Running uTorrent messes up computer, requires Hard Restart???

Well uTorrent works ok, but not after I start any torrents downloading... Whole computer gets insanely slow and even exiting programs becomes impossible.

Eventually I'm forced to hard restart the computer.

Suggestions?

some tips in my sig

I'm having the same problem in a way. After uTorrent being on for awhile downloading and seeding (say, overnight) I wake up and suddenly can't open any programs on my computer, and can't reboot without doing a hard reboot with the reset button on my PC. I've verified this is not a hardware problem and narrowed it down to uTorrent. I will follow the steps in the guide above and see if it resolves the issue.

good

How much ram do you have. its possible your computer has maxxed out memory and is forced to user HD cache (pagefile) Excessive pagefile usage in combination with HD access from uTorrent could cause slowdowns as you describe. If you have a slow harddrive or spyware and bloatware on your computer they could also contribute to your problem. If you open the task manager and see physical memory at anything past 85 percent you should probably think about either closing some programs down or getting more ram. if your cpu is at 85 check what program it is and thats what you need to deal with first.

Do you use a proxy server or not? I know from trial and error some proxy server have hanged my computer forcing hard restart if your using a proxy check to make sure it isn't flooding your connection causing memory leakage. You tested the hardware but did you make sure it wasn't your O/S that was the cause of the problem? Since you don't mention what your O/S is makes it hard to know if there isn't a corrupt files causing the problem.

Okay after following the guide the problem still surfaced. It only happens after leaving uTorrent running for quite awhile. I do have some years of experience with keeping spyware, adware, bloatware off my machine so no big deal there. I've checked before and when it does it nothing appears to be eating up RAM or CPU cycles. I've got 8GB RAM by the way. I'm going to try a different torrent client to see if it causes the issue as well. At least that way I'll know if it's completely isolated to uTorrent.

EDIT: No proxy involved by the way.

Okay I've found out it's definately not uTorrent causing the problem. It's something having to do with my system. I'm getting repeated Event ID 7011's in my Event Viewer system log, timeouts related to the ShellHWDetection service. I've Googled the crap out of this issue and still have come up with no solutions.

Good to hear you were able to narrow down the problem more, I'll see what I can find on that problem, If you figure out what is causing it please let us know.

As I mentioned before without knowing what specs you have help will be lacking...

Core 2 Quad Q9650

Biostar T-Power I45 (Formally a Gigabyte GA-X48-DQ6, same issue)

4 Hard drives which all check out fine (WD Raptor, Seagage, Samsung, and WD 1TB)

Sony DVD-ROM, Memorex DVD-RW, LG Blu-Ray burner (SATA)

1200w Power Supply, 8GB DDR2-1066 RAM (also tested as fine)

Windows 7 Business x64

New information as well: By comparing 2 event logs I noticed right before the hangup and massive amount of Event ID 7011's occurred, on the Applications event log, a SideBySide error occurred for an Adobe Air DLL. I also read somewhere that some people have had issue with 32 bit drivers on 64 bit systems that have caused such errors and notices the DLL was under C:\Program Files (x86)\Common Files\... We'll see if that fixes the problem.

Nope, that didn't fix it so I'm reduced to doing a clean boot disabling all services and startup items that aren't Microsoft ones and seeing if the problem reoccurs, then enabling half the items and waiting again to see if it happens and so on. I'm working on narrowing it down and will let you guys know.

Not sure if that's completely your issue...

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/811428/

Thank you but I've seen that post and does not apply to my case. I've actually Googled the crap out of this issue and haven't come up with anything so I'm resorting to the clean boot method of trouble-shooting, re-enabling things slowly to see what causes it. But it's going to take awhile.

The issue can be relative to your HDDs system and settings or your network adapters/drivers (wireless is not really good). Try to investigate this way.

Thank you for the help but I already went that way. I'm on a wired connection. My hard drives, RAM, Motherboard and processor are all fine. I've tested. Having done a clean boot my system seems to be running fine. I'm going to wait till Monday to determine that it has no issues (as I said it may take a couple days for the system to suddenly lock up) but at the moment it appears to be a software, driver, or service issue. Now I just have to narrow down what's causing it.