Windows 7 'Not Responding' Issues

[Ast0reth]

I just recently decided to go from 32-bit Windows XP Pro (I miss it!) to 64-bit Windows 7 Ultimate. All of my hardware is the same. Obviously, no so for my drivers as I now have a 64-bit OS. My hardware setup is as follows:

AMD Athlon 64 X2 6000+
Biostar TF560 A2+ Mainboard
2GB A-Data PC2-6400 DDR2 RAM
Radeon HD 4890 via PCIe x16
1x 160GB 7200RPM SATA Internal HDD
1x 200GB 7200RPM IDE Internal HDD
1x 500GB USB2.0 External HDD
1x 1.5TB eSATA External HDD

I had been running 32-bit XP Pro on this box for close to 4 years now, I think, with no problems at all. My friends finally convinced me to 'downgrade' to Windows 7. It was DX10 that sold me on it. Once I get everything set up and all my drivers installed I noticed something strange; when certain actions are being performed (mainly during program installations) close to every other open program stops responding until the action is complete.

I.E. I can run Mass Effect 2 just fine, and that's a pretty hardware-intensive program. However, the second I start to install MS Office I can't even use Firefox because it has stopped responding and I can't bring up Task Manager.

I am leaning towards this being one of two things:
1. A driver problem with something I just can't think of. I've reinstalled most.
2. A power supply problem. That would be strange, as this same setup has run fine in the past. Does Windows 7 somehow draw more power than XP? Does running x64 use more than x86?

Any ideas are much appreciated.

Thanks,
Ast0reth

 

[Wamphryi]

I would think that your main issue here is that you have only 2 GB RAM on a 64 bit Win 7 set up. 64 Bit takes more resources than 32 bit. The minimum specs for 32 bit Win 7 is 1 GB RAM while 64 bit requires 2 GB at the very least. The recommended specs are 4 GB RAM for 64 bit Windows. 64 bit Win 7 finds its sweet spot at 4 GB RAM. The RAM you have has no head room for SuperFetch and intense operations such as installs will have your system reaching for that Pagefile a great deal. Those Internal HDD's you have listed are going to be slow and when they are being accessed it is going to cut the legs right out from under your system leaving you no room for multi tasking at all.

Advice: Double your RAM. Install the 1.5 Tera drive as the main drive as it will be the fastest of the bunch and leaves a great deal of room for Windows to work with thus more speed.

 

[daship]

2 things come to mind right off the bat.

Get more ram, duh, on xp 2G is the ***, not so on Vista/7

Make sure you installed the chipset drivers, and mass storage drivers.

Make sure nothing else is missing in device manager.

 

[davcon]

Any issues i had with WIN 7 " not responding" ended up being memory related upon further investigation.
I found my specific problem was a bad stick of ram.
Ran Memtest86+ removed the bad ram = no more issues.

 

[ColoredWater]

*revives the thread*

 

[Ast0reth]

Ended up being the HDD my OS was installed on. I could reformat it and run all the tests in the world and it would work fine, but once I took the thing out of the equation everything worked fine.

Good thing nobody will be using mechanicals for their OS drive for much longer.