Looking for some help.

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Guest

Athlon 64, 2GB RAM, EGA GeForece video card, etc. Machine slowly
started refusing to respond after an hour or so during use. So,
Reinstalling XP. Install goes fine, SP2 install goes fine. Install
chipset drivers goes fine Then, as soon as I start to use the
machine, no matter what I am doing, after about 2 minutes, it
freezes. Mouse cursor moves for a little while, has no effect.
Control-alt-delete does nothing. Then mouse cursor freezes. Hard
shut down is only solution. Have installed on two different HDs--same
problem. Just happened out of the blue, so I am mystified. RAM
suddenly going bad? Any suggestions welcome. I am pulling out my
hair! Thanks!!
 
spammersdienow! said:
Athlon 64, 2GB RAM, EGA GeForece video card, etc. Machine slowly
started refusing to respond after an hour or so during use. So,
Reinstalling XP. Install goes fine, SP2 install goes fine. Install
chipset drivers goes fine Then, as soon as I start to use the
machine, no matter what I am doing, after about 2 minutes, it
freezes. Mouse cursor moves for a little while, has no effect.
Control-alt-delete does nothing. Then mouse cursor freezes. Hard
shut down is only solution. Have installed on two different HDs--same
problem. Just happened out of the blue, so I am mystified. RAM
suddenly going bad? Any suggestions welcome. I am pulling out my
hair! Thanks!!
Click to expand...

While you're working on that hair, get a copy of memtest86+
and test the RAM. That is pretty easy to do.

http://memtest.org/

Another thing that is easy to do - go into the BIOS at startup,
and bring up the hardware monitor page with temperatures and
voltages on it. Watch the values for a while, and see if anything
is out of the ordinary. CPU >65C or any PSU voltage off by 5%,
are some things to check. Make sure fans are spinning etc.

RAM, or some hardware component overheating, are some possibilities.
Check all fans are spinning, and heatsink clips are secure.

Paul
 
Thanks, Paul. I just booted to Memtest, and ran it for an hour; no
freezing, no problems. Heat does not appear to be a problem, either.
All fans are turning.

Does the "no problem" result with Memtest suggest that this is
unlikely related to RAM or (good quality) Thermaltake PS and more
likely something to do with XP?

For some reason, I am thinking of buying a Vista upgrade to see if
that solves the problem...dumb idea?

Thanks!!
 
spammersdienow! said:
Thanks, Paul. I just booted to Memtest, and ran it for an hour; no
freezing, no problems. Heat does not appear to be a problem, either.
All fans are turning.

Does the "no problem" result with Memtest suggest that this is
unlikely related to RAM or (good quality) Thermaltake PS and more
likely something to do with XP?

For some reason, I am thinking of buying a Vista upgrade to see if
that solves the problem...dumb idea?

Thanks!!
Click to expand...

arrgh :-) Vista ? You've got enough trouble as it is.

If you want a free and convenient test OS, Knoppix and
Ubuntu offer bootable Linux environments. In both cases,
the download is 700MB and is an ISO. You butn the ISO
to a CD, and the CD is your boot disk. You don't have to
install anything - just boot from the CD and you end up
in a Linux desktop. Your hard drive is visible, but you
don't have to use it or even have the OS touch it.

I prefer Knoppix to Ubuntu marginally for this, because
Knoppix dumps diagnostic text on the screen during the
boot phase. (I use Knoppix for testing overclocking
stability.) If I see error messages appearing with the
normal status messages, while hardware is being
discovered, that tells me the machine is not stable.
Similarly, applications will disappear from the desktop,
without crashing the OS, if things are not stable. I
always get a good chuckle from that. One minute your
web browser is there, the next minute it is gone.

http://www.knopper.net/knoppix-mirrors/index-en.html
http://www.ubuntu.com/getubuntu/download

Once you have a Linux distro booted, let us say it is
stable while it is idle. You're getting a bit bored now,
because nothing is happening.

Now you can download Prime95 from mersenne.org and
run the Torture Test. Fortunately, there is a Linux
version to download, and you can use that in your new
Linux desktop. There are two versions, and one is
statically linked (meaning libraries are bound in at
compile time AFAIK). Just download both and try them.

Prime95 does a math calculation with a known answer,
and it can detect errors in the calculation. If the
program stops the Torture Test with an error, it can
be because of an unstable CPU, bad RAM, or a bad
Northbridge (which in your case is part of the CPU).
Prime95 runs the CPU at 100% and heats up your CPU.

http://www.mersenne.org/freesoft.htm

If you don't want to do that (say, because you are
on dialup, and cannot download something that big),
another test you could try, is underclocking your
CPU. Either drop the multiplier or drop the CPU
clock rate. Then try your normal environment again.

It could be some driver you are using, like maybe
some update you downloaded recently, and have been
using when you tried your reinstall. Running an
alternate OS, is a good way to try a completely
different set of drivers.

Have fun,
Paul
 
Paul wrote:

When you reinstalled the OS, was that a repair install or
a clean install ? Another thing that came to mind, is maybe
virus/trojan trouble.

Paul
 
Paul wrote:

When you reinstalled the OS, was that a repair install or
a clean install ? Another thing that came to mind, is maybe
virus/trojan trouble.

Paul
Click to expand...

Thanks again Paul for the great suggestions. I think I will try the
Linux route--the only other thing I can think of is to tear this
machine apart and build it again from the ground up. I built it two
years ago and it has been very stable with XP until this week, which
of course only adds to the mystery.

The installs have been clean installs, and one was to a HD that never
had the OS before, so I suppose its not a virus.

I just installed another copy--of XP Pro--and got the same thing--
smooth install, everything normal, until it's time to start the
machine and get down to work, then--freeze! Maddening.

Thanks again.
 
I just installed another copy--of XP Pro--and got the same thing--
smooth install, everything normal, until it's time to start the
machine and get down to work, then--freeze! Maddening.

Thanks again.
Click to expand...

New drive or old drive? If the hd is old, get the manufacturer's diag
and test it. Also, pull any hardware you can live without or turn
things off on the mainboard like sound or network and see if things
work better. Could be that something has gone flaky.
 
New drive or old drive? If the hd is old, get the manufacturer's diag
and test it. Also, pull any hardware you can live without or turn
things off on the mainboard like sound or network and see if things
work better. Could be that something has gone flaky.
Click to expand...

Original poster here. The same problem continues. I have installed
XP on three different HDs, all of which were in the system for the two
years it worked fine. Two of them were in a RAID striping array,
which held the OS, and one was an extra HD, which never held the OS.
I have removed the RAID array, and have used all three to try to get
XP running, and I get the same thing--smooth install, start to use the
machine, 30 seconds, freeze. (For what it's worth, the NUMLOCK key is
live on the keyboard; and when the freeze happens, the mouse cursor
continues to move for a few more seconds, but clicking does nothing,
then the mouse cursor freezes).

I downloaded Ubuntu, burned an ISO to a CD, and ran it from the CD-ROM
drive. It worked fine, no freezing. Does this suggest that it's not
the mobo or a power problem and most likely the HD's?

Is it possible that I got some sort of virus that infected all my
HD's, and despite (XP-level) formatting, is causing the problem?

My current thoughts: buy and try a clean new HD or buy a new mobo.

Here's the system:

Gigabyte GA-K8NF-9 mobo/Athlon 64 3500 Winchester/EVGA GeForce 6800GS
video card/Mushkin 2GB DDR400 RAM/Thermaltake 480W power supply/2
Samsung and 1 Raptor HDs.

Thanks to all for the suggestions and guidance! Please keep helping
if you can!
 
Original poster here. The same problem continues. I have installed
XP on three different HDs, all of which were in the system for the two
years it worked fine. Two of them were in a RAID striping array,
which held the OS, and one was an extra HD, which never held the OS.
I have removed the RAID array, and have used all three to try to get
XP running, and I get the same thing--smooth install, start to use the
machine, 30 seconds, freeze. (For what it's worth, the NUMLOCK key is
live on the keyboard; and when the freeze happens, the mouse cursor
continues to move for a few more seconds, but clicking does nothing,
then the mouse cursor freezes).

I downloaded Ubuntu, burned an ISO to a CD, and ran it from the CD-ROM
drive. It worked fine, no freezing. Does this suggest that it's not
the mobo or a power problem and most likely the HD's?

Is it possible that I got some sort of virus that infected all my
HD's, and despite (XP-level) formatting, is causing the problem?

My current thoughts: buy and try a clean new HD or buy a new mobo.

Here's the system:

Gigabyte GA-K8NF-9 mobo/Athlon 64 3500 Winchester/EVGA GeForce 6800GS
video card/Mushkin 2GB DDR400 RAM/Thermaltake 480W power supply/2
Samsung and 1 Raptor HDs.
Click to expand...


I doubt if it is the drives. I suspect something in your mainboard,
ram or video card has gone nuts and Ubuntu just doesn't push things
hard enough to show the problem. If I were in your situation, I'd
start over and trouble-shoot the rest of the junk when I was in need
of a second machine.
 
spammersdienow! said:
Original poster here. The same problem continues. I have installed
XP on three different HDs, all of which were in the system for the two
years it worked fine. Two of them were in a RAID striping array,
which held the OS, and one was an extra HD, which never held the OS.
I have removed the RAID array, and have used all three to try to get
XP running, and I get the same thing--smooth install, start to use the
machine, 30 seconds, freeze. (For what it's worth, the NUMLOCK key is
live on the keyboard; and when the freeze happens, the mouse cursor
continues to move for a few more seconds, but clicking does nothing,
then the mouse cursor freezes).

I downloaded Ubuntu, burned an ISO to a CD, and ran it from the CD-ROM
drive. It worked fine, no freezing. Does this suggest that it's not
the mobo or a power problem and most likely the HD's?

Is it possible that I got some sort of virus that infected all my
HD's, and despite (XP-level) formatting, is causing the problem?

My current thoughts: buy and try a clean new HD or buy a new mobo.

Here's the system:

Gigabyte GA-K8NF-9 mobo/Athlon 64 3500 Winchester/EVGA GeForce 6800GS
video card/Mushkin 2GB DDR400 RAM/Thermaltake 480W power supply/2
Samsung and 1 Raptor HDs.

Thanks to all for the suggestions and guidance! Please keep helping
if you can!
Click to expand...

It is encouraging that Ubuntu doesn't demonstrate the same symptoms.

Things I'd try:

1) Under Ubuntu, go to mersenne.org and get the Linux version of Prime95.
There is a statically linked and a dynamically linked executable, and
you can try both, until you find something that works. Run the torture
test from the menu. "Blend" is fine. That will run the CPU at 100%
and exercise things a bit more. Prime95 is used as a stability test
by overclockers, and it will stop on the first error it finds. It
should be able to run for hours.

Unfortunately, doing a graphics test that uses hardware acceleration,
is not an easy thing to do in Linux. AFAIK, the default driver scheme
uses software for everything. Nvidia and ATI have binary driver packages
(closed source so not something that the distro can support politically),
and getting a game to run would also be a chore. You're on your own
there. It took me a couple of days of fiddling around, just to get
the Nvidia package loaded (I like to read the howto before doing it).

2) Under Windows, how many drivers are loaded when the system freezes up ?
Is a network driver loaded yet ? What about safe mode ? Try to figure
out what things contribute to the problem.

I don't see a reason to buy any more disk drives. If you want to hardware
test the disk drives, the disk manufacturers have diagnostics you can
download. Run those if you want to give the disks and the hardware
interfaces a workout.

In terms of power consumption, I would think that Linux might be a bit easier
on the supply (since graphics cannot really be loaded up). At the 30 second
mark in Windows, you would have some number of tray icons (startup items)
loading. The graphics driver in Windows would have initialized pretty early
when the desktop appears. Sometimes, the graphics have a "helper" that is
a startup item, and that could be loading at the 30 second mark.

Once you get Prime95 running in Ubuntu, you'll get a little bit more
load on the PSU, to test for thermal or power problems.

One test you can do against a frozen machine, is try to ping it from
another machine. To do that, you'd need to know the IP address of the
frozen machine. Easy enough to do if your router box has a restricted
set of DHCP addresses set up, or you have given the freezing machine
a static address. If the machine responds to a ping, and yet the
screen is frozen, that might suggest a graphics subsystem problem.
Looking in the Event Viewer, for an error message, might be an idea
in that case.

Paul
 
Thanks again, Paul! That's a good list of experiments to try to track
down the problem. I have put this machine aside for now, and will
start
the investigation in earnest this weekend. Thank goodness I have an
iMac to use in the meantime. I put a lot of $ into this PC for the
last
couple of years, thought I was buying high quality stuff--but
somewhere
along the line, there was a weak link. Cheers!
 
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