PC Intermittent "Not Responding" episodes.

[Underclocked]

That battery will be a size 2032, available at most any drug store as that size is also used in medical devices. It should cost no more than $3 and for that you should get a high quality brand. Like I said, a cheap experiment.

 

[crashtech]

I already detailed how I would handle the problem in post #33 above. It is my hypothesis that you have a corrupt driver or application file that will not be fixed by sfc, but it could be other things as well. Parted Magic, for example, has Gsmartcontrol, a utility with which you can scan the entire drive for problems. I don't believe Windows disc utilities can do this without booting to an alternate environment.

 

[Ketchup]

Backup and wipe it all. Start with a fresh install, nothing attached but keyboard, mouse, speakers, screen. Attach only a drive for the OS. Install only drivers you really need, from the Asus website. See if it freezes at that state.

 

[sm625]

This has been happening on my machine. I can move the mouse around, but nothing else will respond for about 45 seconds. Happens about three times a week. I have a SSD boot drive and a 1.5TB media drive. I just ordered a new media drive, thanks to the sale on the deals subforum. Hopefully that solves the problem.

 

[Pleasehelp]

I already detailed how I would handle the problem in post #33 above. It is my hypothesis that you have a corrupt driver or application file that will not be fixed by sfc, but it could be other things as well. Parted Magic, for example, has Gsmartcontrol, a utility with which you can scan the entire drive for problems. I don't believe Windows disc utilities can do this without booting to an alternate environment.

Thank you for the advice.

 

[Pleasehelp]

Backup and wipe it all. Start with a fresh install, nothing attached but keyboard, mouse, speakers, screen. Attach only a drive for the OS. Install only drivers you really need, from the Asus website. See if it freezes at that state.

I was trying to avoid that. If possible.

 

[Burpo]

Uninstall flash player or disable the plug in if you use chrome. Then see if it happens.. I've seen flash player & shockwave both on one machine cause similar problems on different PCs. Make sure you have only one plug-in enabled. When there's a conflict, it bogs the whole machine down (unresponsive)..

 

[Ketchup]

Uninstall flash player or disable the plug in if you use chrome. Then see if it happens.. I've seen flash player & shockwave both on one machine cause similar problems on different PCs. Make sure you have only one plug-in enabled. When there's a conflict, it bogs the whole machine down (unresponsive)..

I was thinking about this as well, but I got the impression that the web browser wasn't running in every scenario. What say you OP?

 

[Pleasehelp]

I was thinking about this as well, but I got the impression that the web browser wasn't running in every scenario. What say you OP?

Im not 100% sure whether my browser was on for every single freeze. There's been a million of them. But.....my browser is almost always on. Let me uninstall Flash now and see what happens. It can't hurt to try.

 

[Pleasehelp]

Uninstall flash player or disable the plug in if you use chrome. Then see if it happens.. I've seen flash player & shockwave both on one machine cause similar problems on different PCs. Make sure you have only one plug-in enabled. When there's a conflict, it bogs the whole machine down (unresponsive)..

Welp.....I guess I don't need to uninstall the flash player. I hit the start button, then clicked on "My computer" and right the. And there by simply clicking on "my computer" nothing happened. In other words....my computer froze again. 30 minutes earlier it worked perfectly. In fact I uninstalled cyrstalinfo with no problems at all. The crazy thing is.....that computer runs perfectly except for the freezes. When it ain't froze its a powerful, fast machine. This problem is really starting to get to me.

 

[crashtech]

If you're not equipped to do detailed diagnostic work, one thing you could try is to use System Restore to rollback your system to a date before this problem started happening. Another thing you could try is to do a repair install on Windows, where you take you disc and direct the setup program to "upgrade", which will re-install Windows over itself while keeping all your programs. This is usually the fix when sfc finds problems it can't fix, but you have indicated sfc finds no problems.

The way it's acting is classic hard drive failure actually, but hell, maybe you got some malware that your scanners missed or something. You might try Hitman Pro, that has caught things for me that other programs have missed.

 

[Pleasehelp]

If you're not equipped to do detailed diagnostic work, one thing you could try is to use System Restore to rollback your system to a date before this problem started happening. Another thing you could try is to do a repair install on Windows, where you take you disc and direct the setup program to "upgrade", which will re-install Windows over itself while keeping all your programs. This is usually the fix when sfc finds problems it can't fix, but you have indicated sfc finds no problems.

The way it's acting is classic hard drive failure actually, but hell, maybe you got some malware that your scanners missed or something. You might try Hitman Pro, that has caught things for me that other programs have missed.

Thanks a million. I did do a Windows repair install. No love. Still freezes. I can't do a system restore because it's been behaving like this for months. Can't go back that far because I have lost track of how long that is. I'll give hit man a shot.

 

[OlyAR15]

In the time it took to attempt all these repairs, you could have easily performed a reformat and clean install of the OS, loaded the latest drivers of only the necessary devices, and load your most commonly used apps. Given that you have 2 hard drives, I am assuming that you keep all your data on the large drive and just your OS and programs on your small drive, which makes the "Nuke & Reinstall" process extremely simple.

If a clean install of the OS still doesn't fix it, it might be a hardware issue, which opens up another can of worms.

 

[crashtech]

It's been clear he doesn't want to do that, so we've been skirting the issue. Next thing is to learn how to download the Parted Magic iso and burn it onto a USB stick. It is very easy to use, and has been one of my PC repair "secret weapons" for years now. It has a good hard drive checker on it.

 

[Smoove910]

I know you said the RAM tested fine, but have you verified in the BIOS that the RAM voltage is set to 1.65v?

 

[Pleasehelp]

I know you said the RAM tested fine, but have you verified in the BIOS that the RAM voltage is set to 1.65v?

I haven't heard about this. I'll check it tomorrow. Just got home from work and it's close to 2am. Time to hit the sack.

All of the suggestions here from the kind people in this thread have been encouraging and meaningful. I appreciate every single thought, idea and comment. My greatest appreciation to all of you.

 

[Pleasehelp]

I know you said the RAM tested fine, but have you verified in the BIOS that the RAM voltage is set to 1.65v?

OK.....I checked the following in the BIOS regarding the RAM. Not sure what I'm supposed to be looking at.

Here is what I see I see in the bios regarding RAM.

QPI - DRAM Core Voltage [auto] Min=1.2000v Max=1.9000v

DRAM Bus Voltage-
Min=1.50v. Max=2.46v(*)

 

[Pleasehelp]

Update: I disconnected my external drive (4gig western digital) and the PC didn't freeze for a couple of hours. I thought....hmmmmm.....this could be the solution to the problem. Then....she froze up on me......but......for a much shorter period of time. I have no idea what that means or indicates.