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It’s been a while since I brought up anything related to my Windows 7 freezing. Mostly that’s because I turned Aero off and it hasn’t frozen since… but also b/c I haven’t bothered to try anything else. That is until earlier this week.

At the end of January Microsoft released a optional update for Windows 7. Might as well try it, right?

Ya, fail.

I installed the update (along with a few other Win7 updates for the month. Restarted. Turned Aero back on. Then left the system idle for a while.

Came back to check it after a while and bam, froze. Did the same thing. The system “woke up” but I couldn’t get my taskbar or anything. Exact same symptoms as before.

Sadly I think I’m throwing in the proverbial towel on this one. Will just end up buying another video card at some point and giving that a try. I don’t think it’s a driver thing. I think it’s a hardware thing.

When Google Chrome first was released I downloaded it and tried it out. It was speedy, but not for me.

I rely on too many things with Firefox that I cannot live without. Specifically some of the Firefox Extensions out there like Adblock Plus, Xmarks, etc. I can’t browse the internet with ads anymore thanks to Adblock. It’s ridiculous, the difference. Xmarks is awesome for syncing my bookmarks between systems.

Chrome Extensions

I’m currently running Xmarks on Windows 7 (Firefox and Chrome), Windows XP (Firefox and Chrome) and OS X (Firefox and Safari). So no matter which browse I’m using on ANY system, I always have my bookmarks. MUST have.

Well I finally decided to check out the new Chrome beta and its supported extensions. All of my necessities are now covered… Xmarks is in the game. Ad Thwart for ads. Even a Twitter app (Chromed Bird). Right now I’m running those three, plus ForecastFox, Woot, Cooliris, ChromeReload, and Gmail Checker. Oh, and a couple other minor ones that I’m playing around with.

So far… I like it. It’s quick, simple. I get all of my extension alerts in one place. I have my bookmarks. I don’t have ads. Good stuff.

One beef so far: I can’t find a way to reorder the extensions bar. They just show up in some random order apparently – which may or may not be related to the order in which they were installed. There may be a solution to this out there, I just haven’t found it. No big deal of course, but it would be nice to order them in some way that I desire.

EDIT: Afterthought: Huge plus for Chrome is the ability to install and activate an extension without restarting the entire browser (Firefox? I’m looking at you….).

Just under a month ago, I installed Windows 7. The next day I noticed a freezing problem. Ok, so it wasn’t so much “freezing” as it was some sort of graphics issue.

Initially tried disabling Windows Defender and EFS. I really had no idea what was causing it. And the few threads I found online didn’t seem to have any more of a clue than I.

After taking a few minutes to think about it the next time it happened, I recalled the Aero Peek function and some of the other weird stuff that Aero does. Perhaps a graphics problem? So I’m running an Nvidia 8600 GTS from XFX with 256 MB of memory. Driver was 100% up to date directly from XFX for Windows 7 64 bit. Then I disabled Aero and went to the Windows classic view.

Have not had the problem since. That leads me to believe it is either a driver problem, a video card problem, or an Aero problem.

Today I downloaded an updated driver and have turned Aero back on. Now it is merely a waiting game to see if the problem has been actually fixed or still remains.

EDIT: Nope. Still not fixed. Turned Aero back off. Back to Windows Classic.

I think I was able to cure my Windows 7 freezing issues for good (OK, maybe not cure, but bypass).

How?

I disabled Aero and went back to Windows Classic. Hasn’t frozen since. In my last post I hinted at a video problem – and I suspect that may have been it. With Classic enabled, the Aero “Peek” and other little things like that are disabled with the Aero package as a whole.

And like I said, it hasn’t frozen since… going on nearly a week now. I couldn’t get by 2 or 3 days before.

Just when I thought I got all of my computer problems straightened out…

The “combo drive” (CDRW+DVDROM) in my Macbook decides to shit the bed. OK, so it’s not totally dead – but it makes some awful noises and decides to randomly spit out a disc it’s trying to read. Definitely a drive problem. Does the same thing in Windows. I wasn’t even able to play Starcraft that I installed on it. Just ejects my disc.

eBay to the rescue though. $60 later and I have a replacement drive on the way. This time figured I’d go with a “superdrive” … or what Apple calls a DVD burner. Damn things are expensive.

A new replacement drive is $100+ and some were as high as $200 depending on where you look (iFixit, I’m looking at you). With instructions from iFixit, it shouldn’t be too hard.
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Jumping back to my last post…. I may have made some progress in my freezing issues.

If you recall, my Windows 7 system would freeze up after being idle for any length of time. I could move the mouse – but do nothing with it. No key combinations would work either. The hard drive activity light would blink regularly but not actually do anything. Eventually the system would start responding again. Sometimes after a couple minutes, sometimes after 20 minutes.

I might have made some progress. Since posting that message I’ve disabled Windows Defender (because it is awful and I don’t need it anyway) and have disabled the EFS service. Since then, everything seems OK so far – but this is really a day to day problem so while it might appear to be resolved now, it may return tonight or tomorrow.

I suppose this is a follow up to my Windows 7 install and initial thoughts… I have been having a problem. I initially mentioned it here.

Situation is this: After the system has been idle for a period of time (I don’t know, 20-30 min?) and I move the mouse, I’m unable to click or do anything. The mouse moves but that’s it. CTRL+ALT+DEL doesn’t work. CTRL+SHIFT+ESC doesn’t work. I can see a consistent and repetitive blink from the hard drive activity light but it doesn’t seem to be actually doing anything. If I leave the system alone for a few minutes, it returns to normal.

At first I had just forced it off (held power button). It booted fine and everything was OK. I checked the power settings and set EVERYTHING to Never or Off. I do not use a screensaver – I have the monitor set to turn off after 30 minutes but that seems to be irrelevant since it will also do it with the monitor still on.
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As I said last night, so far so good. Sort of anyway.

When I woke up this morning and tried to wake my computer (only have the monitor turn off after about 20 min – no screensaver), the monitor came back on and I could move the mouse – but it wouldn’t do anything else. Just kind of sat there.

I could see my wallpaper but that was about it. I have my taskbar on autohide and it would not show up. Tried pressing power button the computer to make it shut down – nothing. Tried CTRL+ALT+DEL, nothing. CTRL+SHIFT+ESC, nothing.

Had to force it to turn off. Booted up OK and seems OK after that – but it was strange.

I’ve also been going through some Black Viper tweaks today. Nothing major. Disabled a couple services, turned UAC off, turned off some Windows components (Why the hell are the Tablet PC features installed by default?).

Just trying to optimize it and get things working the way I like.

Finally got my replacement hard drive (thank you WD warranty!) and was able to install Windows 7 Professional.

So far so good actually. When I ordered Windows, I also ordered up another 2 GB of memory to put me up to 4 total. Don’t know if I REALLY need that much… but I am running the 64 bit version, so why not?

All said and done, the install was only about 20 minutes … wait a second, only 20 minutes? Yes. I didn’t believe it either. At this point I’m just spending a ton of time trying to get things back the way I like (I HATE how it uses the “users” folder to store everything. I keep having to move things around and fix them. Quite annoying.

In order to make things a bit more homey, I’m actually just working normally (playing on Twitter, playing with my WordPress) and finding things I’m missing or need to change. It’s working well, but still a lot to do. Thankfully I have all day tomorrow to play more.

If you’re not backing up your data on a regular basis… you need to be. Whether it is burning to CD or DVD or paying for some online backup service, you need to store your stuff somewhere else. Best option for most people? Just buy an external hard drive… you can even get one of those “one touch” backup ones.

Trust me though, if you do not back up your stuff, you will lose it.

I learned it once the hard way. Back in college, I was slowly learning a bit more about computers and decided to buy a second hard drive for my computer to store my data on in the off chance that Windows shit the bed or some other problem happened upon me. Little did I know, that data drive would fail. It did. I lost all of my crap. ALL of it.

I may have moved my data off of my Windows drive, but I wasn’t really backing it up. You can bet your ass I was after that happened. Do I need to mention that I see hard drives fail at work all of the time? Sick thing is that every user at work gets there own network share to store data that is backed up EVERY night. They don’t use it.
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