Windows 8 freeze occurances

Hello there,

I recently got a brand new PC system and did a clean install of Windows 8, however at random intervals decides to freeze for around 10 seconds. I have managed to see the event log that seems to be causing this freeze, and have put them below. Just wondering if you can make anything of it please? I did a quick test of Western Digital Data Lifeguard Diagnostics which was fine, I ran Windows Memory Diagnostic which also turned out fine. To make sure it wasn't RAM as well I manually set the clocks in the BIOS to 1866Mhz and 1.5v, but that also didn't seem to make a difference.

Error 1:

svchost (1628) The database cache size maintenance task has taken 60 seconds without completing. This may result in severe performance degradation. Current cache size is 24 buffers above the configured cache limit (340 percent of target). Cache size maintenance evicted 0 buffers, made 105390 flush attempts, and successfully flushed 0 buffers. It has run 11669 times since maintenance was triggered.

Error 2:

svchost (1628) SRUJet: A request to write to the file "C:\Windows\system32\SRU\SRUDB.dat" at offset 0 (0x0000000000000000) for 4096 (0x00001000) bytes succeeded, but took an abnormally long time (17 seconds) to be serviced by the OS. This problem is likely due to faulty hardware. Please contact your hardware vendor for further assistance diagnosing the problem.

Sounds definitely like some sort of hardware problem, Have you tried unplugging all usb stuuf except mouse and keyboard? Check out this site as it has a fault number like yours Fault Go down to the numbered fault to see if it is appropriate.

It sounds like your hard drive is spending a long time doing bad sector reallocation. This can happen, especially with SSDs. Try installing another disk drive if you have one.

@cav
Thanks Cav but it's not an error code as such so I can't see what to go off on that site. It's errors being recorded in event viewer.


Mick,

I don't have an additional one so I can't do that, but it's a Western Digital WD10EZRX I have at the moment. One of those WD Greens with Intellipower on it.

What's the motherboard? Also, if the HDD is connected to a SATA III port, could you try connecting it to a SATA II port?

Motherboard is an MSI 970A-G43 and it's all SATA III ports

Presumably, you've used the supplied SATA III cables?

I did indeed

The chances are that you've got a duff HDD. However, it might be a good idea to do the following:

• Make sure that all motherboard firmware is up-to-date, ditto Windows 8 device drivers.
• Try a different SATA cable.
• Try setting SATA Mode (in the BIOS) to IDE (it'll probably make no difference to performance.)
• You could try enabling/disabling Windows 8 Features in the BIOS. However, I have little knowledge of Win 8 so I don't know what effect this will have.

You should also check out this thread on Windows 8 Forums. The user has similar problems to yours although no solution is posted.

Motherboard BIOS is latest as well as the drivers, but will certainly try the cable change and BIOS tweak. Do they not make hard drives as well as they use to or something anymore?

Manufacturers are always pushing the capabilities of hard disk technology, so much so that bad disks will always crop up now and again. The days when disk drives could be certified as "error free" are long gone. I use WD drives and have never had any problems with them. It's just the luck of the draw.

Yeah obviously some are casualties of fast mass production

Could be some task doing intensive IO and keeping the disk busy for a while. Likely culprits would be indexing (possibly if the system is very new it hasn't fully indexed the disk yet) or antivirus. Try running resource monitor and check what processes are using the disk next time it happens.

Yes, but you expect that level of error to show up in tests or in SMART.

Will do thanks

In reply to a post by lt567:

Yeah obviously some are casualties of fast mass production

It has nothing to do with mass production but rather the way in which data is recorded to the disk.

Modern drives cram so much data onto the platters that it cannot be read reliably without using sophisticated error-correction codes. If error-correction fails for any sector, an alternate sector is allocated, usually on a part of the disk reserved for this purpose. If that sector gives uncorrectable errors, another alternate sector is allocated and so on.

Managing alternate sectors can really slow down hard drive performance, to the point where they become unusable. Solid-state drives are not immune to this and, indeed, may be more prone to alternate sector allocation problems.

Yes, but you expect that level of error to show up in tests or in SMART.

You would think that, but it isn't always the case. I recently had a very similar issue with a PC (frequent inexplicable stalls). I replaced the HDD and all the problems went away. This is despite using several SMART utilities, which all told me the disk was fine (I suspected the disk was the issue). Curiously, when I attached the disk to a Mac it registered as failing SMART tests as soon as it mounted.

Presumably when you replaced the disk you cloned at either file-system or sector level what was on the old disk onto the new one? In which case, you cannot ascertain the issues to the hard disk.

Try booting from a WinPE disk and deleting C:\Windows\system32\SRU\SRUDB.dat. Windows will recreate it.

Just curious If you were to send a HDD back to the retailer and they ran tests such as SMART tests and it all passed, how are you supposed to get a replacement if that is the case and you are adamant it is indeed the disk?

In relation to this I ran the full extended Western Digital test for a few hours and it passed fully.

Just an idea but what firewall software are you using?

I'm using Comodo x64

Edited by deleted (Mon 25-Feb-13 23:47:13)

In reply to a post by lt567:

I'm using Comodo x64

Try disabling it. Also, have you disabled Windows firewall? If you run two firewalls simultaneously, they tend to get in each other's way.

Since deleting the DB file in question someone recommended doing, I haven't had any freezes touch wood. But it's so random it could still happen but will wait and see. I thought that myself and turned Windows Firewall off earlier, push comes to shove I may revert to Windows 7.

Edit.

Nope still does it haha, good grief.

Edited by deleted (Tue 26-Feb-13 00:22:51)

You presume wrong.

So you reinstalled the OS? In that case you can't eliminate a software problem as the cause. If you had cloned the disk that would be less likely.

You too presume wrong.

So you didn't copy the hard disk, you didn't re-install operating system, and you refer to "the" hard disk rather than "a" hard disk.

I give up. I'm sure that you are telling us something useful but I have no idea what it is.

My experience with thousands of computers is that if a hard disk has errors the SMART counters will show those errors. And, as I have a couple of those disks myself I know that they are SMART enabled (and extremely reliable). Repeated short freezes in Windows almost always have a software cause - it is at least sensible to investigate that
possibility.

Why would you think I would leap to install a new hard disk with a new operating system or clone a potentially dodgy installation to a new disk in the first instance when SMART utilities werre reporting there was nothing wrong with the disk? I assumed that this was a software issue and did the obvious; I reformatted the disk and reinstalled the OS. That produced the exact same result. After replacing the disk (the new disk worked flawlessly) I decided to check the old one on OS X before disposing of it. Then and only then did SMART report it as failing. I have no idea why this happened, but clearly it is not safe to assume that because SMART is saying all is well that it actually is.

Ah well, it was worth a try. You could try installing the Win7 drivers for this board.

Since SMART provides a "Reallocated Sectors Count", I'm as baffled as you as to why your failing disk didn't show a count of sectors reallocated (if that was happening).

Whilst trawling for problem, i have with windows 8 and IE ( pages not displaying )
Came across this, similar info in events to yours.May or may not be revelent.

After the error happened again and some further investigation, it seems like Windows Update Service is the problem. To fix it, go to control panel-troubleshooting and run Windows Update Repair, after the repair, remove the cached Windows Update files, you can do this by right-clicking on c: drive-properties-Disk Clean-up once it opens and scans the system, select Clean up system files, it will do another scan, select Windows Update Cache files and free the space, clean up the other unneeded files too. It looks like that fixes the problem.

Hi Flip,

How did you come across your problem originally then, was IE crashing? I did what you said thanks and it did find something wrong look:

http://i47.tinypic.com/1zfj4m8.jpg

Did the system files clean up too so will see how things get on

It carried on doing it and it wasn't great when online gaming, every time it froze and came back it had disconnected me. I have since gone back to Windows 7 and so far touch wood is absolutely fine.