A7N8X-E deluxe problem

  • Thread starter Thread starter Ron
  • Start date Start date
R

Ron

Hello All,

I have a very annoying problem. Every once in a while the system just
randomly "freezes" for a second or two. When it occurs everything stops
working for a moment. When I'm typing for example the typed letters won't
appear until after a few seconds all at the same time, and the mouse doesn't
respond either. It may not happen at all for half an hour and then again it
may occur a few times in a row. The temperature doesn't seem to be the cause
because that reads stable and it also occurs when nothing else happens (not
using the system) A slower CPU speed setting in BIOS didn't have any effect.
I also noticed that Windows Taskmanager shows a temporary spike (100%) in
the CPU usage indicator during the occurence.
Can someone please help me what to do about it? I'm out of ideas what to
try. Thanks in advance!

System;
Asus A7N8X-E deluxe
AMD Athlon XP 2600+
Asus V9520 Magic graphics card
512 MB RAM
Maxtor 6Y160P0 Harddisk
Windows XP pro SP2
 
Ron said:
Hello All,

I have a very annoying problem. Every once in a while the system just
randomly "freezes" for a second or two. When it occurs everything stops
working for a moment. When I'm typing for example the typed letters won't
appear until after a few seconds all at the same time, and the mouse doesn't
respond either. It may not happen at all for half an hour and then again it
may occur a few times in a row. The temperature doesn't seem to be the cause
because that reads stable and it also occurs when nothing else happens (not
using the system) A slower CPU speed setting in BIOS didn't have any effect.
I also noticed that Windows Taskmanager shows a temporary spike (100%) in
the CPU usage indicator during the occurence.
Can someone please help me what to do about it? I'm out of ideas what to
try. Thanks in advance!

System;
Asus A7N8X-E deluxe
AMD Athlon XP 2600+
Asus V9520 Magic graphics card
512 MB RAM
Maxtor 6Y160P0 Harddisk
Windows XP pro SP2
Click to expand...
Ron,
I had a similar problem once and went nuts for a week looking for the
cause. After removing all I could from my system and installing a fresh
copy of WinXP and nothing else, the problem was still there. Ended up
that the internals of an optical mouse were going bad. Just a guess,
the list can be long for that symptom. Wish you better luck than I
had! Have you installed anything lately to where you could restore to
an earlier date?
Rob
 
Thanks for the suggestions Rob and SpaceAce,
The cordless mouse and keyboard have been swapped for cord types to no
avail. There seem to be no disk errors either. I will try to find out
whether it is a software or hardware problem the coming time.
Again thanks!
 
Dear Ron!

I have to say it is not a motherboard problem. I am using the very old
computer (3.5 years old), and bought new HDD in November. And for a
week now, a have been experiencing the same problem. I have nothing
else in common to your configuration, not even Windows (I am using
Win2000), but for the HDD, which is also Maxtor 6Y160P0. So a simple
reasoning says that the problem is HDD!

So, my problems were:
*) while booting Win2000, it intensively reads HDD for a while (with a
loud sound)
*) freezing - the same as you described - was really oft
*) when Windows was starting, it asked several times for consistency
check (after normal restart!) and found a lot errors (they were of
two types: 1) Windows created directory FOUND.xxx, and there were
loads of files, 2) it converted some folders to files, so the data
was lost)
*) in Windows, I discovered that lot of files and folders were damaged
(filenames were random symbols), so the data was lost again.

And I tried out:
*) first of all, I backed-up the important data ASAP
*) I started my second operating system, Win98, and there I also
experienced one freeze, so I realised that it was not the OS fault
*) as I have 5 partitions of the HDD, I formatted the first one and
reinstalled Windows. Then I formatted all the other partitions too.
The results were not very nice: I still had first two problems
described above, though not the last two. Freezing became really rare
- it was just for 3 times yesterday, for example.
*) I downloaded Maxtor's PowerMax utility and run all the tests
possible (advanced test took an hour to complete) - they all said
it's allright.
*) I typed "Maxtor 6Y160P0 problem" and found this post of you, Ron.

Don't know what to do know, I guess I'll just have to bring the HDD
back to th store...
 
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