My computer is locking up!! HEEEEELP!

[Hercules]

Hey all.

I'm running an ABit KA7 motherboard, with a Western Digital 27GB hard drive.

Lately, my computer is locking up more and more often. For example, and usually when I'm playing music of some sort (in conjuction with something else), my computer will lock up, and the same chord the music was on will loop over and over being VERY annoying.

Sometimes it takes a few seconds and the music will stop looping, and then sometimes it won't come back and I'll have to reboot. I'm not sure what the fault of this can be. I don't think it's the sound card, because if I just play MP3s I can leave it playing FOREVER. However, when I launch up IE6 or play Starcraft with my MP3s in the background, it has a good tendency to lock up. Internet Explorer alone locks up my computer from time to time, but not often.

Any ideas on what I can do to fix it, or at least troubleshoot it so I know how much I have to spend to fix it??

Thanks!

 

[pillage2001]

Operating system??

 

[Hercules]

Windows 2000, 384MB Ram, um.... SB Live Xgamer...

And a WinTV PCI card.

 

[pillage2001]

Man, I'm not a win2k user. Are you overclocking anything?? Installed all the Service packages for WIn2k???

 

[Hercules]

All service packs installed, in fact this is a clean install of Windows from scratch. When my computer first started to lock up, I reformatted hoping it would rid me of the problem.

However, it hasn't done that. I have downloaded all the patches, latest drivers, etc.. I'm very up to date with everything. It's something with the hardware, that I'm sure, but I don't know how to figure out what piece of hardware it is. Could it be the hard drive? Could it be the Mobo? I don't know!

 

[pillage2001]

chances are, it's the mobo or Sound Card. Hdd rarely affects any of this unless it's crashing??

Wait till the others see this thread and keep bumping them up. I'm not a Win2k user.

 

[billyjak]

It's an IRQ problem, sharing with your SB, try moving the card to a different slot.

 

[Hercules]

<< It's an IRQ problem, sharing with your SB, try moving the card to a different slot. >>



How can this just happen all of a sudden though? I am going to move my card now though as per your instructions

 

[vampiro]

It could be the X-Gamer. If your board has onboard sound, try taking out the SBLive! and using onboard. If not then you might try uninstalling IE6, as betas are known to be buggy.

 

[Hercules]

It's not the software, because even after a format I had this same problem.

I'm gonna reboot now, keep your ideas coming!

 

[Hercules]

I swapped the slot for the card.. it is still locking up.

What else can I do? HELP!

 

[Hercules]

Well, I am pretty sure it's my sound card at this point. If anybody has any suggestions on a new sound card for me to buy, at a decent price, please let me know. I'm just looking for quality similar to that of what I had, the SB Live!XGamer (Not the 5.1).

Unless anybody has any other ideas on what to check, I'll be buying a new sound card tomorrow. Thanks!

 

[PaveLow]

Not the first time I've heard of an SBLive causing trouble. Get a Santa Cruz or an Acoustic Edge.

 

[z442]

I've been having the same problem, so finally I switched back to an older processor of mine. No more lock-ups, put in the newer cpu and the thing randomly locks up at different intervals. Just my 2 cents...


z442

 

[MulLa]

I know a lot of people are recommending against this but it doesn't hurt to try before you go and buy a new sound card.

Try switching over to standard PC mode from the default ACPI it can sometimes fix problmes with SBLive and IRQ sharing.