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Computer hard locking randomly

M

MulLa

Golden Member
Hi all,

I have this computer that would just lock up at random intervals. It could be doing Excel, Word, Surfing and it would just freeze on the screen. Ctrl-Alt-Del won't do anything and no keyboard / mouse input would be accepted. I have to press reset to restart the machine.

Once there was an actual BSOD with corrupted text. I could make out an IRQL_NOT_LESS_OR_EQUAL error.

I ran memtest-x86 and it detected no errors. Prime 95 for an hour and no errors.

It's a: P3-800, 256MB, ASUS CUSI-FX with no OC.

Could it be a problem with the built in graphics? I checked and it's the latest version of drivers. Should I try to loop 3DMark2001 on it and see what happens? Since I would believe memtest + prime95 would pretty much eliminate RAM, CPU, Motherboard problem.

PSU looks fine
+12V 12.352
+5V 5.08
+3.3V 3.328
Vcore 1.68

Or am I barking up the wrong tree here and it's a software related problem? Running Windows 2k SP4

Thanks a million in advance!
 
Bump

I've looped 3D Mark overnight and it hard locked as well while running the program.

Could it be a graphics card problem?
 
Sorry, but my only advice with hardware that old, is build a new system. You can use a lot of your parts, and do it for a few hundred (200-300)
 
Markfw900: I'd love to do that too if this was a home computer. It's a work PC and there's a fair bit of accounting software on there that would be a PITA to reload / reconfig back to their original settings.

Maybe I'll just break the news to him and get him a new PC.
 
It could easily be a software problem. Unfortunately, without spending countless hours trying various settings the only way to know for sure is to format or put another HDD in that computer (Either with existing software or if you install an OS on it) and see if it works okay.

If it's a graphics card problem (Which I doubt if you are experience hardlocks in 2D applications), then just try inserting some crappy video card to test it out. There isn't much other way.
 
Bovinicus: The different HDD idea sounds good. I could reload the OS and test 3D Mark 2001 again and see if it would lock up again. It is a crappy SIS 630/730 on board graphics that we are using here so it could be possiable that it locks up in 2D apps? I was suspecting graphics memory but memtest-x86 didn't pick up any errors. Could it be that the on board graphics has reserved those memory and therefore memtest wasn't able to get in and test them? I should perhapse put a crappy video card in there and retest first.
 
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