Intel X25-M G1 80GB SSD hangs/freezes in Windows 7

[idata]

About a week ago, I bought Intel X25-M SSDSA2MH080G1 80GB SATA II MLC from NewEgg.com.

I plugged in the new SSD as my main (OS) drive (all my specs are in my sig.) and started installing Windows 7. During install I split the drive into 2 partitions: 20GB for win7 & the rest. On the first attempt win7 install froze at "completing installation" stage, iirc. As it was only my 2nd attempt to install windows 7, and first attempt to install it on the desktop pc, I waited for it to "unfreeze" or continue for ~30 min. Finally I gave up and had to push the reset button. I did my first windows 7 install that very same day on my Acer AO751h netbook and it went smoothly and pretty **** fast (and is still working perfectly).

On the second attempt I was able to install windows 7 successfully. I deleted partitions during second install and recreated/formatted only 1 partition 20GB for win7. The 2nd partition I created/formatted already in windows 7. Just after installation, on my first log in to windows 7, I installed Acronis True Image Home 2009 and tried to create an image of my fresh win7 OS partition. That is something I always do, I like having last fresh windows install image for quick "fresh restore", especially in this case, as I knew there are numerous tweaks to be made, to optimize SSD drive usage. Creating the image failed, as True Image software froze and shortly after-wards windows completely froze as well. At that point I had 5 Seagate 1.5TB (ST31500341AS) drives connected to my pc. Knowing the story behind those drives and from my own experience (from the 17 Seagate 1,5TB drives I had, 2 developed freezing/hanging problems), I obviously suspected the problem was one of them. I disconnected all drives, but Intel's SSD and tried to make partition image again. I probably tried 5-6 times and all attempts failed. By now I wasn't sure, maybe True Image was not working properly on windows 7, so I gave up on making image. I used windows 7 for a couple of days, applied tweaks for SSD, like moving paging file, temp files, disabling system restore, hibernation, indexing, superfetch, defrag, firefox memory cache, etc. Windows 7 was flying, I was ecstatic seeing the performance of windows. Though time from time, windows would just freeze up and nothing helped, but the reset button.

I started googling for solutions. All I could find, that maybe Intel SSDs have trouble with nForce chipsets (ironically, neweeg product review that was posted just yesterday put me on this track).

The questions I would like to ask:

What software should I use to diagnose this SSD? I could not find any tools on Intels site, and googling for SSD diagnostic tools gave me nothing.

Is the incompatibility of nForce chipset an Intel SSD the main and only reason for these hangs and freezes? Does the new G2 drives have this problem as well? If it is, I need to think about returning this drive.

Any other ideas/solutions?

I'd be very disappointed to return it, after experiencing the performance boost it delivered, when it was working

Thanks in advance.

[idata]

Hey ashvince,

Thnx for the quick reply.

In the meanwhile, I have (again) reinstalled windows 7 and for the last day and a half everything is running smoothly without crashes or hangs (fingers crossed that it stays this way...)

Here is what I did exactely to get it to work:

First off all, I got to say that I think it was a defective memory slot wich caused my problems, I have installed all but the one that seems to be faulty so it could have just been that.

Having said this, I will still explain how I installed, maybe it can help other people, you never know.

First of all, I used the intel toolbox and performed a secure erase on the ssd.

Then I partitioned it with an xp setup cd because I read somewhere that the 100Mb system partition that is created by windows 7 could cause problems. I just read this, I don't know if it's true.

I removed the ram from the slots that I thought were faulty and also removed my creative soundblaster audio pci card because I have had problems with that one in the past too. Damn creative, has given me nothing but headaches but that's a complete other story

Then I reinstalled windows 7 with IDE settings in the bios, I know, ahci or raid are apparently faster but since I have had problems with ahci too, I didn't want to risk it.

After the install, all worked fine, I installed nvidia drivers with windows update and started installing progs and tools.

I hope this can be of some help too someone. I know it drove me crazy having to work on a system that crashed all the time.

Regards