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So this is probably one of the weirdest PC issues I have ever experienced. I built my PC in the winter of 2011, so about 1.5 years ago. Here are the stats:
- ASUS P8P67 (REV 3.1) LGA 1155 Intel P67 SATA 6Gb/s USB 3.0 ATX Intel Motherboard
- EVGA 012-P3-1570-AR GeForce GTX 570 (Fermi) 1280MB 320-bit GDDR5 PCI Express 2.0 x16 HDCP Ready SLI Support
- CORSAIR Enthusiast Series CMPSU-850TX 850W ATX12V v2.2 / EPS12V v2.91 SLI Certified CrossFire Ready 80 PLUS Certified
- Intel Core i7-2600K Sandy Bridge 3.4GHz (3.8GHz Turbo Boost) LGA 1155 95W Quad-Core Desktop Processor
- Crucial M4 CT128M4SSD2 2.5" 128GB SATA III MLC Internal Solid State Drive (SSD)
- G.SKILL Ripjaws Series 8GB (2 x 4GB) 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM DDR3 1600 (PC3 12800) Desktop Memory (2x)
- ASUS DRW-24B1ST/BLK/B/AS Black SATA 24X DVD Burner
- OEM COOLER
- MASTER Hyper 212 Plus RR-B10-212P-G1 "Heatpipe Direct Contact" Long Life Sleeve 120mm CPU Cooler Compatible
It's running Windows 7, fully updated, and the fully updated FREE version of AVG Virus Protection (for which I ran a full PC scan two days ago).
The issue is very weird. I'll boot up my PC and start to do some work. Here's what usually happens, in steps.
- Within about 15 minutes (this varies), all of a sudden it will look like the internet stops working (links don't open, new tabs don't load Google, etc.) The internet is fine. Wifi works on my phone, Netflix, etc. elsewhere - plus I'm connected directly through ethernet.
- After this, and some clicking around to try and get things to load, the Windows 7 quick start menu stops to work. Hovering over the start menu icons does not outline them, clicking them does nothing, etc.
- After this, the mouse changes to a loading animation over each and every window that is still running (usually I can see this by hovering the mouse over CPU Temp)
- Once this happens, I'm boned. I can't open or close anything. Even CTRL-ALT-DEL just hangs there spinning and says it's trying to load up the options for forever.
The mouse is available throughout all of this, and performing a hard shut down-reboot will enter into this same loop of events within a period of about 15 minutes of everything working fine first. Like I said, I did a full virus scan the other day and nothing came up - 0 threats. Any ideas what this could be or what I should check? Has anyone seen something like this happen before?
It could be a virus, but then this same thing for some reason happens to my mac after about 2 hours of usage and I have checked it thoroughly. – Autumnal – 2013-05-07T13:40:04.487
Yeah it screamed virus to me because of the way it manifested itself so randomly. One day I tried to take my PC off standby and it threw some ieexplore.exe error and some other error I noted down at home, both of which I'd never seen before. Then this started to happen. – Scott – 2013-05-07T13:45:37.157
I would see if getting rid of that god awful AVG software suite would help. Otherwise this actually sounds like you should update the firmware on your SSD storage devices. Your list is also sort of broken work on the formating... If you want help we will need the exact error you received. – Ramhound – 2013-05-07T13:46:05.333
Is there a better free suite to use than AVG? I'm not up on my anti-virus solutions. I'll check for updates in the firmware of my SSD, and I guess while I'm at it, I'll check it for my other hardware as well. I'll post the actual error message in the body of this when I get it, I have better text about it at home. I'll try and summarize it for now though. – Scott – 2013-05-07T13:50:03.580
When it starts freezing up, have you checked which processes are using which resources? (Task Manager, Process Monitor, etc.)? Disk checks? Updated drivers? Does it do it in Safe mode? Why not try a reinstall of Windows, or a different OS all together? As-is this question is pretty vague ('system grinds to halt, it's not a virus, what could it be?'). – Ƭᴇcʜιᴇ007 – 2013-05-07T13:50:12.543
1Have you tried booting a live linux disk such as Ubuntu and tried using the system with that? If the same issue happens I would have though it would be a hardware program. – tombull89 – 2013-05-07T13:54:54.483
I tried to get into task manager to check, but one of the symptoms I'm experiencing is that opening Task Manager is not possible. It just hangs, the task bar at the bottom freezes, and CTRL-ALT-DEL hangs too and just spins. – Scott – 2013-05-07T13:54:58.973
1@Scott At the software level, this occurs when a kernel thread is stuck in the "running" state and won't relinquish control to the operating system on a blocking I/O operation. The causes of this are myriad; it could actually be purely a software problem. Or it could be hardware. See my answer for details. – allquixotic – 2013-05-07T14:00:09.990
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Please join us in Root Access if you wish to discuss this issue in depth, rather than generating large number of Comments. Thanks.
– allquixotic – 2013-05-07T14:01:37.107Does it remain 'frozen'? How long have you waited? Especially for Task manager to come up, because that may take a long time? I suggest you (try to) start TM as soon as the first freeze symptoms appear, then do nothing else and wait. – Jan Doggen – 2013-05-07T14:03:07.487
I've waited for about 5 minutes max before getting frustrated and restarting. I'm going to try and work through the steps outlined in the answer below before trying anything else. – Scott – 2013-05-07T14:03:45.417