Ok so I'm stumped with this one. A few days ago I installed Windows 7 64 bit on my Q6600/P35/X-25M system. The X-25M was an upgrade from a 300GB Velociraptor. I also upgraded from 4GB to 8GB of ram. I used the default drivers that Win7 installed.
On a clean install with minimal software installed (mostly photo editing software) the stability of the system is downright awful. The disk processes will freeze at random moments from anywhere from 5 to 30 seconds. Explorer crashes all the time. WMP is crashing every 10-15 minutes. The video card driver (AMD/2600 Pro) crashes probably 3-4 times a day. Every couple of days the system will just freeze and the monitors will turn off. In that case I have to do a hard reboot.
It is important to note that before this upgrade, the system was 100% rock stable. No issues what so ever in the two years since the initial build.
There are a lot of variables floating about here. Here is my take:
- The RAM upgrade. I'm doubtful this is causing the trouble.
- Win7/64 bit incompatibility. I'm using a DFI P35-T2RL which is a relatively modern, very solid motherboard. There are no BIOS updates for 64-bit compatibility issues on the DFI website.
- Buggy Win7 video card driver. Possibly, but that doesn't explain the random disk freezes.
- Buggy default Win7 drivers for chipset or other hardware. Possible, but I'm doubting it.
- X25-M hard drive is having issues. Right now this is the prime suspect in my mind. My guess is that if the hard drive is screwing up data read/writes that this would cause all sorts of system problems.
One thing to note is that whenever the suspect disk freezing occurs, that it seems like anything stored in *memory* still works fine. For instance, I can't open any programs (disk), but I'm still able to refresh MS Outlook (memory). The X-25M has the latest firmware. These issues were still happening even before I updated the firmware. I did a SSD benchmark on the drive and all of the numbers seem up to snuff. Whenever the drive isn't freezing up, the performance of the system is excellent.
Any idea what the heck is going on here? What are my next trouble shooting steps?
On a clean install with minimal software installed (mostly photo editing software) the stability of the system is downright awful. The disk processes will freeze at random moments from anywhere from 5 to 30 seconds. Explorer crashes all the time. WMP is crashing every 10-15 minutes. The video card driver (AMD/2600 Pro) crashes probably 3-4 times a day. Every couple of days the system will just freeze and the monitors will turn off. In that case I have to do a hard reboot.
It is important to note that before this upgrade, the system was 100% rock stable. No issues what so ever in the two years since the initial build.
There are a lot of variables floating about here. Here is my take:
- The RAM upgrade. I'm doubtful this is causing the trouble.
- Win7/64 bit incompatibility. I'm using a DFI P35-T2RL which is a relatively modern, very solid motherboard. There are no BIOS updates for 64-bit compatibility issues on the DFI website.
- Buggy Win7 video card driver. Possibly, but that doesn't explain the random disk freezes.
- Buggy default Win7 drivers for chipset or other hardware. Possible, but I'm doubting it.
- X25-M hard drive is having issues. Right now this is the prime suspect in my mind. My guess is that if the hard drive is screwing up data read/writes that this would cause all sorts of system problems.
One thing to note is that whenever the suspect disk freezing occurs, that it seems like anything stored in *memory* still works fine. For instance, I can't open any programs (disk), but I'm still able to refresh MS Outlook (memory). The X-25M has the latest firmware. These issues were still happening even before I updated the firmware. I did a SSD benchmark on the drive and all of the numbers seem up to snuff. Whenever the drive isn't freezing up, the performance of the system is excellent.
Any idea what the heck is going on here? What are my next trouble shooting steps?
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