Vista locking up

platypus · 15 Dec 2008 at 12:25

This has only started to happen recently.

The only thing I can think of is that my main HDD is on its way out (74GB raptor, gets thrashed about by Vista to the extent that sometimes I wince at the noise it's making..)

I also considered that it might be overheating, but in my experience this would cut everything out and try to reboot. It just hangs.

Recently I've only changed:

I installed 4gb of ram to take the total to 8gb of ram (this was about a month ago though and I had no stability issues until literally this weekend).
I installed wow and started playing that.
I use my second monitor (whilst playing wow) to watch Macgyver(!), or have Songbird running on it.

Brian Stuart · 15 Dec 2008 at 13:41

Try running WD diagnostics Here is a link

platypus · 15 Dec 2008 at 15:18

Cheers, running it now.

platypus · 15 Dec 2008 at 15:41

Extended test passed without any errors posted.

Mattus · 15 Dec 2008 at 17:10

Overclocked?

Brian Stuart · 15 Dec 2008 at 19:24

RAM maybe?

platypus · 16 Dec 2008 at 10:47

Not overclocked no. I suppose it could be the RAM, any recommendations for a memory tester? Other then memtest..

hegemon · 16 Dec 2008 at 10:52

Try disabling real-time scanning in windows defender and see how that goes, also make sure any anti-virus software isn't trying to do a full scheduled scan either.

platypus · 16 Dec 2008 at 11:12

Already disabled. I use Avast and it runs at 1am daily.

hegemon · 16 Dec 2008 at 14:49

You could try using the Resource Monitor (button on Performance tab of Task Manager), this will show which processes are accessing the hard drive and what files are being accessed by them along with a nice graph of disk activity. Hopefully this shold help identify what is going on