Windows 7 Freezing

[Mustachio]

So, I installed the Windows 7 RC recently (and yes, I know its prerelease software and there are bound to be bugs) I am encountering what seems to be random freezing.

It seems to usually happen when I load up certain programs, the program will load fine, then run for a certain, usually short amount of time then the screen will lock up. Sometimes if audio is playing it will continue normally for a few seconds or just lock into an endless loop. I am stuck having to manually reset the computer.

So far, it has happened for three programs, Steam (usually the server list seems to cause it) although I can still usually play my games just fine, even if i need to restart once or twice. IE8, occasionally this program seems to cause it, but not every time, and also utorrent, which seems to have crashed my computer within 30 seconds to 1 minute after the program is open.

I did a little bit of searching and found that it may potentially be related to my wireless card, either the drivers or the application that installed with the drivers. I am running an edimax 7128g, which is based off a Ralink chip. I have heard that installing the drivers by themself without the application may help, but the driver packages are all installed as executable files and I dont know if there is any way to extract the drivers by themself.

I was wondering if anyone else has encountered this problem and if any possible solutions exist.

 

[Blue Stealth]

My first bet, unless you have made hardware changes to the computer, is that you do not have correct drivers for your computer. Make sure you go and redownload all the latest drivers. Look for windows 7 drivers but keep in mind vista drivers will work also.

You might need to roll back the driver, but first, try to update them.

I would recommend updating video, audio, networking, and any other pci or pcie components you have.

there would be no reason for motherboard and cpu drivers to magically quit working with a change of OS, but it would happen with a pci or pcie card.

good luck and if you need help getting drivers message me.

-Blue

 

[Mustachio]

I was on vista 64 before switching over. I had all the drivers specifically for vista and went searching for Win 7 drivers before upgrading. Currently all my drivers should be up to date (and if not, only old by maybe a month or so) Anything I couldnt find specifically for Win 7 I just used the same vista drivers I was using before.

In fact, for the wireless card, I installed the drivers, then went to device manager and let windows automatically download the latest ones it could find. Didnt help.

I just dont know what else it could be (unless its just since its not a final product yet)

 

[Blue Stealth]

have you gotten any type of error message? are any of your programs not working properly? (besides the crashing of course)

-Blue

 

[Candlejack]

I'm having almost this exact same problem. Random? freezes and lockups whenever I open the server list from steam (only internet though, the other tabs work fine). It's frozen after opening utorrent too now that I think about it. There was nothing in eventvwr that could help. It's pretty annoying.. if you find anything please let me know.

 

[Mustachio]

have you gotten any type of error message? are any of your programs not working properly? (besides the crashing of course)

-Blue

Nope, everything seems to be working just fine, again as you said, with the exception of a few things that cause the computer to just completely freeze up.

Candlejack, do you happen to be running a wireless networking card? perhaps one that uses a ralink chip in it? So far the most promising thing I found online seems to be that either the driver or the software installed for the driver is causing the problem. One solution said something that basically isntalling the driver by itself without the software seemed to fix it. However, all the driver packages are exe files that come bundled with the software and uninstalling the software uninstalls the driver as well. Then I am unable to reinstall the driver by itself because in order to get online to find just the driver I need my wireless card working properly.

Either way, I have not gotten to test that properly... i did however try a few different driver versions i have downloaded relatively recently and all give the same results.

So it comes down to the fact that Im not even sure if that is the actual cause, but so far its the only thing Ive found.

 

[trykael]

Did you upgrade from vista or did you do a clean install of 7?

 

[Candlejack]

Yeah I'm using a wireless networking card with a ralink chip (I think). But you're right you can't just install the driver without the software. Do you know what it is? maybe you can just disable it and try opening the server list and seeing if that changes anything.

If doing a clean install of windows 7 fixes it I might just do that...

 

[Mustachio]

Did you upgrade from vista or did you do a clean install of 7?

I did a clean install, formatted during installation.

 

[Candlejack]

Hm.. I used Windows Update and installed the Ralink driver (after I used the one from the site) and the servers list didn't freeze this time. I'll leave utorrent on and see if anything happens.

 

[Mustachio]

Hm.. I used Windows Update and installed the Ralink driver (after I used the one from the site) and the servers list didn't freeze this time. I'll leave utorrent on and see if anything happens.

Ill give utorrent a try right now and see what happens, but my guess is that its still going to freeze

 

[Mustachio]

Well so far so good... I guess the reason it crashed last time after upgrading to new drivers through windows update was because I hadnt restarted (that particular driver didnt say it needed and update)

Just ran utorrent for a good hour and a half without a crash, hopefully steam servers list will behave next time i get a chance to test it.

 

[Candlejack]

It was fixed.. and then I restarted and today the same things happened...

 

[Mustachio]

It was fixed.. and then I restarted and today the same things happened...

I will keep you updated on whether this happens again for me, but so far so good... if I find out anything else I will let you know. Only other thing I can think of is to make sure that your system is as stable as possible, I went through my bios and made sure everything was set properly (especially RAM voltage since I was having other RAM problems before) But I dont know if that really made much of a difference