Windows Becomes Unresponsive At 25% CPU Usage

[George]

I posted this on Tom's Hardware as well, but there seems to be quite a few folks here knowledgeable on tech stuff n' things.

I had to reinstall Windows 7 after my old hard drive failed. After installing Windows on my new hard drive, I had a few driver problems but they seem to be fixed now. My performance has been much worse than before the reinstall, taking a while to open folders in Windows Explorer and start programs.

The titular issue, however, comes into play when one of my cores maxes out its usage. I am using a 4-core AMD processor. When I run a program that uses an entire core's power, the entire PC goes unresponsive.

In this case, I was trying to run the Elder Scrolls 0nline Installer. It was installing fine until its process got up to 25% CPU usage. 0nce that happened, Windows stopped responding to input. (I can still move the mouse when this happens, oddly.)

When the computer is in this frozen state, everything still animates correctly. The advertisements on the launcher keep scrolling, the loading graphic continues to spin, etc.

In short, a fresh install of Windows 7 becomes unresponsive when one CPU core is at maximum usage.

0h, and here's some from a chat on the subject. It's what was listed in my Task Manager when Windows stopped responding.

Baja Blast: Physical Memory (MB)
Baja Blast: Total: 8185
Baja Blast: Cached: 4821
Baja Blast: Available: 4739
Zarconite: that's fine
Baja Blast: Free: 13
Baja Blast: Kernel Memory:
Baja Blast: Paged: 180
Baja Blast: Nonpaged: 34
Baja Blast: System:
Baja Blast: Handles: 14195
Baja Blast: Threads: 584
Baja Blast: Processes: 44
Baja Blast: Up Time: 0:00:13:04
Baja Blast: Commit: 3/15

If it's any help, all of these values stopped at these numbers. The usage history wasn't even moving after this.

[White Wolf Guardian]

Most likely a bad motherboard, time to spend some money.

[xephoran]

can you give me your specs, including the power supply and hard drive (if you know what rpm/model)?

You could always try reinstalling windows though, fixed the same problem for me once.

[George]

can you give me your specs, including the power supply and hard drive (if you know what rpm/model)?

You could always try reinstalling windows though, fixed the same problem for me once.

I put the specs in that Steam quote, and I also stated that this problem started after a clean install.

[Nrein]

Does it happen in any other scenario? When the computer is idle? When you try any other games or taxing tasks? Or any task in general?
Do you know if the machine is getting too hot? Have you tried running bare-minumum? (IE: One stick of ram, cpu, hard drive, keyboard, mouse, graphics caRd if there's no on board option) Gift any of these a try if you already haven't and see if you get a repeat of the results. Then go from there.

[xephoran]

I was really looking for your psu and hard drive... If you said that was new, try either switching it out or switching sata ports, it sounds like a bad hard drive to me (or a bad install).

[George]

Does it happen in any other scenario? When the computer is idle? When you try any other games or taxing tasks? Or any task in general?
Do you know if the machine is getting too hot? Have you tried running bare-minumum? (IE: One stick of ram, cpu, hard drive, keyboard, mouse, graphics caRd if there's no on board option) Gift any of these a try if you already haven't and see if you get a repeat of the results. Then go from there.

Yes; I was just using the ES0 installer as an example because it's the easiest way to put a single program to max usage without interference. Anything that uses 2GB makes this happen. Machine doesn't really have a chance to get hot when this happens; it only takes a minute or two.  I'll try that bare-minimum thing tomorrow and post what happens.

@Xephoran: It's new, but I've used it before so I know it works. I had been using it to store my games but switched my 0S over to it after my old hard drive failed. Bad install is what I'm hoping for. I can check out the PSU once I get to working on this again.

[xephoran]

Ok. Hopefully it was just a bad install. Hope you the best in finding the problem!

Also, do you mean 2GB of ram is when it crashes? If so, I would definitely check the ram after reinstalling windows.

[George]

Ok. Hopefully it was just a bad install. Hope you the best in finding the problem!

Also, do you mean 2GB of ram is when it crashes? If so, I would definitely check the ram after reinstalling windows.

It's just when a single program uses 2GB of ram, for some reason. I was using over 5 among various at one point, but as soon as one hits 2GB the whole thing stops working. The ram is fine, I even did a memory test on it.

As for the PSU, I don't know how to check the wattage.

Post Merge: January 09, 2016, 06:18:35 PMHoly hell

I think I fixed it.

I would post what I did in case someone else runs into the problem but I really don't know what I did. I just checked over every piece of hardware a thousand times and then now it works for some reason. I didn't do anything differently from the thousand other times I checked over my stuff. 

Either way, I'd call this a success, despite all the frustration. In the end, the only money I had to spend on this reinstall was the money I spent on Windows; exactly how much money I was planning to spend. Didn't need to replace any parts!

[xephoran]

Sounds like something might have plugged in wrong. Either way, it's great that its fixed!

[George]

Yep, played ES0 a bunch, installed a few other games, using the net fine, everything checks out!