Having a really strange/complex problem that I hope someone could help me with. Sorry this is gonna be wordy. Almost 2 years ago I had a tower built with the best components I could afford for video work. I'm a novice so I had Canada Computers assemble it. It's had a cocktail of problems and some are still persisting, would guess they're related. My setup is at the bottom. Will list the problems and what I did chronologically.
The first huge problem was a month and a half into it the computer started shutting down randomly, just powering right off in shorter and shorter intervals, with a system error saying there was a power surge. Upgraded the bios, nothing. Had the seasonic power supply replaced, still shutting down. Had the asus motherboard replaced entirely, then it was ok, no power outages.
Another problem was a super weak wifi signal. Had a top of the line wifi card and router. Replaced the wifi card, nothing. Changed the wifi card brand, worked fantastic.
After that it's had a persistent problem which is my main problem: Windows explorer freezes arbitrarily. Freezes completely very occasionally, but a bunch of times daily it has a 3-7s lag when I browse for a file, like when i hit open or download in chrome/photoshop/etc or sometimes just opening a window in windows explorer. The lag will occur and then disappear, almost as though it's re-indexing the files. Have tried to pin down when the lag is occuring, but seems to be no consistency. feels like the lag happens mostly with my 2tb western digital hdd or when I'm using chrome, but I can't be sure. For a time thumbnails in explorer wouldn't show up and there was a clicking sound, indicating a failing hard drive.
So: first thing I did was rebuild the thumbnail cache, and that improved but didn't eliminate the missing thumbnail problem. I took the machine back and the Canada Computer guys replaced the 2tb HDD, since the thumbnails and clicking seemed to originate from there. After replacing hdd clicking stopped but the lag was still there. Next thing I did was a clean upgrade from windows 7 to windows 8, reformatting everything. Thumbnails work fine now but still the exact same problem with the windows lag. I've tried disabling all startup programs and going through the task manager and ending all unnecessary user tasks, nothing. I've defragged and run diagnostics on all my drives several times, nothing.
Here are my theories:
1. there's conflicting hardware. no idea how to pinpoint this. have ruled out software because I did the clean install of windows 8? but I've had the motherboard, wifi card, power supply, and hdd replaced so there's not much left to be malfunctioning.
2. the ssds or hdd are somehow not connected properly.
3. when the computer was powering off all the time in the first 2 months maybe that fried something other than the motherboard.
My setup:
OCZ Vector 128gb (boot from here)
OCZ Vertex4 128gb (run additional software from here)
Western Digital Black WD2002FAEX 2TB (files here)
asus motherboard, intel core 17-3770 @3.4ghz
NVIDIA Quadro 4000 graphics card
16gb ram
Seasonic X-Series power supply 650 watts
mostly frequently running Chrome, After Effects, Maya, and Cinema 4D.
if anyone can advise me with this problem that would be really appreciated, have no idea how to approach this, have googled everything to death. pretty sure the canada computers guys think i'm cursed, starting to believe it.
The first huge problem was a month and a half into it the computer started shutting down randomly, just powering right off in shorter and shorter intervals, with a system error saying there was a power surge. Upgraded the bios, nothing. Had the seasonic power supply replaced, still shutting down. Had the asus motherboard replaced entirely, then it was ok, no power outages.
Another problem was a super weak wifi signal. Had a top of the line wifi card and router. Replaced the wifi card, nothing. Changed the wifi card brand, worked fantastic.
After that it's had a persistent problem which is my main problem: Windows explorer freezes arbitrarily. Freezes completely very occasionally, but a bunch of times daily it has a 3-7s lag when I browse for a file, like when i hit open or download in chrome/photoshop/etc or sometimes just opening a window in windows explorer. The lag will occur and then disappear, almost as though it's re-indexing the files. Have tried to pin down when the lag is occuring, but seems to be no consistency. feels like the lag happens mostly with my 2tb western digital hdd or when I'm using chrome, but I can't be sure. For a time thumbnails in explorer wouldn't show up and there was a clicking sound, indicating a failing hard drive.
So: first thing I did was rebuild the thumbnail cache, and that improved but didn't eliminate the missing thumbnail problem. I took the machine back and the Canada Computer guys replaced the 2tb HDD, since the thumbnails and clicking seemed to originate from there. After replacing hdd clicking stopped but the lag was still there. Next thing I did was a clean upgrade from windows 7 to windows 8, reformatting everything. Thumbnails work fine now but still the exact same problem with the windows lag. I've tried disabling all startup programs and going through the task manager and ending all unnecessary user tasks, nothing. I've defragged and run diagnostics on all my drives several times, nothing.
Here are my theories:
1. there's conflicting hardware. no idea how to pinpoint this. have ruled out software because I did the clean install of windows 8? but I've had the motherboard, wifi card, power supply, and hdd replaced so there's not much left to be malfunctioning.
2. the ssds or hdd are somehow not connected properly.
3. when the computer was powering off all the time in the first 2 months maybe that fried something other than the motherboard.
My setup:
OCZ Vector 128gb (boot from here)
OCZ Vertex4 128gb (run additional software from here)
Western Digital Black WD2002FAEX 2TB (files here)
asus motherboard, intel core 17-3770 @3.4ghz
NVIDIA Quadro 4000 graphics card
16gb ram
Seasonic X-Series power supply 650 watts
mostly frequently running Chrome, After Effects, Maya, and Cinema 4D.
if anyone can advise me with this problem that would be really appreciated, have no idea how to approach this, have googled everything to death. pretty sure the canada computers guys think i'm cursed, starting to believe it.
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