Computer frequently freezes momentarily... please help!

K

Kuo

Gawd
Joined
Jun 7, 2001
Messages
641
Hey,

I haven't had a need to post a troubleshooting question here for a long time now.. my computer has been very good to me.. until this past weekend.

Physically, the cause could have been numerous things. I moved this weekend, so my computer was in the car (although well cushioned) for 10 hrs... I cleaned my whole computer out (very dusty, might have damaged something?)... I have more HDs then case room, so 1 HD is "hanging" there....

The problem I have is that my computer will just momentarily freeze for 5-15 seconds every few minutes (no fixed time, just every few minutes). I first realized the problem while watching a movie... with the movie, I get 2 "bursts" of freezes. Freeze first for ~10 seconds, then 2-3 secs later, a small freeze of ~1-2 secs. Happens every ~5-10 minutes. The image will always freeze, the sound keeps playing in a loop what WOULD have been said if it didn't freeze. (So if I'm at the 1 minute mark of a movie and it freezes, my image would stick at 1 minute, but the audio would keep playing the words/music of the next ~2-3 secs). When it unfreezes, the image would be like it's on fast forward and "catch up" to where it would have been if it hadn't froze.

Next I tried playing a video game (The Sims in this case). Similar problem.. although I'm not 100% sure what I've been observing in this case. It'll freeze like the movie, sound will keep looping, but I _think_ sometimes I can still input commands. I'm not sure if the command is inputed right after it unfreezes, or if it is inputed during freeze... Just not sure about the timing of everything because it's all such a short duration. But the frequency of the freeze is incredibly annoying.

I've tried reseating everything around (in case something got lose). I've taken out my hanging HD incase it was shortening anything somehow (although I would imagine that might kill the HD too). I'm thinking at the moment it might be my video card or CPU (slight chip on CPU maybe damage video-related issues?) Unfortunately, I have no actual extra parts to test anything with -- so anything I buy will have to be final. Because of that, I'm looking to theorize issues, and/or tests I can run to try to pinpoint my problem.

Oh and another thing that's new.. my computer "clicks" periodically. Not all the time, but every now and then, I'll just hear some type of "click" sound.. and it can go on for hours every few minutes.. or just nothing. So far, there hasn't been a relation between freezing and clicking (it doesn't freeze when it clicks).

So.. please.... anyone have suggestions/ideas on what I should do? I don't really want to buy a new CPU /Vid card if that's not the issue..

Computer specs is in signature.

Thanks in advance.
 
yeah I would try to do a fresh install of your OS. I have had a similar problem before when one of my harddrives was failing.
 
I'm not sure how the OS may be the cause of the issue... but I'll try the OS install on another drive so I don't overwrite my current install anyway.

I can see the HD being corrupt as causing an OS issue.. if that's the case, would a chkdsk (scandisk) like thing help?
 
the clicking noise you've mentioned is probably your HD - and it's never something good... well I figured a fresh install is always worth a try before getting a new hardware :rolleyes:
 
ok, well if you have a hard drive just kinda hanging there then that could be an issue. but , it could be a power issue, maybe having that many in there is drawing a lot of power, and just not killing the system. heat could also be an issue in there as well.
 
So after I get home... what if I unplug all the HDs except my OS one... run a chkdsk from command prompt.. if no errors are found, should I still try a fresh install?

Now, would I get this type of issue if the OS drive was fine, but one of the extras wasn't?

What if I wasn't accessing the extra... like say my E drive is corrupt, but my OS is C and I'm playing a game on D, and my computer has no real reason to access E, would it still cause this issue (assuming it was a HD problem)
 
check event viewer for any error messages. if a hard drive is on the way out, you might get disk errors in the log. as others have pointed out, the 'clicking' sound points to a dying HD... which isnt surprising considering the computer was in transit for awhile.
 
Haha, so just to let you guys who tried helping me out know..

I found out the problem (and I feel very stupid for this, but happy at the same time cause it wasn't anything big).

Turns out that Skype kept trying to connect to Internet (which I don't have installed yet at home). Everytime it tried, system resources for it would spike (dunno why Skype wants to use so much CPU and RAM for connection attempt), but it would cause my computer to freeze up.
 
Kuo said:
Haha, so just to let you guys who tried helping me out know..

I found out the problem (and I feel very stupid for this, but happy at the same time cause it wasn't anything big).

Turns out that Skype kept trying to connect to Internet (which I don't have installed yet at home). Everytime it tried, system resources for it would spike (dunno why Skype wants to use so much CPU and RAM for connection attempt), but it would cause my computer to freeze up.
Click to expand...

heh.. glad to hear you figured it out.. blah.. I don't like software related problems.. I solve most of them with a reformat :p
 
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