Oh no, my pc begins to freeze randomly

[Jiayu]

About two weeks ago, my pc started to freeze randomly.

1. Each morning when I turn on the pc, it will freeze after the boot-check but before the winXP logo shows up. Press the reset button again usually can solve this problem. It appears the pc needs some kind of "warmup".

2. It randomly freezes every one or two hours. It can happen anytime when I surf the web, play the game, or write a report.


I haver reinstalled the winXP but the problem persists.
Any ideas? I suspect it's a driver or hardware related conflicts. Any suggestions will be greatly appreciated.

It's a Athlon 2500+ with 512M DDR running at 360MHz. And it has been running smoothly for half a year under such configuration.

Jiayu

 

[egale]

Cold boot problems are usually a sign of a bad hard drive or bad connection. As drives get older, the grease used to lube the bearings can sometimes thicken when cold causing the drive to take longer to spin up. Other cable connections may be loosening up too and when cold the connection is lost due to the metal contracting. After everything warms up a bit, the metal expands so the connection is now good.

I would reseat your cables and memory first. Make sure all your fans are working and there is no dust blocking the ventilation. There may also be a drive timeout setting in your bios. If you up this, your system will wait a little longer for the hard drive to boot up.

 

[Sammy5000]

There could be a variety of reasons.

1 - Hardware failure due to a conflicted driver
2 - Heat Issue - CPU Overheating
3 - Failing PSU
4 - Virus

A couple of ways you can go is to look at Event viewer to see what happenned right when the computer freezes. Based on the code in the Event Log, it can prolly tell you if it's a hardware issue or not. If you are o'cing, tune that down and see if it still freezes. How are your temps? What are your voltage rails look like?

I also know some people that had their pcs freeze via some virus in the last couple of weeks (a derivation of the blaster worm), and they got tagged. Ensure your virus definitions are up to date and rescan your rig. Also do online scans (google search for online virus scan) to check for trojans, since some antivirus programs don't pick up everything. Have you ran any virus scans recently?

I had the same problem a few weeks ago (do a search for my username, and it was a thread labelled Random Restarts), and I went through all of this, and the only thing I found was that my mouse driver was causing a conflict. But in the end, I decided to go back to Windows 2000 Professional, because I have been experiencing instability with XP.

Let us know what you find.

 

[thorin]

Run MemTest x86 and let us know if it finds anything.

Thorin

 

[nick1985]

heat? what are your temps

 

[Jiayu]

First thank you all for the advice. I know it's hard to diagnose such problem.

1. Temperature shouldn't be a problem, The barton core runs at around 40c.

2. It passes MemTest x86 twice which took half an hour. I am not sure if further tests are necessary.

3. I have re-installed my OS from ghost image (which I took a year ago and imaged a couple times without problem). I also run Norton Antivirus with most recent data files. It doesn't seem to be a virus problem.

4. It's not random restart, it's random freeze. The event log doesn't record anything, at least not something that marked with error.

5. I have turned down my memory setting to 166 now. It was 180 and had been running smoothly for 4+ months.

6. I do suspect it's harddriver related since the freeze becomes more frequent now

7. Or it could be some driver conflict? But it doesn't make sense to me since I have added nothing in the past two months. How could it suddently has conflicts?

 

[nick1985]

maybe the video card is overheating?

 

[Markfw]

Not to sound like a broken record in all of my post replies, but after my recent memory discovery, I am suggesting to set memory to CAS3, and try that first. I had a system that would run for days OC'ed, run memtest, and everything else, but in two games, and only randomly, it would freeze or re-boot. I changed my setting from CAS2 (detected by SPD and rated for it) to 2.5, and it fixed my problem. CAS3 assures you that if you try that, and it doesn't fix your problem, then it NOT memory related, but if it does fix your problem, then it is memory related.

 

[PSAL2]

I am having the same problem. No virus, memory is fine, power supply was replaced, went to Standard PC and put NIC, Sound, etc all on separate IRQs, reinstalled Windows XP Pro and still get freeze.

Only piece of equipment that was NOT replaced was a "cordless Logitech optical mouse". But that is being replaced tonite with a new optical mouse but NOT cordless. I think that is causing my freeze.

Are you using a cordless?

 

[Jiayu]

oh my, I am using a cordless microsoft mouse. Just switch to a wire one and see what would happen.
Now that you said, I remember the freeze usually happens when i try to move/click the mouse. The arrow would change to a hand shape then the whole thing stops.

By the way, videocard shouldn't be overheated since I can run 3dmark2001 without a glitch. The pc freezes in windows.

 

[Sammy5000]

Originally posted by: Jiayu
oh my, I am using a cordless microsoft mouse. Just switch to a wire one and see what would happen.
Now that you said, I remember the freeze usually happens when i try to move/click the mouse. The arrow would change to a hand shape then the whole thing stops.

By the way, videocard shouldn't be overheated since I can run 3dmark2001 without a glitch. The pc freezes in windows.

Ironically, my random restarts (not freezes) were caused by a conflict with my Logitech MX300 Optical Mouse driver (non-wireless). IT caused a conflict with Windows XP for some reason, as that was the error message I got from the Event Log.

 

[Pex]

simply replying to this thread so i can look it up when i get home from school.

 

[PSAL2]

I just switched to a Microsoft Optical Mouse Blue and so far no freezes. I really have the feeling that it was the cordless mouse.

Of course, now that I said that, I will probably freeze up later...LOL

 

[Jiayu]

Updates.

The wire mouse still causes freeze.

Bought a new maxtor HD from fry's. The setup program (it's a 200G HD) hangs on this pc but runs fine on another one. Switching power supply doesn't solve the problem.

Up till now, I could only assume the Leadtek Winfast K7NCR18D motherboard is defective. I bought it 8 months ago so it's still in warranty. But Leaktek is very bad at RMA service ( It took them 2 months and 3 fed express returns to fix my Ti4200). I will probably return the HD and get a motherboard tomorrow at fry's.

 

[Jiayu]

Last update:

It's the motherboard.

Replacing it with a ASUS A7N8X deluxe fixes the problem.

 

[sandorski]

Suckage.

Was gonna mention mobo, had same problems 6 months back that pesisted for a few weeks until it stopped working altogether. Hate when that happens, had to go 24 hours without my PC. :|

 

[Ghost]

I don't know if this pertains to you, but maybe you got one of those unlucky boards with capacitors that leak.

Wouldn't hurt to check and there are places that can fix that for you.

An article about the problem is found here: Leaks