Computer freezes for 3 seconds then returns...CONSTANTLY

A

alik4041

[H]ard|Gawd
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Jul 6, 2005
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My computer has been acting up recently. I'll be playing something as small as cs 1.6 and it will just "pause" everything for 3 seconds or so and then come back as if nothing happens. I turned on performance monitor to see what it could be and here's what I got. If you'll notice the gap in between the lines...that's the "pause". I should say that this also happens in windows, not just video games.


Specs are in sig. I've reformatted multiple times, did WD lifeguard diagnostic for one drive and the majority of the other because it was being used for xp. SMART is all green for the hard drives. I'm thinking it could be the memory which I tested for over 15hours stable with memtest 3.3.

I'm very sure it is the hard drive because there are side effects with the pause. For example, if i'm in a game like heores of newerth, the sound will just turn off when it returns from the "pause". It will only be activated again when I re-open the game. Samething with ventrilo. Sometimes certain people will be muted, I have to re-open ventrilo.

I'm thinking that my memory is attempting to read something from my hard drive and my had drive is taking its sweet old time to give it the information causing the pause that I see which also leads to internet lag (this is what the other players tell me they see from their POV, i just look like my internet is lagging/spiking). And then somehow my sound is getting messed up with that. This is just a hypothesis and it seems to be supported by the pic from the performance monitor. It looks like just before the pause, the hard drive was trying to read something and then the memory fluctuated and everything paused.

Please help, my next move is to send the drives back to WD and get replacements, but they'll prolly run them througt the tests and tell me nothing is wrong with them. I've ran the tests, but still I think they're flawed. I should actually say I ran the MAJORITY of the tests.
 
I'm with you, sounds like the drive is going. I would run Hitachi Drive Fitness Test on the drives. I know this sounds like an odd thing to do, but for whatever reason at our shop I've found it to be the most reliable DFT out there. It has detected problems on drives that WD and Seagate tools have missed. Just skip the short test and do the advanced.

WD doesnt question the RMA. Just fill out the advanced RMA form and send in the drive if needed.
 
Will do tomorrow. The question is, which drive is goin bad :eek: will report back tomorrow
 
Did you load task manager to see if the cpu is doing anything during the pause? If so, which process? Sorry, I can't tell from that image you posted. I get a server error.
 
CPU doesn't seem to be doing anything. It's all hard drives making all kinds of sounds, but I don't see what it can be doing. I have pagefile currently set to 0. I've practically reformatted 20+ times in the past week just trying to diagnose the problem. I'm trying to narrow it down because everything is under warranty, so all I need to do is just find what's wrong and send it in for a replacement. It might be a bad memory stick, but I ran memtest for at least 8 hours and it was fine. I think I'm going to try it with one memory stick and one hard drive and narrow it down to what's having problems.

I couldn't use the Hitachi Diagnostic Tool because there wasn't that was listed that could read my drives :confused: Any ideas? Thanks for the help so far and sorry it took me so long to update the situation, it's been stressful...

EDIT: Direct image

24785514.jpg
 
I'd have to do the test again. I have them running in RAID 0 right now. I'll have to reformat and get back to you.
 
I'm currently using SpinRite 6.0 to test the drives. When I run them individually with the IDE setting on the controller, the drives give perfect results with no errors other than about 60 or so cabling errors. So I guess I do need to replace the cable, but there are no other errors.

When I put the controller in RAID and try both drives in RAID 0, I get stuck at random %'s of the test with errors such as "sector could not be found". Right now I'm stuck at 3%, yesterday I was stuck at 10%. So it's very random I guess.

When I keep the controller in RAID but keep the drives out of RAID (testing only one drive), I also get the same thing. It will just pause and say "sectors could not be found".

I've been running the RAID 0 with both drives since yesterday to see if it can solve anything and it was at 3% yesterday night, still at 3% today at 1pm... It has however spotted more issues of sectors that can't be found. But at this rate, this is going to take forever.

I don't think the cable errors are a real issue IMO. I might change it just to make sure though. The drives are coming back with almost perfect results when I put them in IDE but not in RAID, so i'm stumped! :confused:
 
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UPDATE: Just ran both of the drives in IDE again after adjusting the cable, now errors whatsoever. I'm thinking it MIGHT be the memory. Gonna install XP and see if I get any problems.
 
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