Bitcoin-qt not syncing

[Jenneke]

I installed the latest version of Bitcoin-qt a few days ago and I've been letting it synchronize but it's been freezing occasionally. The program has frozen a couple times and it's stopped syncing as well. It's stopped at places like 127 weeks, 57 weeks, 49 weeks, 27 weeks, and the latest is 10 weeks. When Bitcoin is syncing it's obvious, it consumes  up to 90% of my CPU and 1-3 MB/s of bandwidth. I've tried deleting the block chain and everything except wallet.dat and bitcoin.conf in the data folder, restarting the program, restarting my modem and pc. What' I'm trying to figure out is, is it frozen, the block chain corrupted, or just been sitting there on one block for 14 hours?

Info:
OS: Win 7 64-bit
Bitcoin version: 0.8.5 beta
Current number of blocks: 260931
Estimated total blocks: 273052

Here's the latest few lines in the debug log:

Added 2 addresses from *snip*: 162 tried, 14777 new
Added 1 addresses from *snip*: 162 tried, 14777 new
Added 1 addresses from *snip*: 162 tried, 14777 new
stored orphan tx 61de559e0df05b179b5d2370c3635d3e7090119dc6458151df3f5ab041204ce8 (mapsz 6009)
stored orphan tx e5a347bf6d63b7fdff43f85f674f2245dbe7d9d08800fa8e830f98fb2fcb114e (mapsz 6010)
stored orphan tx f07272c61d4a3406844884f0d6a792899e477e413f008751f52c5f045251d1e1 (mapsz 6011)
stored orphan tx 7866f764c4e0b58e43d745fa89574d7c0077cedbe91db121332cd1c9921ff52a (mapsz 6012)
Added 1 addresses from *snip*: 162 tried, 14777 new
stored orphan tx 5980086d86a4fc907d78d670f5259efc0f0e273e9b1a86f22e79982f17da1d42 (mapsz 6013)
stored orphan tx 34bfe5a2fe2b9f40c16f0ee19242531f167f69fecb73f2bebb2943a6a37cac30 (mapsz 6014)
stored orphan tx 7c2111b9e844661f115c74fc8e77e8c92233c2647d93134f5f4d7f4144923c25 (mapsz 6015)
stored orphan tx b09b3eb7c3252f7f494bc646140a9e6d57c08acde8757a186c02c22ed81134c1 (mapsz 6016)
Added 1 addresses from *snip*: 162 tried, 14777 new
stored orphan tx d658c02ef13dc252302a1a858acbd36498960e4044076af064793fb11a686285 (mapsz 6017)
stored orphan tx 4577618b5933156ff9bf1fd37badb0d175bf148138c86dfc528398c2efcbbc28 (mapsz 6018)

Back up at the beginning there's a bunch of this:

 mapOrphan overflow, removed 1 tx
stored orphan tx a3a3c1f0038015c1f16596cfbf639d38226f9e94b26885b54f2bf8a255587cf3 (mapsz 10001)
mapOrphan overflow, removed 1 tx
stored orphan tx d1b9b96382f060f791a3bbf2e9f8670415b95c4ab13e3a732e71d47767ef237c (mapsz 10001)
mapOrphan overflow, removed 1 tx
stored orphan tx fc7218ce6de0cf00b8e08527cf30955bdc8b5b0c7fc9520dafecf82388159337 (mapsz 10001)
mapOrphan overflow, removed 1 tx
Added 1 addresses from 198.27.97.168: 50 tried, 15163 new
stored orphan tx f1f928793b4530bc7116b4a326e52f3da36cdedce2fcc65e9ac6dc2028c0d376 (mapsz 10001)
mapOrphan overflow, removed 1 tx
stored orphan tx 0b893c241fbb4b96117b5cf143e3b72902f85b742d79885ea5a10bbeb3bb2c9b (mapsz 10001)
mapOrphan overflow, removed 1 tx
stored orphan tx 36304da59d529705d04487c3527dcb931581555df4c390d510ad5d1ac6e8a179 (mapsz 10001)
mapOrphan overflow, removed 1 tx
stored orphan tx da0d3eba7af51f7dda5650e747f5eb2553df2989bf359704173bdf9c92f83180 (mapsz 10001)
mapOrphan overflow, removed 1 tx
stored orphan tx bf07e9a5d3b5056417f5c2b172a43dbbdcdbf272d7a9bda0424feb61e1381c22 (mapsz 10001)
mapOrphan overflow, removed 1 tx

[Ecurb123]

Why not just use electrum or something like that? Much easier.

[Jenneke]

Mostly habit, I used to GPU pool mine a year or two ago and Bitcoin was the only client available (and reputable) at the time.

[ScripterRon]

One suggestion is to delete the blockchain data on your system and then download the blockchain yourself.  The best method is through a torrent (if you have the software installed).  Otherwise, you can download the 9GB bootstrap.dat file from a web server.  In either case, you place the bootstrap.dat file in the bitcoin data directory and start Bitcoin-Qt.  It will read bootstrap.dat and create the chainstate and blocks directories.  When it is done, it will synchronize with the network to get the latest blocks.  This still takes time but it is faster than trying to download the blockchain from peers.

Another suggestion is to delete peers.dat in the bitcoin data directory and then restart Bitcoin-Qt to rediscover peers.

More information here: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=145386.0