freezing vista when downloading any torrent

[Grokmoo]

Hi,

I am having a strange problem in that whenever I try to download a torrent using uTorrent, it will work fine for a few minutes, but then my computer will freeze. By freeze, I mean all forms of input (keyboard + mouse) are entirely unresponsive and the screen stops updating. I am running Vista 64 bit, and am not running any firewalls / anti-virus except for what is built into Vista. The freezing happens sporadically, typically 3 to 5 minutes after I start downloading a torrent.

What is interesting is that I tried using Azureus BitTyrant for a while and started having exactly the same problem! So, I know it is not specific to uTorrent, but must be some characteristic of torrent clients in general.

The only other thing that I can think of that is somewhat unique about my setup is that I am connecting to the internet wirelessly, using a Ralink T61 wireless card and a Netgear router WGR614 v7.

Thanks in advance for your help.

Jared

[Ultima]

Could be b0rked hardware, drivers, or some incompatible software. Just to be sure...

a) get HijackThis from trendsecure.com, run it, view the log, and post the contents here

get Process Explorer from sysinternals.com, run it, Ctrl+D (to show the lower DLL pane), select the µTorrent process from the list, Ctrl+S (and save the list somewhere you'll find easily -- like the Desktop), then post the contents of the saved process list in the .txt file here

Edit: http://forum.utorrent.com/viewtopic.php?pid=319416#p319416

Ralink is the problem.

[zumpiez]

In my experience, problems like that are almost always related to screwed up hardware.

[jewelisheaven]

Also read farther down with the proposed solution... Check for an update to the drivers, and if there isn't one for your chipset/model see if there's a "contact us" link ... Explain your problem, and link to the driver update they already made. The more people who report it the more likelihood they understand it's something that alot of people are having trouble with.

[Grokmoo]

Thanks Ultima and everyone else for your help. Unfortunately, Ralink has yet to release a new driver. I sent an email to them with my complaint, as you suggested. For now, I have removed the Ralink card and am using a crappy USB wireless card.

For this and other reasons, I think I am just going to switch back to XP. I am tired of dealing with this sort of nonsense.

Jared