OS freezes 2-3 minutes, then resumes. Audio driver still active. Suspect it's HD

[thedrunkkmachine]

I have a Gateway NV53 Laptop. Windows 7 Home Premium 64-bit. 2Ghz Dual Core AMD, 4GB RAM, 500GB Hard drive. Laptop is 2 years old.

I've had my laptop for 2 years. I use it heavily- 4-5 hours per day. Internet, music, movies, downloading.. I used to play video games on it also (World of Warcraft almost a year).

*Here is my problem. *
The computer freezes randomly for about 3 minutes at a time before resuming. When it freezes, I cannot use my mouse. None of the laptop soft keys work. BUT, I can still hear music, except it is slowed down by about 99% (imagine a 5 second clip of music stretched out to 3 minutes. It sounds like buzzing, but you can still make out the notes). Also, while my cursor freezes in place, the "working" animation will sometimes continue to spin goes (the little blue circle). While my computer is frozen, I will hit cntrl+alt+del. Nothing happens, but as soon as the computer comes out of its frozen state, the task manager pops up.

The computer usually freezes at least once per day, but I'll sometimes go a few days without a problem. This happens randomly, even when the only thing I'm doing is playing music on Spotify. BUT, when I'm downloading movies or music via torrent, my computer freezes up a lot more frequently (recently it froze up 3 times in an hour while downloading some big files). Sometimes it doesn't freeze at all though, even on long downloading sessions.. usually does though.

Also, my computer takes forever to boot up. Sometimes I have to wait a couple of minutes before it begins to respond to opening apps. The computer also gets very very hot at times when I'm not doing much and I constantly hear the fan blowing, even when I use power saver mode (though, I'm usually plugged in and using "High Performance").

If it was a physical problem with my hard drive, wouldn't Windows crash completely? A friend suggested that there is something wrong with the hard drive cache.

There are no entries in my event log. I've run a lot of different and reliable hard drive testing apps and none of them report a problem. I have run memory testing apps and none of them report a problem. I have run video stress test apps and there is no problem. I have run CPU stress testing apps and there's no problem.

No matter what I do, I cannot reproduce this problem. I have formatted my drive and reinstalled Windows 7 multiple times.

I really can't afford a new hard drive, but I will use the little money I have to buy one if this fixes my issue. But if it isn't the hard drive, I will have wasted $100. I seek advice here, because I'd like a more educated guess on what may be wrong.

So, what do you think?

 

[aheckman]

I've been experiencing a very similar problem with my laptop.

I have a Sony Vaio VPCY115FX, Windows 7 Home Premium 64-bit, 1.3GHz intel core 2 duo, 4GB RAM, 300GB hard drive, bought it 2 years ago.

I experience the exact same freezing you describe, where you can hear the music in super slow-mo sometimes. However, when the computer eventually comes out (1-2 minutes) the task manager doesn't pop up.

It also tends to freeze more often if i'm watching a movie or downloading a torrent, but then again sometimes not at all.

I don't have issues with a slow boot up time, nor does my laptop get feel like it's getting very hot, nor does speedfan indicate the CPU is running hot or anything like that.

I've tried reformatting and re-installing windows and drivers with no success.

I've also run hard drive testing apps and no problems are reported and no issues have been detected by Action Center.

If you come up with anything, let me know.

 

[ghosttownrocker]

I have a Gateway NV53 Laptop. Windows 7 Home Premium 64-bit. 2Ghz Dual Core AMD, 4GB RAM, 500GB Hard drive. Laptop is 2 years old.

I've had my laptop for 2 years. I use it heavily- 4-5 hours per day. Internet, music, movies, downloading.. I used to play video games on it also (World of Warcraft almost a year).

*Here is my problem. *
The computer freezes randomly for about 3 minutes at a time before resuming. When it freezes, I cannot use my mouse. None of the laptop soft keys work. BUT, I can still hear music, except it is slowed down by about 99% (imagine a 5 second clip of music stretched out to 3 minutes. It sounds like buzzing, but you can still make out the notes). Also, while my cursor freezes in place, the "working" animation will sometimes continue to spin goes (the little blue circle). While my computer is frozen, I will hit cntrl+alt+del. Nothing happens, but as soon as the computer comes out of its frozen state, the task manager pops up.

The computer usually freezes at least once per day, but I'll sometimes go a few days without a problem. This happens randomly, even when the only thing I'm doing is playing music on Spotify. BUT, when I'm downloading movies or music via torrent, my computer freezes up a lot more frequently (recently it froze up 3 times in an hour while downloading some big files). Sometimes it doesn't freeze at all though, even on long downloading sessions.. usually does though.

Also, my computer takes forever to boot up. Sometimes I have to wait a couple of minutes before it begins to respond to opening apps. The computer also gets very very hot at times when I'm not doing much and I constantly hear the fan blowing, even when I use power saver mode (though, I'm usually plugged in and using "High Performance").

If it was a physical problem with my hard drive, wouldn't Windows crash completely? A friend suggested that there is something wrong with the hard drive cache.

There are no entries in my event log. I've run a lot of different and reliable hard drive testing apps and none of them report a problem. I have run memory testing apps and none of them report a problem. I have run video stress test apps and there is no problem. I have run CPU stress testing apps and there's no problem.

No matter what I do, I cannot reproduce this problem. I have formatted my drive and reinstalled Windows 7 multiple times.

I really can't afford a new hard drive, but I will use the little money I have to buy one if this fixes my issue. But if it isn't the hard drive, I will have wasted $100. I seek advice here, because I'd like a more educated guess on what may be wrong.

So, what do you think?

I have the exact same problem on the exact same laptop! Did you find a fix?

 

[mooz]

has anyone found a solution?

 

[TheChillGearHead]

I have a Gateway NV53 Laptop. Windows 7 Home Premium 64-bit. 2Ghz Dual Core AMD, 4GB RAM, 500GB Hard drive. Laptop is 2 years old.

I've had my laptop for 2 years. I use it heavily- 4-5 hours per day. Internet, music, movies, downloading.. I used to play video games on it also (World of Warcraft almost a year).

*Here is my problem. *
The computer freezes randomly for about 3 minutes at a time before resuming. When it freezes, I cannot use my mouse. None of the laptop soft keys work. BUT, I can still hear music, except it is slowed down by about 99% (imagine a 5 second clip of music stretched out to 3 minutes. It sounds like buzzing, but you can still make out the notes). Also, while my cursor freezes in place, the "working" animation will sometimes continue to spin goes (the little blue circle). While my computer is frozen, I will hit cntrl+alt+del. Nothing happens, but as soon as the computer comes out of its frozen state, the task manager pops up.

The computer usually freezes at least once per day, but I'll sometimes go a few days without a problem. This happens randomly, even when the only thing I'm doing is playing music on Spotify. BUT, when I'm downloading movies or music via torrent, my computer freezes up a lot more frequently (recently it froze up 3 times in an hour while downloading some big files). Sometimes it doesn't freeze at all though, even on long downloading sessions.. usually does though.

Also, my computer takes forever to boot up. Sometimes I have to wait a couple of minutes before it begins to respond to opening apps. The computer also gets very very hot at times when I'm not doing much and I constantly hear the fan blowing, even when I use power saver mode (though, I'm usually plugged in and using "High Performance").

If it was a physical problem with my hard drive, wouldn't Windows crash completely? A friend suggested that there is something wrong with the hard drive cache.

There are no entries in my event log. I've run a lot of different and reliable hard drive testing apps and none of them report a problem. I have run memory testing apps and none of them report a problem. I have run video stress test apps and there is no problem. I have run CPU stress testing apps and there's no problem.

No matter what I do, I cannot reproduce this problem. I have formatted my drive and reinstalled Windows 7 multiple times.

I really can't afford a new hard drive, but I will use the little money I have to buy one if this fixes my issue. But if it isn't the hard drive, I will have wasted $100. I seek advice here, because I'd like a more educated guess on what may be wrong.

So, what do you think?

Did you ever find a solution, I have the same exact laptop with the same exact problem