Frequent Freezing

[Chalex4]

For a while now my PC running XP has been getting slower and slower, and as soon as it started to display bluescreens (mainly because of crashing in-game) I decided to install Windows 7 in the hope that XP had just got old.

However, even on Windows 7 my gaming rig (see sig) lacks a quick response to most tasks and tends to freeze up if I try and do anything at the same time as something stressful like an installation/file transfer. It can be alright when just navigating/playing music but anything more stressful requires much more waiting and hanging.

My hard drive configuration (2x 500GB and 1x TB (new) - all are Samsung F1s) is like this:
500GB - Windows XP and files
500GB - Media, songs, downloads
1000GB - Windows 7 and files

At this point I don't know where to point the finger. The 1TB drive with W7 on is brand new, so I doubt that's the cause. The other drives could be to blame, but I don't know why they'd cause problems when they aren't running the OS.

I also ran Memtest and got one error, but I don't know if that is enough to cause the problems I'm having:



All advice is really appreciated as always .

 

[Voxination]

Is this with or without the overclock in place mate?

 

[Chalex4]

I've had the overclocking off for a few months now - in fact *I think* the problems all started from around the time when I accidentally reset my CMOS. I'll look into updating the BIOS or something, I doubt that'll work though...

 

[Voxination]

Just check that the cleared BIOS hasn't accidentally set the FSB:MEM divider to something to high, or too aggressive timings, that could be causing the error in Memtest.



Use the EZ Flash BIOS utility when updating, DON'T use the one from within Windows, that just increases the chances of bricking your board.



Edit: Reset CMOS means vDIMM of 1.8v, PC2-8000 should be around 2.1v

 

[Chalex4]

Thanks Voxination for the advice, it's very helpful. I updated the BIOS and upped the voltage going to my RAM to 2.1v and made sure my RAM was actually running at the correct speed. My PC is definitely running faster now, but after trying to install a large software package this morning (which worked fine on my laptop) it doesn't seem to have improved much.

I start the install, it happily chugs along until it's about 17% through then it's like my hard drive is giving up, the yellow HDD activity light flashing on my case stops flashing madly and the install almost grinds to a halt. It then doesn't allow me to do anything else on my PC and just continues but VERY slowly.

To give you an idea, it began the install with an estimated time remaining of 15 minutes - 4 hours later it isn't past 65% .