Computer freezing a lot :: What are typical causes?

[Quad]

i just put my 2 40gb hdd's in raid 0 last night, and did a fresh install of win2k. previously when i didn't have raid my system was rock solid. now it freezes a few times per day when just do anything light (ie. using internet explorer, winamp...anything). i have sp2 installed, via4in1's (v4.36), amd agp patch, all installed.

i have a tbird 1 ghz on my asus a7v133.

what are some typical causes of system freeze that i could look into?

thx in advance

 

[minendo]

What kind of temps are you getting on your CPU? There is a good chance that the cooling in your system may not be adequate and the CPU is getting too hot causing your lockups. Well, just a guess.

 

[ZzB]

Possibly a PSU prob - often a cause of lockups etc... You should be fine with 300w but more is always nice.

 

[Vegito]

Right, as mentioned... what was your previous VIA 4-in-1 driver version ? Did you change to a newer version ? I would look at some of the basic and if you have time, do a few test install ie, just bare w2k w/o the via and see how it runs with general windows app like ie and stuff and slowly add additional drivers and stuff

 

[Quad]

thx for the replies

i believe i had version 4.35 installed before, and now i installed v4.36

just this morning i installed 4.35 over top of 4.36
when i go home i'll see if its more stable.

i think my power supply is good quality. it's a powerman 300w.....before i formatted everything was fine, so i doubt that the psu is crapping out on me.

i have an alpha pal6035, with more than sufficient case cooling...
my idle temps are 45c, and again, temps never caused lock ups before the format

any other typical causes?

tia

 

[cuteybunny]

via bus master driver seem to be causing random lockup, it seem to be faster but not really when you have the native windows via driver with dma enabled.

 

[911paramedic]

If you are using win2k go into admin and check your error logs there should be some good information there as to what happened. If not, since this is the first time this is happening, I might think about your raid controller. Is that the only thing that changed before the problem started?

 

[Quad]

^bump^

if my raid controller could be causing these lockups....what could i do about it?

 

[cleverhandle]

What about IRQ conflicts? I got lockups (more frequent than yours, but not constant) from a conflict between my RAID controller and SBLive on WinXP.

 

[Quad]

well as usual, windows shows that everything is sharing irq 9, including my sblive and raid controller.
however, i have the sblive in pci slot3, which apparently does not share an irq with anything.

i tried uninstalling the via bus master driver....but i still get lockups. these lockups don't occur on their own (ie. if i leave the computer and come back several hours later.....it will be fine). it usually happens when i'm moving the mouse around etc

my mouseman was connected via usb...just now i changed it to ps/2 to see if that would help.

anyone have any ideas? thx in advance

 

[Burnt]

My laptop's been freezing like a crazy because I just found out that I've been using the wrong heatsink with it. I can surf the net and all, but if I try to do anything that utilizes the cpu more, it will lock up.

 

[Richard98]

Have you updated the Promise drivers? I don't use Raid with my a7v133, but as I remember Raid Hard drives are connected to the Promise controller. As I understand (could be wrong), the via drivers are used only for the standard ide controller.

You may also try flashing the bios on the A7v133.

 

[Quad]

i believe i have the latest promise raid drivers. i got them from the european asus ftp (ftp.asus.de i think). i have the latest bios, 1008 01beta

 

[cleverhandle]

It's not clear to me from your post whether the SBLive is still sharing IRQ 9 with the RAID controller. If they are, get the sound card off of IRQ 9 - I guarantee that's your problem (since it sounds exactly like mine). Try putting the SBLive in the lowest possible PCI slot (furthest from the AGP slot). The second lowest also works for me.

 

[Quad]

clever, windows reports that its sharing irq9......but it also reports that 10 other devices are also sharing this irq. i read in anandtech faq's that this is normal, because windows sets up virtual irq's (ie. it's possible that the raid controller and sblive aren't really sharing irq's)

when i go home i'll read my manual to see which slots are sharing, and also change up my pci slot. now that i think about it, everytime the system would freeze, my soundcard would be in use. last time it happened i was playing q3, time before that i think i had winamp open with an mp3 paused

any other ideas while i try this out?

thx in advance

 

[cleverhandle]

It's "normal" in the sense that Windows 2000/XP does intentionally share IRQ's through ACPI. Unfortunately, it doesn't work too well with certain devices, RAID controllers in particular. Like I said, I'm near positive that's your problem. What else is on IRQ 9 BTW? It would probably be best if only the Promise was assigned to 9, but that might not be possible. From what I read, sound cards are the worst offenders in this category, however. Stuff like a USB controller shouldn't be a problem.

 

[Quad]

clever

Resource Device
IRQ 9 Microsoft ACPI-Compliant System
IRQ 9 Radeon DDR
IRQ 9 VIA USB Universal Host Controller
IRQ 9 VIA USB Universal Host Controller
IRQ 9 D-Link DFE-530TX PCI Fast Ethernet Adapter (Rev A)
IRQ 9 D-Link DE-528 Ethernet PCI Adapter
IRQ 9 PCI Serial Port
IRQ 9 Win2000 Promise FastTrak100 (tm) Lite Controller

those are all the other devices on irq9, BESIDES the sblive
going to change the card to another slot tonite and see what happens

 

[HereThereandEverywhere]

Heat & IRQ, the two banes of my computer existence!

 

[cleverhandle]

Wow! That's a lot of crap on one IRQ, virtual or not. I'm still thinking that moving the sound card should be enough, though. But if there are still problems, there are also some BIOS options that may help. If there's one or more serial ports you don't use, they can be disabled in the BIOS - sometimes this frees up an IRQ for Windows to use for USB or a network card. There's also an option to toggle BIOS IRQ assignment for the USB on or off. Trying the other setting may help. There was a nice page somewhere that someone had written about SBLive IRQ 9 conflict in Win2k - I'll try to dig it up if moving the sound card doesn't help.

 

[Bovinicus]

Heat, IRQ, and PSU problems are the main cause for locups. You could also suffer from memory problems. Sometimes the lack of memory can cause system freezing. This is because the use of the page file make a system far more unstable than purely using system memory. However, this uses causes GPF's as opposed to lockups.

 

[AndyHui]

cleverhandle: FAQ: Why are all my devices using one IRQ in Win2K/WinXP?

 

[Quad]

before i try to move my sblive, i'm trying this PCI Latency Patch, found here

apparently, it fixes some of the problems that occur with via chipsets, such as sblive conflicts, freezing when copying from ide devices etc.