System keeps freezing

[WilBro]

Gentlemen/ladies I am having a serious problem where my systems just keeps freezing randomly meaning I do not necessarlily have to be running a certain program or application for it to freeze. It has been happening a good while now but I just keep on ignoring it,, sometimes it says it is a problem with the Nvidia driver most times it doesn't. I have in a brand new graphics (courtesy of maxfactor that I got about 3 weeks ago) and the lastest drivers are installed.
Yesterday I formatted my hd and re-installed Xp as the system has been basically moving sluggish and since then it has been freezing more frequently I'm talking like 3 times in half an hour it's a wonder I managed to type all this without it freezing. What could possibley be the problem.

~~~WILBRO IS FRUSTRATED~~~

[icuucme]

Open the case and make sure all the parts and cables are in securely..RAM etc

[deakie]

try getting your latest drivers for your chipset....this may also be a problem.
did the freezing occur before the graphic card install?

[WilBro]

Open the case and make sure all the parts and cables are in securely..RAM etc

Tried all of that already


this may also be a problem.
did the freezing occur before the graphic card install?
it used to freeze when I had the old card so I thought it was the problem but after got the new card it still continued but not as often as it is now since yesterday.

[Gillion]

You can try new RAM if the freezing is at REGULAR points.

[Gillion]

If your powersupply is small (e.g 300Watts) or in abad shape (damage by JPS) that can also cause freezing and not to forget.... if your CPU is running too hot (intel/amd) that can cause problems.

[WilBro]

You can try new RAM if the freezing is at REGULAR points.
Oh yeah I had also upgraded my memory about a week after changing the video card

[Gillion]

Oh yeah I had also upgraded my memory about a week after changing the video card

Try testing with different memory from friends or removing the "new memory" and replacing it with the old.

Suppose your memory clock frequencies are set bad... you would have to readjust that in BIOS (let the bios handel it automatically)

or you might just need to take it back and get a new stick of ram

[lorettagbr]

that sounds like over heating have you tried a bigger fan on the cpu or checked if it is spinning slow i had that problem more than once over the years and it has always boiled down to the processor being overheated ie the fan not seated properly take a look at your fan on the processor

[WilBro]

If your powersupply is small (e.g 300Watts) or in abad shape (damage by JPS) that can also cause freezing and not to forget.... if your CPU is running too hot (intel/amd) that can cause problems.
I have a 350w power supply,, how would I know if it's damaged, not sure of my actual temp but I think it's running cool enough.


Try testing with different memory from friends or removing the "new memory" and replacing it with the old.

Suppose your memory clock frequencies are set bad... you would have to readjust that in BIOS (let the bios handel it automatically)

or you might just need to take it back and get a new stick of ram
Tru but remember I have been having the problem B4 I changed the memory, the BIOS is handling it automatically

[lorettagbr]

like i said my youth look at your fan i will bet you a pound to pinch of sh**** its most likely be your fan on the processor worst if its an amd processor they tend to run extreamly hot thats why i never use amd they are known 4 that also it will damadge the mother board the teltale sign for that is to look on those capacitor on the motherboard and c if the heads on them have swollen or begening to if they are start looking for a new mother board or get the soldering iron out an start changing them capacitors

[Gillion]

Slow down first... try the CPU and RAM angle.

If you can touch your cpu for more than 10 seconds when the system is running then its ok.

if you swap out the ram and the system still crashes then its further down the line

which reminds me... a bad or dying hard drive will also cause a system to freeze up especially if the bad areas of the drive reside where windows will try to create certain runtime files.

anywhoo... eleiminate the ram and cpu angle first.

To know if you PSU is bad... you need a Digital Voltmeter (long and drawn out process)

Just try one of your friends.

350 Watts seem enough... but just barely.

[lorettagbr]

oh yeah i forgot about the bad hdd well spotted but how is he going to feel the processor with the fan on and i would not run my pc with the fan off 4 even a second i had a bad experience with that:lol,cost me a p4 when they first came out as u imagine i was not very pleased hehe but tha hdd tingy is defetnaly a possibality but i will stick with tha fan pon tha processor as for the power supply i would not give much attention on that untill i try the cup fan and the hdd

[deakie]

but how is he going to feel the processor with the fan on

he meant the heatsink......

[lorettagbr]

i do belive that the fan covers tha heat sink well it does on my computer any way just had a look to make sure and it does

[zRo ToLeRaNcE]

Just buy a Power Supply for $1000 (u can get 400 watt for that) and then change it. I bet my last dollar is that. That price is for a generic power supply.

This can kill everything in your system so i suggest changing it first. When a PSU go bad, it can lick out all Drives (HD/Optical), Mobo (even the keyboard/mouse). I have 1 system at my house where the PSU killed the mobo, hd, 2 optical drives, floppy, and keyboard. Just hte memory and processor were spared.

CHANGE THE PSU.

[WilBro]

UPDATE: it's now 12:20am and I think the system has been running a full 1 1/2 hours now without freezing or restarting, what I have done is use the MSI utilty tool and
1: Flashed the BIOS (felt scared doing that as it is a first for me)
& 2:Updated the VIA Chipset Drivers,Lan Drivers & SATA RAID Drivers.

I also went HERE (http://www.msi.com.tw/program/support/driver/dvr/spt_dvr_list.php?part=2&kind=8&CHIP=1&COM=&Page=1&num=0) and downloaded that driver but not too sure if I should install it,, what do you guys think? I have the NVIDIA GeForce4 Ti 4200 with AGP8X card.

[deakie]

good move....my bet is the chipset drivers.....

but see how it goes tomorrow....

[BlaqMale]

i haven't been paying attention to this thread but i could have saved you some time by telling you to upgrade bios and software. Anywho is it an msi videocard that you have, if so then download the 76.45 drivers, what does msi lvi monitor tell you is the latest driver for your card?

[lorettagbr]

well you have listned to all the suggestion that were made and came to your owne conclusion,i am glad that u have it sorted out,i know how frustrating it can be when your pc is messing you about,

[Gillion]

Drivers.... wow... windows or you.

[WilBro]

BAD NEWS
still freezing, I think firefox (v1.0.5) one of it's extensions may be also one of the problems,, so i uninstalled all and watching the progress.
there was also a problem earlier where as the system would just suddenly stopped detecting the Speedtouch modem,, happened about 3 times this morning, it hasn't happened since. bwoy oh bwoy problems :eusa_wall problems :eusa_wall problems :eusa_wall.
gonna take a break, now as I have not seen outside all day :icon_cry:

[lorettagbr]

i dont know if this will help but try timing the pc and see how long it takes before it start to crash if it takes longer to crash after booting up from cold,and then crashes more frequently the longer it stays on mening the hotter it gets then its more likely to be the fan on the cpu,but if there is no real pattern to its behaivour then look elsewhere like removing some of the latest software you have recently installed,making a note of the behaivour of the pc each time you remove a software,that normaly works for me thats if the offending software dont leave some nasty dll behind.good luck

[WilBro]

i dont know if this will help but try timing the pc and see how long it takes before it start to crash if it takes longer to crash after booting up from cold,and then crashes more frequently the longer it stays on mening the hotter it gets then its more likely to be the fan on the cpu,but if there is no real pattern to its behaivour then look elsewhere like removing some of the latest software you have recently installed,making a note of the behaivour of the pc each time you remove a software,that normaly works for me thats if the offending software dont leave some nasty dll behind.good luck
no there is no real pattern for it to crash,, sometimes it runns for ahour or 2 and sometime seconds,, bear in mind that I formatted the hd on sunday evening so so right now I have limited software installed.

[icuucme]

This is a very strange problem..lol
I would do some serious borrowing and exchanging parts and putting in other systems until I find what is giving the prob. It seriously sound like a hardware prob to me. First try the HD in another system and see if u have the same probs

[WilBro]

well definately not a firefox problem,, I made my last post at 4:11pm and it froze at 4:18pm, at that time I was opening IE to search Google,

@ icuucme yeah I definately think so too, my first bet is the HD (is long time a waan get rid of it) althou when I checked it it did not report any bad sectors or anything like that

[deakie]

does it mainly freeze when you open programs?
what about when you are using it to do stuff?

have you run a memory test as yet?
i think there is a proggy called memtest to do the job.

[WilBro]

does it mainly freeze when you open programs?
what about when you are using it to do stuff?

have you run a memory test as yet?
i think there is a proggy called memtest to do the job.
IT just randomly freezes,, sometimes even a few seconds after startup.
tell me something memtest how long does it usually run for, cause I tried it last night and it was still running after 2 1/2 hours

When I get home later i'm going to try a next hard drive in it and see how it runs

[ramesh]

There is a Progress indicator in Percent. Depending on how much memory and other factors it should run for quite a few hours.

[zRo ToLeRaNcE]

POWER SUPPLY....POWER SUPPLY...POWER SUPPLY!!!

Find an old ATX Power Supply and use it for a while and see what happens.
An incorrect voltage going to your motherboard is one thing that people take for granted. This causes everything that youd described to me. As i said before...POWER SUPPLY.

[chlidish]You try everybody else solution and you don't try mine... ;( Not Fair! [/childish]

[WilBro]

POWER SUPPLY....POWER SUPPLY...POWER SUPPLY!!!

Find an old ATX Power Supply and use it for a while and see what happens.
An incorrect voltage going to your motherboard is one thing that people take for granted. This causes everything that youd described to me. As i said before...POWER SUPPLY.

[chlidish]You try everybody else solution and you don't try mine... ;( Not Fair! [/childish]
ok Mr Tolerance, your suggestion is duly noted and IS taken into consideration, that will be the first thing I try when I get home( that is if I can find one)

[zRo ToLeRaNcE]

yaaaaAAAA!! :)

<slapped in the back of the head by mother telling him that the computer going to give him cancer>

;(

[icuucme]

Any update? It start working now?
Next time it freeze, check to make sure the HD cable plug in properly and dont slip out. Today i was moving my case while the computer was on and then the pc completely froze..nutten was responding, i check the HD IDE cable and realise it slipped out a little, So look at that next time....but then again when u reboot you would get no boot disk error :eusa_thin , oh so it might not be that, still look tho :)

[WilBro]

ok here it goes,, i'm just getting a chance to look on the system this evening so I went back and check out my hard drive and I noticed 2 things
1) one of the pins (power) was slightly damaged which was causeing the power cable not to be inserted properly
and 2) a pin for the ide cable was pushed in about half way!!,, I managed to take a pliers and pull it out...
ok, it's boot up time and everything is going well until I get to the blue welcome screen and for some reason it took about a good 20 minutes to pass that stage.... it's up and running now so i'm watching the progress

[deakie]

that was in fact icuucme first advice posted to you...... :p :icon_mrgr

[WilBro]

that was in fact icuucme first advice posted to you...... :p :icon_mrgr
yeah I know and i did that initially and it seemed ok at the time,, but for allits worth those are still not the problem,, I booted up at 10:56pm last night and it foze again at 12:02am, restarted and it froze again after about 20 minutes,, so it's back to the drawing board.

[icuucme]

Try another HD in it

[WilBro]

Try another HD in it

If only I had a spare hard drive and psu

[deakie]

ok, lets take this stage at a time with what you have....
can you please disconnect your cdrom by taking out the ide cable and the power cord.....
now try the system and see how long it lasts now....

[WilBro]

ok, lets take this stage at a time with what you have....
can you please disconnect your cdrom by taking out the ide cable and the power cord.....
now try the system and see how long it lasts now....

dvd rom & dvd burner unplugged... system system fully booted @ 5:13pm.....time now 6:40pm.... no crashes so far.........FROZE @7:25pm :eusa_wall :eusa_wall

[icuucme]

Try a new hard drive, try a new hard drive
Try a new hard drive, try a new hard drive....lol :)

or even try your HD in another system

[lorettagbr]

Still havent tried checking the fan yet or have you?

[WilBro]

Try a new hard drive, try a new hard drive
Try a new hard drive, try a new hard drive....lol :)

or even try your HD in another system

no other hard drive no other hard drive no other hard drive

Still havent tried checking the fan yet or have you?
Yes I have checked the fans,, all seem to be in contact and cooling seems quite sufficient.

ARE ANY OF YOU GUYS CLOSE TO LIGUANEA?, MAYBE YOU CAN HELP ME OUT BY SWITCHING SOME HARD DRIVES AND PSU's

[DPierre]

ARE ANY OF YOU GUYS CLOSE TO LIGUANEA?, MAYBE YOU CAN HELP ME OUT BY SWITCHING SOME HARD DRIVES AND PSU's

Hey i am close to Liguanea and may be able to source a working 2-10gig drive. Just hit me back and i ask one of my boys. Infact i have a little space to plug in that sucker and test it. My brethen even had one of those diagnostic tools he paid US$400 for to tell you what wrong with your computer but he lost it :( . No problems though, just hit me back and we can set it up.

[WilBro]

Hey i am close to Liguanea and may be able to source a working 2-10gig drive. Just hit me back and i ask one of my boys. Infact i have a little space to plug in that sucker and test it. My brethen even had one of those diagnostic tools he paid US$400 for to tell you what wrong with your computer but he lost it :( . No problems though, just hit me back and we can set it up.
Oh cool,, I will be working Saturday morning 7am-3pm after that I am free till about 1pm on Monday, so just let me know what time is good for you... how the hell could your brethren loose a tool like that? DAMN

[DPierre]

Well he is a moron. Anyway i am free all weekend, no problem. Just link me and i tell me when you ready. You going to need my number, 1-876-327-4391. Cool just link me.....

[deakie]

nice one pierre....hope things work out for you wilbro....

[Teddy]

All those suggestions you have received I have them done on my first computer that was having the same freezing problem. One action solve the problem; Replace the entire machine.

[zRo ToLeRaNcE]

All those suggestions you have received I have them done on my first computer that was having the same freezing problem. One action solve the problem; Replace the entire machine.

You just SALT!!!. :eusa_doh:

But thats a really funny post. :icon_lol:

ROFL :icon_lol: