Hey guys, me has a little problem with this wonderful new operating system..It basically randomely freezes every few minutes for 30seconds or so. Doesn't matter if i'm browsing net, playing a game or whatever. At first I thought it was the mouse but I think it's explorer freezing. I can't switch/alt-tab windows or anything until it comes back.

I am unsure what could be causing it. I have stopped some unnecessary startup programs and services but it still happens. Checked the Event Viewer but I can't really use it to be honest. I got onto Dell and they made me restore the PC, telling me everything would be ok after this...haha, they must hire comedians for support :cheesy:

This is a brand new PC bought only last week and the problem has been there since the start..
Dell Dimension 9200
Intel Core 2 CPU 2.4Ghz
2 Gigs RAM
256MB Geforce 7900GS

Anyone know of this problem or think of a possible solution...?

Complete guess here but try disconnecting your system from any network connection and test for a day...completely offline.

P.S. if you could provide more information that may be usefull. e.g.does the mouse cursor atualy completely freeze along with the system.

BTW I'm a part time comedian.

Not quite sure if this helps now but I had a similar problem and I thought that it was the Beta Version that I have, but I had upgraded XP to Vista, I was pulling my hair out and nearly going bald in the process. I then did a complete system rebuild and fully formated my drive and cross fingers up to now it has been ok. I hope this helps

hello. I also have a similar problem. I have a dell E520 with windows vista home premium and it freezes every now and than for about 20-30 seconds. I have contacted a few techs who have told me to do the following. delete temp internet files, run a 32 bit diagnostics test which i passed 100%, and clean install vista. Which a clean install did not work, and now i cant get the windows xp back that dell sent me from the factory that was originaly on the computer when i received it. Finally i called dell again and I got an american this time! yes! nothing wrong with the other guys except they treat you like freaking idiots. He had never heard of this issue before, so i infored him if he were to look online that he would see many cases. which he did. But after haveing me install new drivers which did not help, he informed me that there was nothing we could do. He said i would have to wait for an update for it, and that i have the option to go back to xp and wait. Thats what I did, so here i am on windows xp again. waiting. If anyone can help me at all please do. Thank you oh and ps. dell guy yes the whole screen there is no response from anything!

what do you mean you did a complete system rebuild and formated your drive?

before reformatting the hard drive and starting all over again try getting a spyware program from the net and see what it finds. Its probably not a virus but may be spyware or some keylogger.

I did this and my computer works fine now!


Good news, it looks like the problem is solved !!!
Indeed, after reporting the problem to Dell Europe, I was called by a technician who told me that a solution had been found and how to fix the problem. He kindly assisted me on the phone during the whole process.
(This fix applies to a Dell Dimension 9200 with two hard disks in RAID 0 on SATA ports 0 & 1 and two CD drives on SATA ports 2 & 3)
What I had to do was move the CD drives from SATA ports 2 and 3 to ports 4 and 5. If you open your computer, you will see two orange cables coming from the CD drives to connectors on the motherboard. Two other free connectors are located underneath. You just have to disconnect both cables and connect them into the lower set of connectors.
After this is done, when you restart the computer, you have to go to the setup (F2 at startup) and change the status of the SATA ports 2, 3, 4 and 5:
Drives
SATA-2 set to OFF
SATA-3 set to OFF
SATA-4 set to ON
SATA-5 set to ON
You can then save and leave the setup. After you restart, the computer runs smoothly.
I did this about an hour ago and didn't experience any freeze yet. I guess the "30 second freeze syndrome" is history now.

Addendum: now it's 5 hours later and everything is still fine. Operation successful ! [IMG]http://us.i1.yimg.com/us.yimg.com/i/us/pim/el/spc_eee1.gif[/IMG]



I decided to try this on my Dell DM061/E520.
Have now been running for over 2 1/2 hours without a freeze.
On my machine the 2 orange cables were on SATA 1 and 4.
I moved 4 to 5 and 1 to 4 to keep the drives in order.
Went into setup and reset the switches.
SATA 2 and 3 are not available to me, unless they are on the bottom of the motherboard.
This sure beats Dell's suggestion to reinstall Vista.
Check Event viewer for Errors with IAStorv to see if this may be relavent to you.
Make sure you shutdown and turn the power off. Push the power button for 10 seconds or so to drain reserve power before opening the case.

Just as you would be building a system, I took everything out and started again with the basic components. I reformatted the drive installed Vista, Installed drivers and so on. I had previously checked for spyware and viruses using different software and found nothing. For some reason vista did not like upgrading from xp, may be i inadvertantly did something wrong but I don't think so. I was having all sorts of booting problems it wouldn't even boot into safe mode. I lost a few things that i had on the hard drive and I keep on telling myself to back things up but i didn't a lesson i hope i have learned. Anyway thats what I did. They do say that a clean install of any software is better than an upgrade. I know that when my Beta version of vista runs out at the end of june i'll probably go back to XP and wait untill they have SP1 for vista
Bye for now

Thanks! I tried this and it worked. I've had this problem ever since I've switched to Vista Home Premium. I have a Dell Dimension E520. My cables were also on SATA 1 & 4. I moved them to 4&5. So far, for hours now, NO FREEZING! Again, thank you very much!

i had a 5150 that froze (was XP, i upgraded to vista myself) and updating the BIOS and installing the newest SATA and chipset drivers from Dell supports site seemed to fix it.