PC freezing...

[darkwhisperer]

Hey guys...

After a few hours of usage, my pc freezes, and I have to reboot it.

First the applications stop responding, about 10 seconds later the keyboard stops responding(Num lock stays on despite me hitting the key). About 10 seconds after that, the mouse stops moving. During all this, my HDD seems to be a bit busy, blinking a few times a second. But about 5-10 seconds after that, even the HDD goes quiet. And the PC sits, idle & totally frozen.

Now Im thinking its one of two things causing this:

(1) A hardware fault.

(2) A virus, worm, etc....

My Power Supply has been troubling me for a few months now. It makes a loud whirring sound every now & then, at seemingly random times. Could this cause the system to become unstable & freeze?

Alternatively, could it be the 2nd option? Could something software related have this kind of effect? I have very limited net access on this PC, which I basically use to keep my AVG up to date.

The one thing that can predictably cause it to freeze is VirtualPC. If I've been doing anything, and start up VPC, it'll freeze within a few minutes. To use VPC, I gotta reboot, and then use it.

Any help & ideas is highly appreciated.

Edited September 12, 2006 by darkwhisperer

[Thunderbolt 2864]

Well, try formatting the computer and see if it solves the freezing problem.

If not, then its a hardware problem.

[jftuga]

How much memory do you have? Have you run a memory tester, like the one from http://www.memtest86.com/ ? I would run this over night to see if any of your chips are bad. I would also run a program that looks at the SMART stats of your hard drive. I don't know of one off the top of my head, goolgle for something like "smart hard drive".

-John

[darkwhisperer]

Only 512Mb DDR2-533. I know its less, that makes things slow, but not frozen!

Will definitely try out Memtest, and managed to find DiskCheckUp. So I"ll give those a shot.

Thanks

[cluberti]

I think that getting a complete memory dump from the machine the next time the apps start to freeze (but before the keyboard goes south) would be the best way to see if it's hardware or software. Follow these steps to enable complete memory dumps on your machine - note that this requires the use of a PS/2 keyboard, USB keyboards do not work on XP for this process:

1. Create or set the following registry value:

Key: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\i8042prt\Parameters

Value: CrashOnCtrlScroll

Type: REG_DWORD

Data: 1

Refer to the following Knowledge Base article for more information on this registry key:

244139 Windows Feature Allows a Memory.dmp File to Be Generated with Keyboard

http://support.microsoft.com/?id=244139

2. Right-Click on the "My Computer" icon on the desktop and select "Properties"; this will open the "System Properties" window. Go to the "Advanced" tab and click "Performance Options". Click "Change" under "Virtual Memory". Set the pagefile to be located on the partition where the OS is installed, and set it to be equal to Physical RAM + 50 MB.

3. Also in the "System Properties" window, click on the "Advanced" tab, then click "Startup and Recovery". Make sure "Complete Memory Dump" is selected. You can change the location of the memory dump file to a different local partition if you do not have enough room on the partition where the OS is installed.

4. You will need to reboot for these changes to take effect.

5. The next time that the machine starts exhibiting the problems, hold down the RIGHT CTRL key and press the SCROLL LOCK key twice to cause the machine to bugcheck (STOP 0xE2) and create the memory.dmp file. If this works and the machine generates a complete dump file, it's likely software and not hardware (and analysis of the memory.dmp file that was just generated should pinpoint the culprit). However, if the machine hangs while generating the dump file, we can be quite certain that hardware is at fault.

I believe it will be software, but it is possible there is bad hardware. This should give us a good idea of which to look at as the culprit.

Edited September 12, 2006 by cluberti

[Jeremy]

I'd recommend that you replace the PSU (or use a can of compressed air outside if you have a lot of dust inside the case. Go and download Ultimate Boot CD 3.4 Basic and boot to a CD, test your RAM and HD.

Also, you may just have a totally bloated harddrive with lots of garbage lying around. How many programs do you have installed?

[LLXX]

My Power Supply has been troubling me for a few months now. It makes a loud whirring sound every now & then, at seemingly random times.

Likely to be overheating.

[darkwhisperer]

@cluberti: I'll give it a shot.

@Jeremy: I dont think its bloat. I keep a clean system, always defragged.

@LLXX: Lets hope you're wrong.

@jftuga: I got a SMART monitor app. It didnt find anything drastically wrong with my HDD, but it seems to have helped, bcos my PC hasnt rebooted since I put it on.

Thanks for all your help:)