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Here's an odd issue I'm facing lately.

Lately at times, while working, my Windows 7 machine freezes temporarily, although I'm able to move the mouse and even the hover effects on window titlebars work. But not switching windows, nor keyboard typing. (No reboot required! Freeze disappears after 15-30s)

The most common scenario is while installing something or copying files. It starts with the copy/install process being stuck at the beginning. After a few seconds, I immediatelly Ctrl+Alt+Del to enter the task manager and look for a culprit, but it doesn't open only after the freeze passes, and everything continues as before the freeze. Afterwards, the system logs in Event Viewer show nothing abnormal; no errors, no warnings.

It's now happening even on my fresh clean install.

Things I did so far: - scan for any malware, viruses (although I do this frequently and my system is clean) - all SSD tools report that my disks are perfectly healthy (29% wear only). - fresh install - read every piece of info on the internet regarding similar behavior, with no solution. - all drivers are the latest versions.

Here's my setup (worked fine for almost 18 months now) - win7 pro 64-bit - 16gb ram - 2x intel 240GB SSDs - asus notebook with bios upgraded (N751JK) - nvidia 850m 4gb

Has anybody encountered this before? Any other ideas on how/what to look for?

I also noticed that also recently and occasionally my cooling fan (cpu?) starts running at max with no apparent reason, until I close Firefox - but these are two separate issues, and may not be linked.

At first, I thought it might be some issue with drivers/some app, but since this happens on a fresh install too, I believe I can safely exclude it now. Which leaves me with suspecting one of the SSDs (but tools report all's good), RAM (doing a memtest tonight), or CPU/something on the mobo.

Any help or ideas would be much appreciated.

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  • How is the temperature of your CPU? Could be a throttling issue.
    – Carrein
    Commented Oct 2, 2016 at 23:33
  • Not sure. I didn't take a cpu temp measurement after the event, but I can't say I noticed any increase in fan activity during the freeze. will check when it happens again, thank you for the suggestion. Any other way to check if throttling might be the cause, before it happens again?
    – Mihai Potra
    Commented Oct 2, 2016 at 23:52
  • Your problems are pretty symptomatic of a overheating cpu. could be an IO issue too, but you mention that the drives tested fine..
    – Carrein
    Commented Oct 4, 2016 at 17:10
  • Today I made a full test on each ssd drive, using Intel's Toolbox. Both drives passed with 100% (it even updated the firmware). This evening I had another freeze (when starting the installer for my touchpad driver, at 0% file copy), and this time I paid more attention to the CPU and fan activity. During tge freeze, although I wasn't able to start any cpu monitoring, there was no increase in fan activity at all, and immediately after, checking the CPU temp showed it under 47°C on all cores.
    – Mihai Potra
    Commented Oct 5, 2016 at 21:16
  • Quick description of the event: Installer progress bar stuck at 0%, but everything else working fine. Knowing a freeze is coming up, I quickly try to start some monitoring, but withing 5-10seconds the freeze is in, and changing windows, opening panels etc becomes slower than a 286. Mouse still working, hover effects still working, and the apps I started, show up after 20s, at several seconds apart. ~40s into the freeze, everything starts working at full speed and freeze is gone.
    – Mihai Potra
    Commented Oct 5, 2016 at 21:22

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