Intermittent freezing every 30 seconds or so.

[Mighty_Mouse]

Hey everyone,

Just a few days ago I started experiencing this problem with my system. When in a game for about 10 minutes, my system would freeze for about 1-2 seconds, sometimes up to 3-4 seconds every 30 seconds to a minute. When this occured I could hear a definite drop in the RPMs of my case fans. Easy, I thought as I replaced my year old 450W with a shiny new 520W. Well, when I got home I threw this bad boy in and powered the system on. I went straight to Battle for Middle Earth to test it out. After about an hour of play the freezing started happening again. This time though the RPMs on my case fans stayed the same. Also the freezes where now no more than 1 maybe 2 seconds long. "Well I can live with this until I upgrade after christmas I thought" Well, now for some reason, whenever I copy files, listen to music or do anything on my system I get the freezes. Again, no more than 2 seconds long, but happening about every 30 seconds or so. I did an AVG virus scan, which found nothing. I downloaded and ran Webroot's SpySweeper, which found 6 traces and removed them. Still no change. I then turned off HyperThreading only to have the system slowed to a grind. Took about 10 mins to boot-up. Now I am thinking this is a HD problem. I backed-up my data, and removed my SATA RAID 0 stripe and decided I would just run the drives as normal (since I have had the RAID volume fail about 3 times in the 4 months I've owned this thing.) When I went to try to re-install XP, after about 45 mins I was done copying half the files in the original Blue Screen set-up. At that point, I just turned my system off and went to bed. Now, this morning before I head out to Fry's and get a new SATA cable I wanted to check with you guys and see if there is anything I am missing. System specs as follows:

MB: Intel 865PERL
CPU: Prescott 3.4
MEM: XMS3200XL (4x512)
GPU: Leadtek 6800GT @ 420/1.15
HD: WD 250GB SATA x 2
Sound: Audigy2 ZS
PSU: Vantec Stealth 520W

If there is any additional info you guys need as far as sys specs go, please let me know.

Thanks in advance to everyone for thier help.

[excuzzzeme]

Sounds like hardware issue. One thing to check is the motherboard for swollen/bulging capacitors. Also see if your hard drives/cd(dvd) is making unusual noises. Unplug all drives (except main HD), modem/network cards etc. run minimum memory and see if this problem continues. If not re-attach until failure occurs

you may want to open task manager and see what is running and how much of resources you are using. Watch for changes in values when the system freezes. That should help to identify if you have a software issue.

[Mighty_Mouse]

Thanks excuzzzeme, I think it is a HD problem since they have been moving data sooo slow for the past couple days. I am hoping it is just my SATA cable as when I opened the case up, I noticed the wires on the connection to the MB. That means that the cable could have been bent or pulled back. I'll let you know if it works when I get back from Frys'. Also I am gunna re-load XP when I get back so that should rule out a software problem.