I just installed Windows 7 Enterprise on a 2.7GHz 64-bit dual core AM2+ processor with 8GB of RAM. The motherboard is an ECS A790GXM-A, the boot drive is a RAID0 (AMD SB750 on-board RAID controller) created from 2 36GB WD Raptor drives, the installation drive is a SATA Lite-On DVD burner, and the video card is an Nvidia GeForce 6500. I ran a fresh install on the newly formatted RAID with absolutely no problems but, now that the system is up and running, it hangs almost every time it does something. For instance if I setup rotating wallpaper the sytem will just stop functioning for about 60-120 seconds every time the wallpaper changes. I can move the mouse and use ctrl-alt-delete but that's it. Once the wallpaper changes the system starts running again. I've looked in the logs but all I found were firewall errors so, as a test, I turned off the firewall but it had no effect. Currently the only thing on the system is Windows, Office 2007 Ultimate, and Symantec Anti Virus Corporate 10.2, but the problems started as soon as Windows was installed. Actually, it took several hours to install the above applications because the system kept pausing every time I inserted the CD, started the install, clicked the buttons during the install process, etc...It's at the point that I installed Windows 7 this past Sunday and am already ready to go back to XP. Has anybody seen this problem, or know of some troubleshooting steps I can take to track it down? Oh yea, the system doesn't hang on startup or login only after logging in and trying to do things. Also, I have run Windows Update and installed all the hotfixes but none of them helped. Thanks, Greg

Hi, Are you using hardware raid 0 . W7 might be having problems with it. Can you use W7 own software raid 0 instead. Slan go foill, Paul

I am using hardware RAID; you think it's a problem with Windows recognizing the driver correctly? I know that there isn't a driver out for Windows 7 so I had to use the Vista version which, I read, that others are using without any problems. It's worth a try though. I noticed that the hard drive light shows intermittent activity while the system is "paused". It makes sense if the pauses are related to disk access attempts.

Hi, It worth trying until there is a driver. Make sure to back up your data to an external harddisk, because as you know if one harddisk fails you will lose all your data. Slan go foill, Paul

Well, I tried it last night and it doesn't appear to have worked. I disabled the RAID controller and replaced the Raptor drives with a single OCZ SSD, connected over SATA II, and then performed a fresh install. After the install I configured personalization settings for the audio, wallpaper, and screen saver. After this, I inserted the disk for my KWorld TV Tuner card. Through the install process, the system paused for about 10 seconds at every click of the next button. There were roughly 6 setup screen so it took over a minute to get the install to actually start. The install ran and completed without issue but then the "installation complete" screen came up and the system froze. I could move the mouse and click ctrl-alt-del to bring up the "Lock Computer", "Task Manager" and other options screen, but I couldn't do anything else. I waited over a minute for the system to resume but it didn't so I left it at that point. Any other ideas?

Hi, Please try to less ram, bring down to 4GB . If you are able to install then reinstall the other 4GB back. Then restart with the W7 Enterprise 64bit disc, Slan go foill, Paul

No offense, but what difference is lowering the RAM by half and then adding it back going to have on system performance?

Hi, In other post, some have tried this and it worked for them. Slan go foill, Paul

Have you ran a memory test on your machine? Click the Windows 7 Start button. Type cmd in the Start Menu’s search box. Right-click cmd.exe in the search results and then select Run as administrator. Type mdsched.exe in the command prompt and then press enter. Click the option to restart your computer now and run the memory diagnostics test or to schedule the memory diagnostic test to run at your next reboot. Lets try that with all the memory installed in your computer.Aaron Sanders - MCP, MCSA +Security, MCTIP:Server Administrator, Security+ Http://www.codepuddle.com

Hi, This issue also can be caused by outdated BIOS and motherboard drivers. Please go to ECS website and download the BIOS and driver updates. You can find them hereVivian Xing - MSFT

Thanks for the input and suggestions but, after several hours of troubleshooting last night, I believe I traced the problem to a compatibility issue with the new nVidia 64-bit Windows 7 driver for my video card. I started noticing that the more video intensive things were--wallpaper, screen saver, and playing video files would cause up to five minute pauses while installing an application would cause few second pauses here and there--the more frequent the problem became. Finally, I went into the display settings, via the nVidia control panel, and started making changes. As I started changing things like screen size, position, etc. the system started to hang more often until finally Windows started kicking out video driver compatibility errors. Today I am going to order a new ATI video card and see if the problem continues. The funny thing is, it appears to only be a 64-bit driver issue because I installed the 32-bit under both XP and Win2K8 with no problems.

Looks like I was correct. I installed the new ATI video card last night and reinstalled Windows 7 and, the "pausing" problem is gone. I guess Nvidia needs to do some more work on their WHQL x64 drivers.

Looks like I was correct. I installed the new ATI video card last night and reinstalled Windows 7 and, the "pausing" problem is gone. I guess Nvidia needs to do some more work on their WHQL x64 drivers. You could have just rolled back to a prior version of driver, and saved some bucks.Your cause and effect conclusions are not definitive, anyway.

You could have just rolled back to a prior version of driver, and saved some bucks. Windows installed with a driver for the card and the problem existed. I upgraded the driver using the newest one from the nVidia site and the problem was still there. There was no previous version to roll back to. Your cause and effect conclusions are not definitive, anyway. How so? The conditions between my two installs were identical except for the difference between the nVidia card and the ATI card. With the nVidia card and drivers the system was unstable. With the ATI card and drivers the system worked flawlessly. The nVidia card works without issue under XP and Win7 32-bit and under XP 64-bit but not under Win7 64-bit. Hence, it's only logical to deduce that the Win7 64-bit video drivers for the nVidia card are faulty. How is that not definitive?

I've been having the same problem. I was watching Star Trek in iTunes a couple days ago and tonight I was trying to play WoW and it kept pausing temporarily. Since I'm on a laptop I can't just swap out my Nvidia GPU for an ATI. Instead I turned off the Windows Search service (Formerly Indexing) and now it appears to be running much better. My HW specs are as follows: Dell Studio XPS 13" Laptop (I don't remember the model number and it's not marked on my lappy) 2.4 GHZ Core 2 Duo 4GB RAM 500GB 7200 RPM SATA HDD Geforce 9500M Windows 7 Home Premium 64-Bit