Random freezes with windows 7 - 64 bit

Some more detailed symptoms... I am convinced disk writing errors are behind virtually all the symptoms reported in this thread.

I disagree.  My system freezes.  I don't, however, experience any of the symptoms you discuss re: file/disk writing errors, and I never have any difficulty restarting my system after a freeze.

It is quite possible that different users are experiencing freezing for different reasons (some are obviously due to a bad memory module, or BIOS misconfiguration; others appear to be directly related to Windows 7, as the same hardware is stable in XP).

I was able to boot the volume again by using 3rd party volume descriptor and MBT repair utilities but the instability was still present.

Some more detailed symptoms... I am convinced disk writing errors are behind virtually all the symptoms reported in this thread. I think it is x64 related but beyond that the variety of hardware and software affected pretty much rules out 3rd party software or hardware causes. the variety of systems and configurations affected suggests the problem is systemic.

The only reason I know I am having write issues is because an older version of chkdsk (xp v5.1.2600) found errors that the chkdsk embedded into W7 doesn't see. With the current chkdsk giving the system a clean slate we assume the file structure is ok. Windows system file handling routines also assume the indexing structure is ok.

Whenever what the user is doing causes the system to attempt to read or write to the damaged index structure location, windows sits there and tries for awhile and then goes on without generating an error code. Depending on how extensive the read or write request is it could take just a little or long time to complete the task. If all the free space is allocated to something like the pagefile or the restore function working files there is a lot of ground to cover.

A few more details on my configuration and then I will step through one specific recovery attempt and report what occured in detail.

All 4 of my partitions on 2 physical drives are NTFS formatted. I also have a multitude of usb drives attached to the system at different times for specific purposes.

The system partition is C: and the only files written there are by the system and internal working files of the programs I use. All data files are written to different volumes on a separate physical drive. This data includes data such as incredimail's data store.

I  have dual monitors and a logitec wireless keyboard & mouse combo.

My main connection to my network is cat5e but I also regularly switch to a usb wifi dongle to check the wifi network i maintain.

Usual memory resident programs... Comodo, Malwarebytes, Incredimail, Clipmate, Process lasso, BW meter, bluesoleil, display fushion, acronis true image, usb manager, airoboform, colorvision screen profiles. Symptoms remain the same in safe mode with all these disabled.

I  wrote the lengthy post above last night on this system while it was on the verge of going south. I decided to turn it off to see what would happen this morning. It was unusable when started up this morning. I am writing this on a laptop and will describe what steps I took to attempt to recover the system.

I did get the system to boot up but it was unusable. I tried to force a chkdsk on the next reboot but was unable to complete the process. This always happens when the system goes south. I get to the last step of confirming a chkdsk on next boot and the confirmation box freezes, I think as it is looking at the structure of c: or writing the autorun to the registry. If I wait for half an hour or so the box will just disappear without the [ok] confirmation button appearing.

I then inserted the install disk and ran a system repair. Repair gave the system a clean bill of health but the system still was unusable.

I booted from a true image boot disk and tried to do an incremental backup. Access to the drive was very slow but eventually I was able to start the back up.  It should have taken about 15 minutes to save about 4gb of data. After about 1 1/2 hrs it came up with the error that there was insufficient space to write the file. This was after filling about 300gb of free space on another drive. Obviously it was trying to backup all the free space on the c-drive not just the changed files.

I booted the system with BartPE (xp v 5.1.2600) and ran chkdsk from a dos prompt there.

Stage 1

Deleted corrupt attribute record (128, "") from file record segment 107197

Only one of these, regularly about 6

Stage 2

crashed out with "unspecified error occured"

Ran chkdsk again...

said disk was in use by another process, asked for permission to close current handles. I said Y.

This happens regularly when the partition is acting up at times when you would think you had exclusive access to the partition. Could handles not being released properly be at the root of this problem?

Stage 1 & 2 no errors

stage 3

inserted data attribute

correcting errors in uppercase file

Insufficient disk space to fix uppercase file. What is this file? Could it be the one causing the problem?

Went to explorer within bartpe and it showed 530.08 gb free on this drive

Used the "dir" command on the drive from a dos window and it reported 569,951,616 bytes free.

Tried chkdsk again and got volume is in use but allowed me to assign a chkdsk on next boot.

Booted the system off the normal hard disk and chkdsk ran.

Stage 1, 2 & 3 ran without error but then it reported...

"chkdsk discovered free space marked as allocated in the volume bitmap."

correcting errors in MFT mirror

correcting errors in uppercase file

correcting errors in volume bitmap

insufficient space to fix volume bit map.

failed to transfer logged messages to event log with status 50.

"dir" reports 570b bytes free

Hopefully someone from microsoft will see this and give an opinion.

I am unable to overcome the errors this time and will restore from a backup.

This time I am going to format the volume as a fat32 volume to see if the problem is ntfs related. I'll report the results.

My system  ran flawlessly for about 7 months and then started up about 5 weeks ago with the same symptoms described here. I have since done dozens of restores and spent days trying to resolve this. I can't say I have read every post in this thread but hit most of them. I tried almost everything suggested without resolving the issue. The problem is still ongoing on my system but I will mention what I suspect is going as I haven't seen but brief mentions of similar issues.

MY  SYSTEM--------------OS Name    Microsoft Windows 7 UltimateVersion    6.1.7600 Build 7600Motherboard    MSISystem Model    MS-7522System Type    x64-based PCProcessor    Intel(R) Core(TM) i7 CPU  BIOS Version/Date    American Megatrends Inc. V7.3, 4/17/2009SMBIOS Version    2.5Hardware Abstraction Layer    Version = "6.1.7600.16385"Installed Physical Memory (RAM)    6.00 GB------------Hard drives------------Model    WDC WD7501AALS-00J7B1 ATA DevicePartitions    2Size    698.64 GB (750,153,761,280 bytes)(W7 System drive)Partition    Disk #0, Partition #0Partition Size    598.63 GB (642,772,698,624 bytes)(Acronis True Image Secure zone)Partition    Disk #0, Partition #1Partition Size    100.01 GB (107,381,030,400 bytes)Model    Hitachi HDT721010SLA360 ATA DeviceSize    931.51 GB (1,000,202,273,280 bytes)Partitions    2(Data)Partition    Disk #1, Partition #0Partition Size    488.28 GB (524,288,000,000 bytes)(Data)Partition    Disk #1, Partition #1Partition Size    443.23 GB (475,912,994,816 bytes)--------Video--------Name    ATI Radeon HD 4800 SeriesAdapter RAM    1.00 GB (1,073,741,824 bytes)Installed Drivers    atiumd64.dll,atidxx64.dll,atiumdag,atidxx32,atiumdva,atiumd6a.cap,atitmm64.dllDriver Version    8.632.1.2000Driver    c:\windows\system32\drivers\atikmdag.sys (8.1.1.921, 5.76 MB (6,037,504 bytes), 8/18/2009 3:48 AM)--------Audio--------Name    ATI High Definition Audio DeviceManufacturer    ATI Technologies Inc.Driver    c:\windows\system32\drivers\atihdmi.sys (5.0.7000.6, 116.52 KB (119,312 bytes), 7/23/2009 11:49 PM)    Name    High Definition Audio DeviceManufacturer    MicrosoftDriver    c:\windows\system32\drivers\hdaudio.sys (6.1.7600.16385, 342.00 KB (350,208 bytes), 7/13/2009 5:07 PM)

I suspect the problem is caused by a disk writing error possibly by the page file or system restore utility. In any case it is something that chkdsk often misses.  I have 3 different version of chkdsk. The one that came with the install disk for the os, the one on the erd 65 system tools disk and another copy on a BartPE disk I created around the middle of last year.

The version of chkdsk on the BartPE disk finds the errors most consistently but also misses sometimes. I can run the other versions of chkdsk and get a clean slate and then run this one and get a slew of errors mostly related to invalid attributes and errors in index file $I30 and or the UPPERCASE FILE. About 80% of the time this resolves the issue and the system will run normally for as long as you leave it on (days). Almost invariably if you reboot the system the problem will recur once the system is restarted.

The 20% of times this chkdsk also gives a clean slate  I have had to restore the system from a backup copy. Invariably it also runs fine until you reboot. The odd time I'll be able to reboot a couple of times without problem.

Why do I think this is the cause?

A few times I have caught write errors in the event log mostly  related to ini or log files. Sometimes while a program is working it will pop up an error insisting it couldn't write to a log because the disk is full. It isn't with about 400gb free... explorer will confirm the free space... chkdsk will give the drive a clean bill of health. Shortly after such errors occur the system will start to freeze.

Once this happens all existing restore points will disappear and trying to create a restore point will hang. Many programs will lose their custom settings and revert to default settings.

I have played around with the pagefile size without any luck and only briefly ran the system without a pagefile. I'm going to try running without a pagefile for a longer period and see if the problem goes away.

There are a couple of programs that most consistently cause the error to occur. Firefox is the main contender with Incredimail running a close second.

I can often tell when the problem is going to occur  because the disk will churn for a minute or so after entering a command. The disk doesn't usually churn while frozen, just when the problem first occurs. I suspect the page file or some such has run amock and overwrites some critical indexing structures. After the problem occurs I often try to do an incremental backup from dos using true image. The whole installed system is about 40gb and the incremental should only be about 4gb or less but the backup will usually fail as the disk will run out of space after about 300gb is written. TI also thinks the whole disk space is data at this point. There is some kind of leak in the indexing structure that leads to the unallocated space which chkdsk doesn't find.

 * I did run Process Monitor for a bit while the problem was occurring but only caught a few errors. wmiprvse.exe and cfpupdate.exe (comodo updater) had a few buffer overflows and one suspicious installer failed to run because of name not found (I will delete this registry entry).

This system is checked regularly and malwarebytes also runs resident, I'm comfortable that it is clean. I've also checked for rootkits regularly.

I used Hard disk regenerator to check the whole disk and it did not find any physical problems.

From the sounds of this thread doing a clean install won't resolve the issue and I haven't done it as it takes me days to install everything I use. Before each restore I delete the partition, wipe the disk and reformat.

I have fixed a lot of computers in my time but have never seen anything like this.