Annoying bugs in Windows 7

I'm running Windows 7 64-bit Home Premium on an Asus P5Q3 motherboard with
an Intel Q9550 2.83GHz quad core processor, 4GB of 1800 MHz DDR3 RAM (the
memory is not overclocked to 1800 MHz at the moment and runs at 1333 MHz),
80GB Intel Solid State Drive and two Seagate 500GB hard disks in striped
data mode (ASUS super speed mode).

I love the new windows 7, but it has three annoying faults for me.

1) When the USB bus gets tied up it crashes windows into a reboot, not blue
screen of death, this can occur when rebooting the system after a prolonged
shutdown period, and also if I unplug and replug my USB Alcatel modem (USB
1.1 i/f) into a USB port whilst Windows 7 is running.

I have read that there have been issues with the USB drivers on Windows in
the past and I have taken the latest releases from the Microsoft USB team
for Windows 7, supposedly to cure this problem , which has possibly improved
things now, the pc boots up cleanly from a prolonged shutdown period. But I
find that opening other CPU intensive progs can kill the USB modem's sync,
and this cannot be recovered except by unplugging the modem from the USB
port and reconnecting - when I try this, it crashes the system into a reboot
phase, not blue screen of death.

So it appears to me that there are still issues of stability with the USB
drivers on Windows 7.

2) I'm happily watching tv on my pc using a Hauppage USB tv stick, I open my
IMVU chat prog and I get a really loud buzz on the tv sound channel whilst
IMVU initialises itself, similar thing happens if listening to online radio
stations. What is windows 7 doing to cause this loud interference in another
application on the audio side? I checked the CPU loading at the time this
buzzing occurs and it was less than 20%. My sound hardware is an onboard
Realtek device with the correct latest 64-bit drivers.

3) Explorer stops responding. I have read many other people have this
problem too, I checked my addons in IE and cannot see any rogue addons to
cause this problem; and its so random when it chooses to lockup, typically
just trying to open explorer or right clicking on the taskbar will do it.
Although Win7 recovers from it by restarting explorer, this has the very
annoying habit of losing the active icons in the tray on the taskabar, which
cannot be recovered. So If Microsoft cannot stop explorer locking up, at
least they can restart it and put the icons back in the tray - that should
not be an impossible task to code up. IE can recover from a random
unexpected shutdown of of IE so the tray should be able to do the same thing
and recover. And obviously the bug in Explorer should be fixed to stop it
from locking up, this never happened in XP, and I suspect not in Vista
either (I've never used Vista).

I have read about many people complaining about random freezes on Windows 7,
luckily I do not suffer from these problems, but they could be related to
USB problems.

My question is: when will Microsoft acknowledge these problems and come up
with working solutions to them? This year would be good.

Joe

The USB problems in Win 7 that are reported all over the internet are
primarily on MBs with Intel cips and nVidia chips. Supposedly
Microsoft, Intel and nVidia are trying to identify the source of the
problem.



Joe wrote:
> I'm running Windows 7 64-bit Home Premium on an Asus P5Q3 motherboard
> with an Intel Q9550 2.83GHz quad core processor, 4GB of 1800 MHz DDR3
> RAM (the memory is not overclocked to 1800 MHz at the moment and runs at
> 1333 MHz), 80GB Intel Solid State Drive and two Seagate 500GB hard disks
> in striped data mode (ASUS super speed mode).
>
> I love the new windows 7, but it has three annoying faults for me.
>
> 1) When the USB bus gets tied up it crashes windows into a reboot, not
> blue screen of death, this can occur when rebooting the system after a
> prolonged shutdown period, and also if I unplug and replug my USB
> Alcatel modem (USB 1.1 i/f) into a USB port whilst Windows 7 is running.
>
> I have read that there have been issues with the USB drivers on Windows
> in the past and I have taken the latest releases from the Microsoft USB
> team for Windows 7, supposedly to cure this problem , which has possibly
> improved things now, the pc boots up cleanly from a prolonged shutdown
> period. But I find that opening other CPU intensive progs can kill the
> USB modem's sync, and this cannot be recovered except by unplugging the
> modem from the USB port and reconnecting - when I try this, it crashes
> the system into a reboot phase, not blue screen of death.
>
> So it appears to me that there are still issues of stability with the
> USB drivers on Windows 7.
>
> 2) I'm happily watching tv on my pc using a Hauppage USB tv stick, I
> open my IMVU chat prog and I get a really loud buzz on the tv sound
> channel whilst IMVU initialises itself, similar thing happens if
> listening to online radio stations. What is windows 7 doing to cause
> this loud interference in another application on the audio side? I
> checked the CPU loading at the time this buzzing occurs and it was less
> than 20%. My sound hardware is an onboard Realtek device with the
> correct latest 64-bit drivers.
>
> 3) Explorer stops responding. I have read many other people have this
> problem too, I checked my addons in IE and cannot see any rogue addons
> to cause this problem; and its so random when it chooses to lockup,
> typically just trying to open explorer or right clicking on the taskbar
> will do it. Although Win7 recovers from it by restarting explorer, this
> has the very annoying habit of losing the active icons in the tray on
> the taskabar, which cannot be recovered. So If Microsoft cannot stop
> explorer locking up, at least they can restart it and put the icons back
> in the tray - that should not be an impossible task to code up. IE can
> recover from a random unexpected shutdown of of IE so the tray should be
> able to do the same thing and recover. And obviously the bug in Explorer
> should be fixed to stop it from locking up, this never happened in XP,
> and I suspect not in Vista either (I've never used Vista).
>
> I have read about many people complaining about random freezes on
> Windows 7, luckily I do not suffer from these problems, but they could
> be related to USB problems.
>
> My question is: when will Microsoft acknowledge these problems and come
> up with working solutions to them? This year would be good.
>
> Joe

I am using the Asus P5Q3 with a Q9400 processor and 8 gig of RAM.

I don't have any of your problems. My system resumes fine from sleep,
whether it be 1 hour or 24 hours.

I did notice that using the advanced Realtec audio drivers made my system
susceptible to all sorts of extraneous noise, no matter which version I
loaded. I am back to using the default drivers that came with Windows 7
without any issues for the past 11 months (yes, I was a Tech beta tester).

You are referring to Internet Explorer or Windows Explorer not responding?
They are two separate animals. I have had I.E. Explorer hang once. I have
never had a problem with Windows Explorer.

--

Richard Urban
Microsoft MVP
Windows Desktop Experience & Security


"Joe" <> wrote in message
news:Ox17%...
> I'm running Windows 7 64-bit Home Premium on an Asus P5Q3 motherboard with
> an Intel Q9550 2.83GHz quad core processor, 4GB of 1800 MHz DDR3 RAM (the
> memory is not overclocked to 1800 MHz at the moment and runs at 1333 MHz),
> 80GB Intel Solid State Drive and two Seagate 500GB hard disks in striped
> data mode (ASUS super speed mode).
>
> I love the new windows 7, but it has three annoying faults for me.
>
> 1) When the USB bus gets tied up it crashes windows into a reboot, not
> blue screen of death, this can occur when rebooting the system after a
> prolonged shutdown period, and also if I unplug and replug my USB Alcatel
> modem (USB 1.1 i/f) into a USB port whilst Windows 7 is running.
>
> I have read that there have been issues with the USB drivers on Windows in
> the past and I have taken the latest releases from the Microsoft USB team
> for Windows 7, supposedly to cure this problem , which has possibly
> improved things now, the pc boots up cleanly from a prolonged shutdown
> period. But I find that opening other CPU intensive progs can kill the USB
> modem's sync, and this cannot be recovered except by unplugging the modem
> from the USB port and reconnecting - when I try this, it crashes the
> system into a reboot phase, not blue screen of death.
>
> So it appears to me that there are still issues of stability with the USB
> drivers on Windows 7.
>
> 2) I'm happily watching tv on my pc using a Hauppage USB tv stick, I open
> my IMVU chat prog and I get a really loud buzz on the tv sound channel
> whilst IMVU initialises itself, similar thing happens if listening to
> online radio stations. What is windows 7 doing to cause this loud
> interference in another application on the audio side? I checked the CPU
> loading at the time this buzzing occurs and it was less than 20%. My sound
> hardware is an onboard Realtek device with the correct latest 64-bit
> drivers.
>
> 3) Explorer stops responding. I have read many other people have this
> problem too, I checked my addons in IE and cannot see any rogue addons to
> cause this problem; and its so random when it chooses to lockup, typically
> just trying to open explorer or right clicking on the taskbar will do it.
> Although Win7 recovers from it by restarting explorer, this has the very
> annoying habit of losing the active icons in the tray on the taskabar,
> which cannot be recovered. So If Microsoft cannot stop explorer locking
> up, at least they can restart it and put the icons back in the tray - that
> should not be an impossible task to code up. IE can recover from a random
> unexpected shutdown of of IE so the tray should be able to do the same
> thing and recover. And obviously the bug in Explorer should be fixed to
> stop it from locking up, this never happened in XP, and I suspect not in
> Vista either (I've never used Vista).
>
> I have read about many people complaining about random freezes on Windows
> 7, luckily I do not suffer from these problems, but they could be related
> to USB problems.
>
> My question is: when will Microsoft acknowledge these problems and come up
> with working solutions to them? This year would be good.
>
> Joe

"Richard Urban" <> wrote in message
news:...
> I am using the Asus P5Q3 with a Q9400 processor and 8 gig of RAM.
>
> I don't have any of your problems. My system resumes fine from sleep,
> whether it be 1 hour or 24 hours.
>
> I did notice that using the advanced Realtec audio drivers made my system
> susceptible to all sorts of extraneous noise, no matter which version I
> loaded. I am back to using the default drivers that came with Windows 7
> without any issues for the past 11 months (yes, I was a Tech beta tester).
>
> You are referring to Internet Explorer or Windows Explorer not responding?
> They are two separate animals. I have had I.E. Explorer hang once. I have
> never had a problem with Windows Explorer.
>
> --
>
> Richard Urban
> Microsoft MVP
> Windows Desktop Experience & Security



Hi Richard,

Thanks for your responses.

1) With regard to the cold restarts after long time shutdown (not sleeps),
these problems seem to be finally gone now and my system boots up fine now.
When they did occur it was due to USB probs that would cause the
crash/reboot sequence just as the modem was about to sync which is the very
final phase of my very fast windows startup, after installing a couple of
the latest USB updates from Microsoft (Hotfix KB974476 & Windows Update
KB976972 these seem to have cured this problem finally - yay.

2) With regard to the USB issue, I have found that I should have selected
the Safely Remove feature for my USB, when I do this I can safely unplug my
Alcatel STS330 USB modem without crashing Win7 64-bit into a reboot
sequence, also when I replug it back in it now causes no problem and resyncs
the modem and allows reconnection with my ISP fine again - yay. The only
remaining problem is that very occasionally I initiate something on my pc
that causes the sync to be lost. I think I have had it sometimes when
accessing my 2nd hard disk (the pair of striped Seagate 512GB Hard Disks)
when they have gone into power down mode and I hear them spinning up (I
don't think it does it all the time though - ie going thru this scenario).
At least now I can use the safely remove feature to allow me to unplug and
replug the modem to get the line to sync again ( I have a 4 port USB hub on
my desk and so its very easy to plug and unplug the modem which is also in
direct line of sight on the desk (I threw away the plastic case and have the
small circuit board taped to the kitchen tile and resting the lower edge on
the table - the gap between the edge of the table {1"} allows airflow that
keeps the hottest chip on the circuit board now a lot cooler). Finally the
ASUS P5Q3 motherboard uses the P45 Intel chip for the north bridge and the
Intel ICH10R for the southbridge, so I hope someone could pass this on to
Microsoft that the USB problems also occur with Intel chips and is not
generic to NVidia chipsets, which seems to indicate a problem with the core
USB handler code and not chip manufacturer register specifics.

3) With regard to the sound problems I have experienced: I initially had
lots of extraneous noise problems when I used the Realtek drivers, and with
all my crashing probs initially when I was getting used to Windows 7, I
actually re-installed (upgraded over itself ) Window 7 64-bit a further two
times, and without realising it although I had the Realtek driver installed
initially and reinstalled it again on the 2nd upgrade, I did not on the
final upgrade, which is when all my extraneous noise magically disappeared
and I did not know why but was ever so glad it did as I was just about to
buy a PCI sound card, just checking the audio driver now I found out that I
have the Windows High Definition Audio Device driver - version
6.1.7600.16385 date 13/07/2009, (so that is why I have crystal clear sound
now - hmmmmm). Its really bad that ASUS supply the Realtek driver that makes
the onboard sound device 24-bit 192kHz sound like crap, so that people
actually go out and buy sound cards - I've read about a lot of people doing
this, and myself being a systems engineer thought that problem was due to
not being able to screen circuit board tracks - shows what I know LOL. So,
the problems with the audio buzzing are occurring using the Microsoft High
Definition Audio device driver, but I don't believe the problem lies in the
driver but rather in the interruption of the audio feed to the driver caused
by the kernel. Hopefully this info finds its way to Microsoft so they can
quickly locate and fix the problem. Thankfully its very rare and when I will
be able to identify exactly when it occurs I'll pass this information on to
you so you can see that it makes its way back to the Microsoft development
teams.

4) With regard to Explorer problems (ie not responding), I was referring to
Windows Explorer and not IE, although I did mention the addons (shell
extensions) used in IE as I have read that these are the cause of the
problems. I checked earlier and I only have a handful of non-Microsoft
addons, I used ShellExView 64-bit V1.45 ( http:/www.nirsoft.net ), which is
an excellent utility for seeing all the Shell Extensions used in Windows and
IE, I think I came across the program in utilities at www.filehippo.com.
I'm glad you have never had a problem with WinExplorer, perhaps you could
run ShellExView and do some screen captures and we could exchange results
and try to identify if anything in my set is causing the WE to lockup, I
will have a go at disabling all the non-Microsoft extensions and see if I
still have this problem. I will get back to you on this.

Finally, yay - I am glad your system is working well using the same
motherboard as I (ASUS P5Q3), I note you are using a Q9400 and I a Q9550, I
was going to say that I looked at the Intel Erratum Data Manual, that
outlines all the bugs in the microcode of the Q9000 series of Quad Core
Processors (and there are lots and many will not be fixed!) and thought that
my problems may be due to different microcode bugs in the Q9550 and the
Q9400, but now I realise they both use the same microcodes and just differ
in speeds and ALL cache sizes, so I would be interested to correspond with
you further to enquire as to your BIOS setup and anything you have done to
improve stability of Win7 64-bit (are you running the 64-bit or 32-bit OS?).
I'm a bit loathe to print out my personal email add in a newsgroup though,
not sure how to get round that prob tho. I could setup a new hotmail addy
just to correspond with you tho.

I have found the Q9550 is very temperature sensitive to CPU core voltage -
as the P5Q3 caters for a wide variety of CPU, I found that in the BIOS the
CPU core voltage when not in AUTO went yellow (which I took to mean default)
at 1.7V and so booted up with that and so the CPU temp in the BIOS shoot up
to 80C, quickly shut down and set it back to AUTO where the CPU temp fell
back to 3COM in the BIOS. I then looked in the Intel Hardware manual for the
Q9000 series Processors and found the max CPU Core voltage is V1.45 - ooops
(must read processor voltage limits before frigging around in the BIOS).
Have you done any over clocking in your BIOS? I don't particularly want to
overclock but it would be nice to use my 1800MHz DRY Ram at that speed and
not at 1333Mhz, when I set the BIOS RAM clock to 1800MHz O.C. the system
will not boot, so I need to frig around with other settings as well the DRAM
main clock speed, if you have any expertise in that area I would like to
hear about it pls - if not I can contact overclockers in other forums.

Despite these niggles I really do like Windows 7 and I'm glad I bought it
soon after it was released.

Joe


>
> "Joe" <> wrote in message
> news:Ox17%...
>> I'm running Windows 7 64-bit Home Premium on an Asus P5Q3 motherboard
>> with an Intel Q9550 2.83GHz quad core processor, 4GB of 1800 MHz DDR3 RAM
>> (the memory is not overclocked to 1800 MHz at the moment and runs at 1333
>> MHz), 80GB Intel Solid State Drive and two Seagate 500GB hard disks in
>> striped data mode (ASUS super speed mode).
>>
>> I love the new windows 7, but it has three annoying faults for me.
>>
>> 1) When the USB bus gets tied up it crashes windows into a reboot, not
>> blue screen of death, this can occur when rebooting the system after a
>> prolonged shutdown period, and also if I unplug and replug my USB Alcatel
>> modem (USB 1.1 i/f) into a USB port whilst Windows 7 is running.
>>
>> I have read that there have been issues with the USB drivers on Windows
>> in the past and I have taken the latest releases from the Microsoft USB
>> team for Windows 7, supposedly to cure this problem , which has possibly
>> improved things now, the pc boots up cleanly from a prolonged shutdown
>> period. But I find that opening other CPU intensive progs can kill the
>> USB modem's sync, and this cannot be recovered except by unplugging the
>> modem from the USB port and reconnecting - when I try this, it crashes
>> the system into a reboot phase, not blue screen of death.
>>
>> So it appears to me that there are still issues of stability with the USB
>> drivers on Windows 7.
>>
>> 2) I'm happily watching tv on my pc using a Hauppage USB tv stick, I open
>> my IMVU chat prog and I get a really loud buzz on the tv sound channel
>> whilst IMVU initialises itself, similar thing happens if listening to
>> online radio stations. What is windows 7 doing to cause this loud
>> interference in another application on the audio side? I checked the CPU
>> loading at the time this buzzing occurs and it was less than 20%. My
>> sound hardware is an onboard Realtek device with the correct latest
>> 64-bit drivers.
>>
>> 3) Explorer stops responding. I have read many other people have this
>> problem too, I checked my addons in IE and cannot see any rogue addons to
>> cause this problem; and its so random when it chooses to lockup,
>> typically just trying to open explorer or right clicking on the taskbar
>> will do it. Although Win7 recovers from it by restarting explorer, this
>> has the very annoying habit of losing the active icons in the tray on the
>> taskabar, which cannot be recovered. So If Microsoft cannot stop explorer
>> locking up, at least they can restart it and put the icons back in the
>> tray - that should not be an impossible task to code up. IE can recover
>> from a random unexpected shutdown of of IE so the tray should be able to
>> do the same thing and recover. And obviously the bug in Explorer should
>> be fixed to stop it from locking up, this never happened in XP, and I
>> suspect not in Vista either (I've never used Vista).
>>
>> I have read about many people complaining about random freezes on Windows
>> 7, luckily I do not suffer from these problems, but they could be related
>> to USB problems.
>>
>> My question is: when will Microsoft acknowledge these problems and come
>> up with working solutions to them? This year would be good.
>>
>> Joe
>

I have been running W7 since the first beta and I also run into problems
with IE 7 and now 8 locking up. I often gets a message with Inertnet not
available, yet when I close and open IE the internet is working. I am on a
SBS2003 R2 betwork and when this happens it locks my other Vista machine out
of the last website I was connected visitng.

I lose the same 6 icons from the screen every 3rd or 4th reboot, I like W7
but it's not completely finished in my book.

Peter

"Joe" <> wrote in message
news:Ox17%...
> I'm running Windows 7 64-bit Home Premium on an Asus P5Q3 motherboard with
> an Intel Q9550 2.83GHz quad core processor, 4GB of 1800 MHz DDR3 RAM (the
> memory is not overclocked to 1800 MHz at the moment and runs at 1333 MHz),
> 80GB Intel Solid State Drive and two Seagate 500GB hard disks in striped
> data mode (ASUS super speed mode).
>
> I love the new windows 7, but it has three annoying faults for me.
>
> 1) When the USB bus gets tied up it crashes windows into a reboot, not
> blue screen of death, this can occur when rebooting the system after a
> prolonged shutdown period, and also if I unplug and replug my USB Alcatel
> modem (USB 1.1 i/f) into a USB port whilst Windows 7 is running.
>
> I have read that there have been issues with the USB drivers on Windows in
> the past and I have taken the latest releases from the Microsoft USB team
> for Windows 7, supposedly to cure this problem , which has possibly
> improved things now, the pc boots up cleanly from a prolonged shutdown
> period. But I find that opening other CPU intensive progs can kill the USB
> modem's sync, and this cannot be recovered except by unplugging the modem
> from the USB port and reconnecting - when I try this, it crashes the
> system into a reboot phase, not blue screen of death.
>
> So it appears to me that there are still issues of stability with the USB
> drivers on Windows 7.
>
> 2) I'm happily watching tv on my pc using a Hauppage USB tv stick, I open
> my IMVU chat prog and I get a really loud buzz on the tv sound channel
> whilst IMVU initialises itself, similar thing happens if listening to
> online radio stations. What is windows 7 doing to cause this loud
> interference in another application on the audio side? I checked the CPU
> loading at the time this buzzing occurs and it was less than 20%. My sound
> hardware is an onboard Realtek device with the correct latest 64-bit
> drivers.
>
> 3) Explorer stops responding. I have read many other people have this
> problem too, I checked my addons in IE and cannot see any rogue addons to
> cause this problem; and its so random when it chooses to lockup, typically
> just trying to open explorer or right clicking on the taskbar will do it.
> Although Win7 recovers from it by restarting explorer, this has the very
> annoying habit of losing the active icons in the tray on the taskabar,
> which cannot be recovered. So If Microsoft cannot stop explorer locking
> up, at least they can restart it and put the icons back in the tray - that
> should not be an impossible task to code up. IE can recover from a random
> unexpected shutdown of of IE so the tray should be able to do the same
> thing and recover. And obviously the bug in Explorer should be fixed to
> stop it from locking up, this never happened in XP, and I suspect not in
> Vista either (I've never used Vista).
>
> I have read about many people complaining about random freezes on Windows
> 7, luckily I do not suffer from these problems, but they could be related
> to USB problems.
>
> My question is: when will Microsoft acknowledge these problems and come up
> with working solutions to them? This year would be good.
>
> Joe