System freezing and crashing with X-25 + Win7 64bit

d33pblue

Senior member
Jul 2, 2003
225
1
81
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?
 
Last edited:

Xed

Golden Member
Nov 15, 2003
1,452
0
71
Are you using ahci? Maybe try it in ide mode just to test?

My older asus x48 board would become completely unstable with ahci enabled even if there was no drive attached (even froze in the bios screen).
 

Elcs

Diamond Member
Apr 27, 2002
6,278
6
81
First Thing I would look at:

Are you using Kaspersky 2010 AV or IS? I had hassle with my Windows 7 system and Intel X-25M and it seems to be a problem with Kaspersky 2010. Major slowdowns occuring unless I uninstalled it.

Also, I was experiencing lockups and almost lockups with USB items at irregular intervals. Plugging in my Windows Mobile Phone, saving something to my USB memory stick or plugging in my USB Headset could send the PC into a lock whereby Task Manager would not report the offending process despite listing all processes, each key press would take up to 60 seconds to return and the mouse would be frozen out. An odd problem which I never found a solution for.

My X-25M also had some bad performance at times. Boot times were exceptionally good. 90 seconds compared to 5 minutes on my WD GP Vista install but once into Windows I could experience load times as slow as my WD GP's or several seconds of lag when opening programs. Internet Explorer when I required it was a real pain and opening a window from fresh could take 30 seconds from the SSD.

Unfortunately neither of this information directly correlates to any of the problems you have listed but exhibit similar symptoms. I have actually RMA'ed my SSD with the company I purchased it from to see if they can find out whats up and my Seasonic PSU is currently heading to Germany to repair the fan so I am PC'less.

I hope some of this information is useful to you or if not, someone that comes in to express similar issues or to help. I'll be following this thread closely to see if I can add anything else or at least learn the solution.
 

d33pblue

Senior member
Jul 2, 2003
225
1
81
Are you using ahci? Maybe try it in ide mode just to test?

My older asus x48 board would become completely unstable with ahci enabled even if there was no drive attached (even froze in the bios screen).

Any idea how to check this setting? Can I check it through Windows or do I have to go into the BIOS?
 

d33pblue

Senior member
Jul 2, 2003
225
1
81
First Thing I would look at:

Are you using Kaspersky 2010 AV or IS? I had hassle with my Windows 7 system and Intel X-25M and it seems to be a problem with Kaspersky 2010. Major slowdowns occuring unless I uninstalled it.

Also, I was experiencing lockups and almost lockups with USB items at irregular intervals. Plugging in my Windows Mobile Phone, saving something to my USB memory stick or plugging in my USB Headset could send the PC into a lock whereby Task Manager would not report the offending process despite listing all processes, each key press would take up to 60 seconds to return and the mouse would be frozen out. An odd problem which I never found a solution for.

My X-25M also had some bad performance at times. Boot times were exceptionally good. 90 seconds compared to 5 minutes on my WD GP Vista install but once into Windows I could experience load times as slow as my WD GP's or several seconds of lag when opening programs. Internet Explorer when I required it was a real pain and opening a window from fresh could take 30 seconds from the SSD.

Unfortunately neither of this information directly correlates to any of the problems you have listed but exhibit similar symptoms. I have actually RMA'ed my SSD with the company I purchased it from to see if they can find out whats up and my Seasonic PSU is currently heading to Germany to repair the fan so I am PC'less.

I hope some of this information is useful to you or if not, someone that comes in to express similar issues or to help. I'll be following this thread closely to see if I can add anything else or at least learn the solution.

I'm running MS Security essentials, but no other AV or spyware software. And besides the freezing, performance of the disk is excellent. Boot times, software load times are all very good.
 

TemjinGold

Diamond Member
Dec 16, 2006
3,050
65
91
I had the same problem. IE8 would hang up for 10 minutes (I timed it on my watch) before I could do anything at times. What solved it for me was I stopped using IE8 (it's a piece of crap.) Once I switched over to Firefox, all the instability issues were gone. Unfortunately, some things still take longer than my Velociraptor to load (15 secs for Word 2007) but at least it stopped freezing. I also have a P35 and am wondering if maybe that has something to do with it. I'm also using Spysweeper and am wondering if that might be it as the system was snappy right after a clean install but before I installed Spysweeper.
 

GP_Pacer_Blue

Junior Member
Nov 25, 2009
19
0
0
I had this same on my ASUS X48 board with an Q9450 w/ 8GB of 1066Mhz, 3x ASUS P45 board with Q9650 w/ 8GB of 1066MHz, and ASUS P35 w/ an Q9450 w/ 8GB ddr3. The problem is you are going to have to raise your NB voltage to no higher than 1.4v max limit on the chipsset. Also if you are running 8500 ddr2 ram, you are going to have lower your memory timing to.

When I made these modifications to my X48 on q9450, my ram at ran 1066MHz no changes to memory timing.

When I made these modifications to my P45 on q9650, my ram at ran 800MHz changes to memory timing.

When I made these modifications to my P45 on q9550 , my ram at ran 1066MHz no changes to memory timing.

When I made these modifications to my P45 on q9650 , my ram at ran 1066MHz no changes to memory timing.

When I made these modifications to my P35 on q9450, my ram at ddr3 ran 1333MHz no changes to memory timing.

CPUID with also help you in getting your issues corrected.
 

bryanW1995

Lifer
May 22, 2007
11,144
32
91
yes, check out the ram one stick at a time. It's even possible that one of your old sticks went bad before your switch and just didn't cause enough problems to notice.

A few years ago I upgraded from a 1900xt to a 3870 and had all kinds of problems. I went back to the old video card finally and kept having the same problems, finally figured out that one of my sticks of ram had gone bad.
 

d33pblue

Senior member
Jul 2, 2003
225
1
81
Thanks for the tips. If it still gives me hell tomorrow I'll pull the new RAM and see if it settles down.
 

d33pblue

Senior member
Jul 2, 2003
225
1
81
Ok just for a follow up to this issue. I tested the RAM and it passed one full run of Memtest 4.0 with no errors.

The SSD is in IDE mode. When I put it in AHCI mode, I got a BSOD when trying to boot into Windows. Back into IDE mode it goes.

On the other hand, I found what appears to be the smoking gun. My processor was idling at 55C. On full load it would hit the 85C shut down temperature pretty quickly. I cleaned out the HSF, and reapplied thermal paste to the proc/HSF interface. Now its idling at 37C and everything seems to be stable for now.

We'll see if it stays that way.
 

Elcs

Diamond Member
Apr 27, 2002
6,278
6
81
The SSD is in IDE mode. When I put it in AHCI mode, I got a BSOD when trying to boot into Windows. Back into IDE mode it goes.

This is common.

You can google a registry fix which will allow you to switch to AHCI (recommended) and boot into Windows without issue. If you installed Windows under the IDE setting, you would be unable to boot into Windows under AHCI without this registry fix.
 

d33pblue

Senior member
Jul 2, 2003
225
1
81
Ok so I patched the registry and changed the drive mode to AHCI. I noticed the SSD scores much better overall in benchmarks now:

IDE:
ide.png


AHCI:
ahci.png


One exception being the sequential writes. I'm not sure what is going on there, but its not too much of a concern.
 

Thor86

Diamond Member
May 3, 2001
7,886
7
81
Your SEQ Writes getting slower after AHCI mode is weird. This can only mean one thing. Something is chewing up your I/Os during the AS SSD testing. Download DiskMon and see what is causing the I/O.