CPU? Ram? RAID? What would cause random 10 second pauses in Windows?

[Trevelyan]

Okay here's my issue. I'll be using Firefox or Dreamweaver and suddenly out of the blue it will pause for around 10-15 seconds.... not the entire system, just Firefox. I can access other programs and do anything, but Firefox will not respond.... after 10-15 seconds it will come back and everything will continue as normal.

This also happens with Dreamweaver occasionally, and most likely only those two programs because those are the ones I use frequently throughout the day.

I'm just wondering -- could this be CPU or memory related? Or maybe something is wrong with my RAID array? It happens probably once every hour or so, so pretty common. I thought it was Firefox, but even disabling all addons/extensions didn't fix it.

Windows 7
i7 920 @ 3.6ghz
6gb memory
Gigabyte UD3R motherboard
Intel 128gb ssd drive
2GB (2x1gb) WD 1001 RAID array

I'm fairly certain if I were to reinstall Windows 7 this problem would go away... but I'm just wondering if this is something beyond just software?

 

[Spikesoldier]

sometimes when i had 4gb i would get what you describe in the middle of heavy gaming.

when i upgraded to 8gb this issue went away.

 

[piasabird]

Blame it on Microsoft. Browsers are not conforming to a specific technology and they are getting data a cross posting and all kinds of things that they can not handle. It is poorly written webpages that do not conform to any standard. I have noticed that on different websites I get different restults with different browsers. It is really a pain in the neck. Blame it on google if you want. A lot of sites have stupid Chrome browser preferences.

 

[DaveSimmons]

Firefox 6 - 7 introduced an issue for me where the download manager sometimes freezes for 10 seconds or more. I never had this problem with earlier versions and the rest of the system is responsive during that time.

Sometimes it stalls to the point where Firefox puts up a "script not responding" alert.

So, this may just be buggy Firefox code.

 

[uOpt]

Do you have swapspace and/or the browser profile on the SSD?

Trying moving it off and see whether that helps.

What kind of raid? The on-mainboard stuff?

 

[Trevelyan]

Hmm... I'm wondering if that is the case... It's a shame because it's making me consider switching to Google Chrome.

I did just update my ATI drivers to see if that fixes it. I'll let you know how that goes today...

I just can't imagine it being hardware-related, because I never get any hard crashes, you know? Never get BSODs, no resets, no programs crashing, nothing.... it's just these weird hiccups... but they are SO annoying.

 

[anti.machine]

Ok in the spirit of trouble shooting I have a few questions.
1.Have you checked your logs in event viewer?
2.Have you tired running one application at a time and no applications to narrow down if it is one of those programs causing the hangup?
3.Have you tired a different browser?
4.When is the last time you have done a 'Tune up"

I always tell my users that a clean install of windows every now and then seems to be the only way to keep it fast, windows tends to just get slower over time. I recommend you check out CCleaner to clean up your registry and wipe the free space on your drives.
Also while your at it check your msconfig and see what extra programs are starting with windows and slowing down your system. And see what services you can disable without effecting your systems stability.

Even if that does not solve your issue it never hurts to do

 

[anti.machine]

Let me know what you find out

 

[uOpt]

Hmm... I'm wondering if that is the case... It's a shame because it's making me consider switching to Google Chrome.

I did just update my ATI drivers to see if that fixes it. I'll let you know how that goes today...

I just can't imagine it being hardware-related, because I never get any hard crashes, you know? Never get BSODs, no resets, no programs crashing, nothing.... it's just these weird hiccups... but they are SO annoying.

One reason why I am still not jumping on SSDs for many things (let's not go to all of them right now) is that they tend to lock up when overloading them. Their onboard processor's software obviously has a very limited ability to deal with concurrent requests if there is "real work" for them involved, namely if they struggle to find new sectors to write to and there are outstanding read requests at the same time. A HDD can do better here, I have seen it. Often.

Firefox on the other hand has gone crazy with some of their profile (and possible cache) data and calls fsync at intervals that are nothing short of crazy.

Hence my recommendation: if you have browser profile and swap space on the SSD, get is off there at least for a test. Having random mostly readonly things on the SSD should be fine. DLLs in particular are a good thing to place there. Swap? Not so much. fsync trigger happy programs? Hell no.

 

[Trevelyan]

Do you have swapspace and/or the browser profile on the SSD?

Trying moving it off and see whether that helps.

What kind of raid? The on-mainboard stuff?

How do I move those? Do you mean the paging file?

And yes, it's the onboard RAID... the motherboard has two chipsets for it... and whatever the better one was, I used that one when I set it up.

 

[uOpt]

Oh and I hate to say but I have one of the earliest i7s here with whatever the first clock-worthy Gigabyte board was for i7. I can't check which model right now but it has some kind of occasional problem with SATA or I/O in general. Hangs up the GUI all waiting for I/O to finish on some form of load that doesn't seem to be constant.

 

[uOpt]

How do I move those? Do you mean the paging file?

And yes, it's the onboard RAID... the motherboard has two chipsets for it... and whatever the better one was, I used that one when I set it up.

If your browser has the profile on the SSD and it's the thing that's hanging then it's unlikely the RAID is at fault. I would never use on-mainboard raid to protect my data in raid1 as I have seen what some of those systems attempt to do instead of a proper resync when you replace a disk. But I haven't heard of hangs with it.

Yes, in windows you usually have a paging file. Move it off the SSD along with the browser profile (which includes history and cache) and see whether that helps.

 

[iluvdeal]

Firefox has been doing that to me more and more recently, I'm seriously considering a full time switch to Chrome as well.

 

[mfenn]

One reason why I am still not jumping on SSDs for many things (let's not go to all of them right now) is that they tend to lock up when overloading them. Their onboard processor's software obviously has a very limited ability to deal with concurrent requests if there is "real work" for them involved, namely if they struggle to find new sectors to write to and there are outstanding read requests at the same time. A HDD can do better here, I have seen it. Often.

Firefox on the other hand has gone crazy with some of their profile (and possible cache) data and calls fsync at intervals that are nothing short of crazy.

Hence my recommendation: if you have browser profile and swap space on the SSD, get is off there at least for a test. Having random mostly readonly things on the SSD should be fine. DLLs in particular are a good thing to place there. Swap? Not so much. fsync trigger happy programs? Hell no.

2007 called and it wants your SSD knowledge back. What you described is what happened back with the original crappy JMicron SSDs, but it most certainly does not happen with any (non broken) modern SSD. SSDs absolutely L-O-V-E large queue depths when it comes to driving IOPS.

OP, that's not to say that there might not be something just plain wrong with your SSD. A long pause here and there is usually the sign of two things:
- Firmware bug
- Badly depleted spare pool (this usually happens if TRIM is turned off or due to A).

Get the Intel SSD toolbox to check the drive's health and update the firmware.

 

[Trevelyan]

Okay, this has to be related to Firefox, because I've been using Chrome the past two days and have not experienced the same issue at all...

What the heck, Firefox?

 

[uOpt]

Okay, this has to be related to Firefox, because I've been using Chrome the past two days and have not experienced the same issue at all...

What the heck, Firefox?

As I said above, Firefox went extremely trigger-happy on the fsync calls, on first sight in a bogus manner.

So if you have anything that has a write problem, or might develop one, such as a SSD, then it's a bad idea to put your FF profile on it.

Expected behavior.

 

[uOpt]

2007 called and it wants your SSD knowledge back. What you described is what happened back with the original crappy JMicron SSDs, but it most certainly does not happen with any (non broken) modern SSD. SSDs absolutely L-O-V-E large queue depths when it comes to driving IOPS.

OP, that's not to say that there might not be something just plain wrong with your SSD. A long pause here and there is usually the sign of two things:
- Firmware bug
- Badly depleted spare pool (this usually happens if TRIM is turned off or due to A).

Get the Intel SSD toolbox to check the drive's health and update the firmware.

I have a total of 5 SSDs that I owned or own. I can make all of them lock up easily. It seems obvious from the outside that the management of the spare pool can easily be overrun with simultaneous requests, so that you have huge delays in any request (even read) while the SSD's processor tried to deal with the writes.

You desktop/game people usually don't see it since you tend to have read/write patterns that are more sequential by nature. Unless of course you have Firefox and swapping going on at the same times -> KABOOM.

None of this means that more RAM and a decent RAID (not the onboard junk) aren't the better investment for the $$$.

 

[mfenn]

I have a total of 5 SSDs that I owned or own. I can make all of them lock up easily. It seems obvious from the outside that the management of the spare pool can easily be overrun with simultaneous requests, so that you have huge delays in any request (even read) while the SSD's processor tried to deal with the writes.

You desktop/game people usually don't see it since you tend to have read/write patterns that are more sequential by nature. Unless of course you have Firefox and swapping going on at the same times -> KABOOM.

None of this means that more RAM and a decent RAID (not the onboard junk) aren't the better investment for the $$$.

Careful about those assumptions. I've probably spent more on SSDs in the last year for my data center than you have for yours.

Care to list which SSDs you've owned and had problems with? You seem to be a programmer as well, so care to post any sample code? I'm having a hard time fathoming a situation where a competent, non-broken SSD would perform any worse than an HDD.

 

[mfenn]

As I said above, Firefox went extremely trigger-happy on the fsync calls, on first sight in a bogus manner.

So if you have anything that has a write problem, or might develop one, such as a SSD, then it's a bad idea to put your FF profile on it.

Expected behavior.

This does not line up with the known performance characteristics of any (non-broken) SSD. Small random reads and writes are what they excel at.