Computer ‘freeze’

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I’ve been having a problem for several months with my (Win7/64) browser(s) freezing, or locking up, when I’m online.
I use Chrome, and the problem was only with Chrome, but now freezes with Firefox also.

I’ll be online to whatever site (doesn’t seem to matter) and it ‘freezes’: the HD light stays on indicating some kind of activity, the modem activity light
stays on continuously, the cursor won’t move, and the Ctrl-Alt-Delete won’t come up. This usually lasts for 30-45 seconds, then the ‘freeze’ stops, and the
computer returns to normal. This has been happening at least once a day.

I use the latest Norton 360 and Iobit security software. I run scans for all files at least once a week, and keep their files updated.

I’m wondering if ‘someone’ is downloading files from my system? CIA, FBI, NSA?? I post to a lot of websites, but never threaten anyone. My posts usually
are ‘rants’ about our current administration.

If anyone can give me an idea what’s going on, I’d really appreciate it.

John

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Quite likely that behavior was to do with your computer accessing your disk, for some reason, but also maybe because it is using the paging file, moving contents from memory to disk to release memory to allow you to do what you want to do. Does this happen mostly when you open new pages or tabs in your browser?

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You may be correct, but I’m wondering why the ‘modem activity indicator’ would also be ‘on’ continuously during the hard drive freeze? My computer has
6 GB of RAM, so I’m thinking it shouldn’t be swapping to the ‘virtual drive’. Why would it totally freeze up?
Thanks, John

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I can’t really explain the modem lights are on at that time, especially if they aren’t on at other times. About freezing, I have seen it happen and yes, in computers with lots of RAM. It really depends on what you are doing. Browsers, with lots of open tabs, usually take a lot of memory and cause that type of slowdowns. I have experienced it especially with IE, but with Chrome too. Sometimes it is just silly the amount of time it takes to “get your computer back”.

You can use a number of tools that you can keep open to try and catch such activity. One of those tools is TCP View.It will tell you what programs are connecting to where. Probably you will have to have it open before it happens, or else you won’t have time to open it when it happens.

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I tend to think this could be an issue with Norton/Iobit, my guess is that there’s a lot of duplication going on and a lot of ‘cloud’ activity file/process-checking. If you have TaskManager started and minimized while you work, you can switch quickly to it via Alt+Tab when you hit the next ‘freeze’.

Set TaskMan Performance > View to Show kernel times – the resulting red line shows how hard the kernel and low-level drivers are working, over about 8% and that will have a noticeable effect on your running software (like lag). In the Networking tab > View, set Adapter history to show bytes sent and received.

For a ‘bigger’ view of what’s happening, TaskMan Performance tab > Resource Monitor; again, if you leave that running but minimized, it’ll remain fairly responsive to switch to via Alt+Tab.

In both programs you should be looking for the highest CPU/network/disk I/O traffic and try to pin it to a program/conflict.

There are also tools like Process Monitor by Sysinternals/Microsoft that would allow similar tracking down to be done.

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I wonder if this due to Chrome having it’s own integrated version of Flash player installed?

I’m pretty sure that I read a thread here recently that disabling Chrome’s integrated version worked when there was another version of Flash player installed.

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