Thank you for responding so fast and thorough.  I did as you said and ran the diagnostics tests. All of them passed. (I even ran the memory one).  There was also some other diagnostics options through a GUI menu where you could pick tests for specific types of problems. I choose the system lock-up one and all of those passed.

So I guess this means I have a problem with my installation of Win 7 Home Premium?  I have started keeping a log of the freezing instances and I am trying to look through the event manager to see if it is recording anything around the same time but I don't have enough data yet to show anything.

-Aaron

FYI - Since I just received my Studio 14z in Dec 2009 it came pre-loaded with Win7 home premium on it. I have not done anything that I am aware of to modify the install of the operating system.

-Aaron

Have you identified the cause of your problem?  Are you running Win 7 64?  

I am having the same issue and it appears to be related to the hard drive setting.  I tried a clean install of Win 7 64 with ony the Dell drivers but I had slow boot issues and constant freezing plus the sound pops randomly.  Finally I changed the BIOS setting to ATA from ACHI and installed Win 7 32 and everything works fine now.

Hey,

I was having what appears to be the exact same issue as you. I can promise you with 99% certainty that this is only a software issue that takes only a few minutes to install a driver. I want you to do one thing though. Shut down and then restart. Let me know if it takes a long time to fully load the windows environment, sometimes more that 5 or 6 minutes.

Later

Did you ever resolve this problem? I have a Studio 14z that came installed with Win7 Home Premium, and I've been having the exact same problem for several months. Usually within minutes of a restart, the computer will pause for a few minutes even though the mouse will still move around. It's just the way you described. If you ever solved it, I would love to know what worked. 

Thanks for any advice you can give,

MrHexagon

May I ask you what are your specifications for your Studio 14z?

I never did get this problem solved. In fact shortly after I posted this topic I seemed to loose the ability to reply to responses on this forum (website issue; apparently it is working for me now).

The random freezing issue does seem to happen a little less then before but is still very frustrating. I would be interested in trying what the poster above suggested about a driver update, my computer often does take a long time to reboot/restart (but not every time).

What driver needs to be update? Where would I get it from?

I have not checked the BIOS for AHCI settings, I will look into it next time I reboot.

-Aaron

My system:

Intel Core2 Duo 2.53 Ghz

3GB Ram

NVIDIA GeForce9400M

High resolution (900p) screen 

Win7 64-bit

My system is very similar to foxballz. The processor is just a bit slower:

Intel Core2 Duo T6600 @ 2.20 Ghz

BIOS version A04 (10/27/2009)

3GB Ram

NVIDIA GeForce 9400M G

Win7 64-bit

Hi Foxballz,

Well, it's too bad you never were able to fix the problem. Like you, it often takes a long time (5-6 minutes) for my computer to restart, so I don't restart very frequently. I have found that if I put the computer to sleep, rather than logging off or going into hibernate mode, that I don't have the random lock-ups as often. 

When I called Dell Support about the issue, they suggested that I completely reinstall Win7 using the Recovery partition on the hard drive, but I've resisted because I have so many programs that would have to be reinstalled. Maybe over a long weekend, I'll get frustrated enough to give it a try :)

Thanks for getting back to me. Maybe someone with the solution will stumble across this thread and tell us the secret. 

Thank you for responding so fast and thorough. I did as you said and ran the diagnostics tests. All of them passed. (I even ran the memory one). There was also some other diagnostics options through a GUI menu where you could pick tests for specific types of problems. I choose the system lock-up one and all of those passed. So I guess this means I have a problem with my installation of Win 7 Home Premium? I have started keeping a log of the freezing instances and I am trying to look through the event manager to see if it is recording anything around the same time but I don't have enough data yet to show anything. -Aaron