Windows 7 Issues

[Shjinta]

So... I downloaded and installed the RC version of 7

I was thrilled by how much I enjoyed the OS so far. Then problems came. Basically my system half freezes.. stuff works but games and the task manager freezes for up to 5 minutes then blurt out as if nothing happened.

I didn't really mind it, until it started to mess with WoW. Basically WoW would start hanging during loading, 2-3 minutes later i'd get Disconnected or it would go to the character screen. Now it will abruptly pause like I'm getting DC'd but instead throw me to my Desktop. Checking the Task Manager I see WoW.exe peaking 1gb of Memory out of my 4GB. I tried messing with nvidia drivers, nothing seems to work.

Anyways, All my drivers are up to date.

Intel Quad Q6600 Not OC'd

4GB DDR2 Ram

P35 Platium MSI Mobo

2x 500 GB SATA 2 HDDs

Any ideas?

[bone_matrix]

Do you have the newest version of the RC (I think they updated it once or twice)?

Try an older version of video drivers possibly?

I love Windows 7?

I'm Ron Burgandy?

An old laptop of my roomate's has an IGP 345M by ATI, that I cannot get drivers for, so games will cause W7 to blue screen. My fix? Windows XP partition. Sure, doesn't fix the problem, but she can continue to get her gaming fix.

[BabyJesus]

Shooting in the dark here, but have you looked at you hd health lately. I have seen similar pauses when hard drives start failing and are having a difficult time reading sectors. In the 3 RC installations I have set up I have seen nothing like that other than some couple of second hangs right after boot up on my Asus eeePC. But I blame the slow assed CPU for that, as once boot is over its smooth.

[Shjinta]

Shooting in the dark here, but have you looked at you hd health lately. I have seen similar pauses when hard drives start failing and are having a difficult time reading sectors. In the 3 RC installations I have set up I have seen nothing like that other than some couple of second hangs right after boot up on my Asus eeePC. But I blame the slow assed CPU for that, as once boot is over its smooth.

Could be my HDDs.. any idea how to gauge their health?

[BabyJesus]

Could be my HDDs.. any idea how to gauge their health?

Run chkdsk /r at the command prompt(may take a loooong time), but before that use a util to see if you can read the hd's SMART profile.

Here is one that reads smart http://www.passmark.com/products/diskcheckup.htm , I also think that speedfan and some others read smart too..

One issue you could run into is if your HD controller is listed as a SCSI controller in device manager, a lot of times utils cannot read smart when its like that.

[Shjinta]

It sees both HDDs and I got info under the SMART tab. I know nothing about HDDs, what am I looking for exactly?

Under status it's listed as OK for each HDD under each option.

[BabyJesus]

It sees both HDDs and I got info under the SMART tab. I know nothing about HDDs, what am I looking for exactly?

Under status it's listed as OK for each HDD under each option.

Which tool are you using?

Edit:

Nevermind, it has been a while since I used passmark, if they say OK all the way down then SMART hasn't picked anything up yet. I'd run a chkdsk overnight on it just in case.. If that find no bad sectors then I don't know what to say.

[Shjinta]

I'm thinking it's my HDDs.. I rebooted and my BIOS suddenly couldn't see one of them. So I powered down unplugged the SATA plug then plugged it back in. Now the BIOS sees them but Windows is still trying to Start :/

Oh yeah something is wrong. Random open folders are locking up... /sigh

[Shjinta]

UPDATE

It is my second HDD. I unplugged it last night. My PC is running smoothly now. Problem is ALL my games were on that HDD. UGH.

[BabyJesus]

Well at least you found it.. If you can get that drive to work for a while you could get another drive and try to copy everything for that drive to the new.