PC unresponsive for 30+ sec

[BeavermanA]

Haven't had this happen before, but I recently formatted and ever since, whenever just my monitor goes into sleep mode, when I move the mouse to wake it up, my pc is unresponsive from 30 sec to up to 3 minutes sometimes.

The display will turn on, I can move my mouse cursor around, but nothing I click on will open, and hitting ctrl+alt+del only brings up the task manager screen after the timeout.

I turned off all the sleep/hibernate options in power management except for my display and gfx card, and those are the settings I've always used without this problem.

The only thing I changed since formatting was adding a mirror RAID that is managed through Win7 computer management in admin tools. Could not get it to work with my motherboard for whatever reason.

Could that be causing it somehow? Any other ideas, starting to piss me off. My computer can start from cold and get into Win7 faster than it stops doing this timeout bs.

 

[jeremyshaw]

HDD via IDE? An older HDD (2006?) caused this exact issue for me.

Moving to a faster HDD (SATA2) resolved this

Previously, I just thought ASrock made really bad motherboards as the reason behind why it randomly froze up

 

[BeavermanA]

Nah all my hdds are SATA2.

I'm thinking it has something to do with the monitor. I didn't have this exact problem before formatting, but it would sometimes not turn on the display after moving the mouse. Id have to unplug+plug it back into my gfx card to turn on. Then some error about display link failed pops up, hit ok and its fine.

So last night instead of letting my monitor go to sleep, I just turned it off. When I woke up, I turned on the monitor and the same error popped up, but my pc was responsive right away. This monitor is fairly new. Am using displayport for the 1st time with a 5870. Maybe I should try the dvi.

 

[Nightbird]

Didn't you say you can move the mouse around and click things but nothing responds?

Definitely not the monitor unless you want to withdraw that statement

If you think it is Raid 1, why not turn it off and try it out?

 

[BeavermanA]

Didn't you say you can move the mouse around and click things but nothing responds?

Definitely not the monitor unless you want to withdraw that statement

If you think it is Raid 1, why not turn it off and try it out?

Well when it does the unresponsive thing, the display error never pops up. Just before the pc starts to respond again, the screen flickers once. But yes the mouse cursor moves around.

The times when it does respond right away, the error pops up.

I've never used a raid created by Windows OS. If I unplug the drives and reboot without them, are they still going to be recognized as a mirror raid when I put them back? What about if I reformat again, if I configure them as a raid 1, will all the data still be present?

 

[Nightbird]

Well when it does the unresponsive thing, the display error never pops up. Just before the pc starts to respond again, the screen flickers once. But yes the mouse cursor moves around.

The times when it does respond right away, the error pops up.

I've never used a raid created by Windows OS. If I unplug the drives and reboot without them, are they still going to be recognized as a mirror raid when I put them back? What about if I reformat again, if I configure them as a raid 1, will all the data still be present?

I meant disabling it in the Windows OS, there's no need to unplug the drive right?

When you say mirror, do you mean a backup drive? I can't imagine a system not working if the backup is turned off, and you can turn it back on immediately after your tests. I admit I haven't heard of the Windows mirroring, hopefully someone who has will give you a more confident answer.

 

[djstarfox]

This happened to my work computer. Go into power management, select "High Performance" profile, and turn off all the advanced features, especially processor throttling and PCI settings.

 

[BeavermanA]

I meant disabling it in the Windows OS, there's no need to unplug the drive right?

When you say mirror, do you mean a backup drive? I can't imagine a system not working if the backup is turned off, and you can turn it back on immediately after your tests. I admit I haven't heard of the Windows mirroring, hopefully someone who has will give you a more confident answer.

Yea two 2 TB drives managed by Windows to be direct copies, only show up as one 2TB drive in My Computer. Didn't know about the Windows raid either, but discovered it when trying to get them to raid with my board. Basically tried everything, but whenever I had raid enabled in my BIOS, Win7 would always crash at the Win boot logo.

I'll have to experiment with my two 500gb drives I replaced with the 2TB ones, see exactly what happens when you do various things with the Windows raid. I'm afraid that if I disable the mirror, when I go to enable it again, it will want to format the drives first.

The OS is on an SSD, so unplugging the 2TB drives shouldn't mess things up, I hope.

This happened to my work computer. Go into power management, select "High Performance" profile, and turn off all the advanced features, especially processor throttling and PCI settings.

Will give that a go when I get home. Seems weird that I've never had to set it at that before though. Maybe some hardware has added options from windows and/or driver updates that were done after format?

 

[Nightbird]

30secs to wake up when you have an SSD? I feel your pain.

 

[jeremyshaw]

30secs to wake up when you have an SSD? I feel your pain.

unless if his SSD was a gen1 ssd, in which case, it's normal

It's the primary reason why Intel SSD were popular at their relase time - they didn't have random pauses. Read anandtech's SSD anthology for more info.

 

[Old Hippie]

The OS is on an SSD, so unplugging the 2TB drives shouldn't mess things up, I hope.

All the information about your RAID array is kept on the disks themselves.

It won't "disappear" when the drives are unplugged and will be recognized when the are plugged back in.

To troubleshoot correctly you're gonna hafta unplug the RAID array and go from there.

Many SSDs have trouble recovering from sleep mode.

 

[BeavermanA]

All the information about your RAID array is kept on the disks themselves.

It won't "disappear" when the drives are unplugged and will be recognized when the are plugged back in.

To troubleshoot correctly you're gonna hafta unplug the RAID array and go from there.

Many SSDs have trouble recovering from sleep mode.

Well I hope so. I've done raid 0 on my two previous builds and had no problem, but that was through BIOS.

So even if the raid is managed solely through Win7 disk management on a separate ssd, I should be able to swap the hdds into another pc with Win7 and have it recognize them as a raid 1 if all the info is on the drives?

And it can't be my ssd, been using it for the past year without this issue. It's a gen2 Intel x25-m 80gb.

 

[Old Hippie]

So even if the raid is managed solely through Win7 disk management on a separate ssd,

I am referring to the type of RAID that's been set-up using the Intel controller.

You said the RAID was the only thing you've done to change the machine before the problems started happening.

I'm saying that I would revert the machine back to what it was before the problems started happening....and if that's before the RAID install....so be it.

That's how I have to start TSing a problem.

 

[BeavermanA]

Well I did several things at once in an effort to get my hdds in raid through BIOS, ultimately ending, but still failing with a format. Which meant downloading the latest drivers and win updates for all my components.

Adding the hdds would be the only hardware change.

My initial feeling was a power management issue, but I turned off all the features I usually do. I will try as suggested turning it to high performance. Then start on the hardware if that doesn't work.

 

[BeavermanA]

Ok, so I tried putting the power profile to high performance and disabling everything manually. No change, still locking up for 30+ sec after waking up display.

So now I tried letting the display go to sleep, and waking it up to see it locked up each time. So I tried pulling the displayport cable out of my video card, and then plugging it back in immediately. Boom, pc becomes instantly responsive again. Did this twice with same result. Wtf?

 

[Nightbird]

Ok, so I tried putting the power profile to high performance and disabling everything manually. No change, still locking up for 30+ sec after waking up display.

So now I tried letting the display go to sleep, and waking it up to see it locked up each time. So I tried pulling the displayport cable out of my video card, and then plugging it back in immediately. Boom, pc becomes instantly responsive again. Did this twice with same result. Wtf?

Uninstall video card drivers, do driver sweep, then reinstall newest drivers? My reasoning is that if the monitor is at fault, the computer will be ready but you don't see anything.

 

[BeavermanA]

Uninstall video card drivers, do driver sweep, then reinstall newest drivers? My reasoning is that if the monitor is at fault, the computer will be ready but you don't see anything.

Yup that did it. Updated to 10.11 and doesn't seem to be locking up now. Freakin 10.10e drivers, makes sense since I only updated to them when I formatted. Don't know how AMD manages to do these things, last year one version of drivers didn't even allow the display to go to sleep.

 

[BeavermanA]

Nooooooooooooooooooooo!

I left the pc alone for a more extensive period. Came back and lockup city again, mouse moves around but can't click on anything. This time when I pulled the display cable from my video card and plugged it back in, the monitor stayed off until the lockup was over. Then turned back on and pc was responding again.

 

[Nightbird]

Nooooooooooooooooooooo!

I left the pc alone for a more extensive period. Came back and lockup city again, mouse moves around but can't click on anything. This time when I pulled the display cable from my video card and plugged it back in, the monitor stayed off until the lockup was over. Then turned back on and pc was responding again.

Noooooo!

I'm out of specific ideas, but if you could run prime95 and a memory test, maybe there's some instability that's corrupting your files and forcing your system to recover.