from nvstor. After 2 weeks and a new PSU I caught on to the fact Vista had somehow changed all my sata drivers and or HD options in the device manager. Through some toying with the IDE ATA/ATAPI Controllers in the device manager labeled "ATA Channel 0 / ATA Channel 1" and for some reason I had 3 of each listed and I do only have 1 Sata WD 1tb and 1 Sata DVD. One of the 3 then appeared to have the Ultra DMA setting again and once I was able to get the DMA back on I have no more freezing and my PC is back to 100% stable for 48+ hours now.
So my point is this, if you get the Event Warning from NVstor32.sys with the msg "Reset to device, \Device\RaidPort0, was issued." Vista somehow got ahold of some drivers and messed things up, if you can get the DMA back on you should be home free!! And Im sorry I cant be more clear how to get DMA back but I do know it solved my freeze problem! - Hi. I 'used' to have Win XP (great system), but in switching over to Win Vista, i "now" have those annoying little 30 second freeze-ups, too. A Computer "Geek" told me it was because my RAM (memory), is not sufficient enough to run the program and it being 'slow' is basically cos it is working its little butt off to try and keep up. So...all you can do is keep upgrading your HD every year or so.
My Questions is this: Does anyone know of a free Windows Vista Home Edition program that will clear and erase your HD of all of the old emails, letters, etc. on it WITHOUT requiring you to have the system discs on hand (i misplaced mine and cannot find them..?).
If so, please contact me: john_obeirne@hotmail.com, with info.
Thank you!
John- Proposed As Answer byTheFrenchy Wednesday, April 08, 2009 2:00 PM
- Here is what worked for my system: Home brew Gigabyte GA-P965-DQ6 board, NVIDIA GeForce 8800 GTS, 6 GB RAM, 64 bit Vista Business, SATA2 HDD (Raptor and Samsung) set up in AHCI mode. This board happens to use the Intel 965P chipset with an ICH8R interface. (forgive me if my memory is screing up the exact nomenclature here).
Although I did update my BIOS to the latest, I do not think it was needed for the fix. Here is what did fix it:
Install the latest Intel Matrix Storage driver! HOWEVER, the instructions for this say to install the intel chipset driver 1st. So...
1. Install the latest Intel chipset drivers. I used arguments to the set up program to force it to update (in case my stuff was boogered up somehow) I think if Iremember correctly some options I used were /OVERALL and /OVERIDE.
2. Install latest Intel Matrix storage driver.
I did not manually adjust any reg settings, but this may have worked itself out by doing 1 and 2 above. I have not tested real long yet (maybe 3 hours of computer use) but have not had the issue since. Prior to that it would happen on average several times an hour.
I always suspected the issue was related to storage since whenever the 30 second or so "freezes" would happen, the HDD busy light would be on solid the entire time, and the GUI was not locked up but for anything that needed to do disk IO.
Good luck.
