Computer freezes when 'working'

[mostdope]

Hey lads.

My computer which is roughly a year old now has completely gone to crap. When ever I'm playing a game or doing multiple things like, Skype, Chrome, Steam chat and perhaps Reason (Music program) Everything will suddenly stop working, perhaps the steam chat will be available but if I move the chat box, it'll freeze as well.

In games, specifically Dota 2 and Starcraft I end up freezing, and when this started, it would freeze for roughly 30 seconds to 2 minutes and then I'd timeout, reconnect and it would be fine.

Now when playing Dota 2, when connecting and then picking heroes, as soon as I choose a hero, it will freeze and it won't unfreeze until I either timeout or it will randomly unfreeze (Which is perhaps 1 out of 15 games). And usually when it unfreezes, sound will be extremely delayed. Your hero's 'dialogues' will be delayed by 30-45 seconds. Only thing that is in 'sync' is the ambient sounds, of the wind, water and such.

In Starcraft 2 when joining a lobby, it will freeze on 'Downloading' and then it may take up to 3 minutes before it fixes itself or I'll have to force restart my computer.

And when I say the game freeze, I don't only mean that. I mean literally everything besides the Task Manager.

My specs:
Processor: Intel(R) Core(TM) i7-3820 CPU @ 3.60GHz
Memory: (RAM) 16,0 GB
Graphics: NVIDIA GeForce GTX 660
Gaming graphics 10982 MB Total available graphics memory
Primary hard disk 604GB Free (1863GB Total)
OS: Windows 7 64-bit.

 

[Karsten75]

In task manager, is anything increasing it's CPU or I/O counts? My hunch is htat you have a network issue, but I've no idea what or how to fix it, but every action you mention involves networking.

 

[mostdope]

CPU usage is between 0% to 1%, so throughout a minute, it'll pop up to 1% for 5 seconds or so and then down at 0.

 

[Karsten75]

you did run a hard drive health check such as Crystal Disk? Otherwise I'm still thinking "network" ...

 

[mostdope]

Nah, I haven't. But it could be the harddrive. A few months ago, it went down with failing to boot up the computer and it would come with 'failing to boot, check CD drive' or something like that, but it went away after a few weeks. I've suspected it being the hard drive but the delay of audio and the ability to run singleplayer games without lag or freezes makes me deny the suspicion.

 

[Karsten75]

Well. D/l and run Crystal Disk Info.

 

[mostdope]

Frankly I don't know what I'm supposed to look at in the Crystal Disk.

It says the Hard Drive's health is 'Good' and Temperature is stable at 39 degrees Celsius.

But is there other signs in the program I should look at ?

 

[mostdope]

After I force-restarted my computer, I got an 'Insert Boot Media' error and couldn't start it up. I dragged the power and SATA wire out of the hard drive, replugged them and pulled the hard drive out of the spot in the cabinet. After that, I've got no issues at all. I have no idea how this fixed anything but I'm gonna assume one of the wires are quite poor.