Is there any software that can prevent or repair crashing PC's

[Arkitech]

I'm runnin a Win98 system, Athlon 700, 256mb, Creative Labs Geforce 2 Video card, SB Live card. The problem I'm having is that my system is constantly locking up. It does'nt matter if I'm playing a game, browsing the web, installing a program or even runnin defrag. It does'nt seem to make a difference how long I've had the computer on either, sometimes it will crash before I get to the desktop at other times it will crash after 2 hours.

When it crashes I can't do anything, I can't move the mouse, crtl alt del wont work, nor can I turn on or off the cap and num locks. I've tried unloading my drivers and that did'nt work, I've scanned my system for viruses, I even downloaded the trial version of Norton Utilities and I could'nt fix the problem with that program either.


does anyone know of software that can log what happens before a machine crashes? Or maybe a program that will send out a warning if the system becomes unstable?


thanks, i'd appreciate any suggestions

 

[virusag13]

That could also be a hardware problem. I know my system did it all last summer and it was because either my video card was getting to hot, or my cpu was getting to hot. Either way they both got a new hsf and never had the problem again.

When did the problem start? Install anything new on it right when it started happening? Did you change the environment the computer was in? Anything correlate to the problem at all?

 

[Arkitech]

My hard drive died a week ago, I had to reload my OS on a new drive. Unfortunately even with a basically clean system I still get problems.

 

[BA]

if you're crashing a clean system, it's probably hardware. Even Windoze isn't THAT bad.

 

[Arkitech]

I was hoping that was'nt the case. Is there a way to check the integrity of hardware devices?

 

[virusag13]

You can test each piece by putting them in the system one at a time and waiting for it to crash. Or you can also try putting your pci cards into different slots and disabling the com ports if you are not using them to free up an irq or 2. You may have a resource conflict, like sound vs video.

 

[SerraYX]

If you're running a KT133/KT133A Abit motherboard, it may be having problems with the SBLive or the GTS. They are the most likely causes.

 

[Gunbuster]

Those crash stopper programs are BS. the best they do is pretend to act like the NT/2K task manager.

If you have a crash find the problem.

Power supply size? (if athlon)

CPU hot?

Try bumping down ram timings

 

[skemlawn]

yep, take Norton Crash Gaurd. It WOULD catch a crash, but in recovering, Norton Crash Gaurd would crash. Either that or it would crash on it's own for no reason. TOTALLY worthless software.

I would check the RAM first.

 

[PCResources]

It sounds to me like a memory, PSU, motherboard or overheat problem, try setting down the memory setting a notch and see if that helps.. (from cas2 to cas3)

Otherwise, if you have the opportunity to test other components in your PC then exchange the components one by one until you find what is causing the instability..

Of course, it could also be a driver issue, do you have the latest verions of all drivers?

Patrick Palm

PC Resources