Random lockups and Hanging in XP fresh install.

[Sickpuppy]

I am running windows XP pro, and have two occasional problems along with some extra info to help give an idea of what is going on

1. When I run a new application for the 1st time, or i switch between running apps, the system hangs for a second or two. I checked the taskmanager to see if anything is eating up resources but nothing out of the ordinary there.

[When I run a game, or a 3d benchmark i have no slowdowns at all, and the results are satisfactory. I can run prime 95 for 8+ hours (never tried for longer because i am using the pc) I checked for trojans and virii, thats not the problem either. ]

2. I have had a few random reboots, with nothing in the systemlogs to explain it. This usually happens when i am installing software from a cd image mounted off the network, or browsing network shares.

[I have a windows XP pro file server with 4 shared folders (each a different drive) They are all read only. My machine has 3 of them mounted as network drives. I mount an image from a drive using daemon tools latest version.]


I just installed windowsXP pro on the following setup:
AMD A64 3200
ASUS K8V
(2)512 3-4-4 pc4000 mushkin
RADEON 9500 pro
Hercules GTXP
ANTEC 400Watt PSU
Western digital 13gig 5400rpm (my 80 gig is being RMA'd)
I am not overclocking yet.

I am not accustomed to such untraceable issues... any help would be appreciated.

 

[MrChad]

Well, your system hangs may be from using an incredibly slow hard drive in such a fast system. You do have the latest motherboard chipset drivers installed, right?

 

[JK949]

Your hard drive is the problem. way to slow to for running more than one app at a time.
In addition to being very slow the cache is problably 2 meg.
I would just put up with it until you get your main hard drive back.
Theres nothing to fix.

 

[CTho9305]

1. Make sure your HD is in DMA mode and not PIO. The slowest hard drive in DMA will create fewer pauses than the fastest drive in PIO. Device manager, check the properties for your IDE controller ("advanced settings" tab, i think).

2. Check for a newer network card driver?

Originally posted by: JK949
Your hard drive is the problem. way to slow to for running more than one app at a time.
In addition to being very slow the cache is problably 2 meg.
I would just put up with it until you get your main hard drive back.
Theres nothing to fix.

I disagree that the slow drive causes problems. With 512 MB ram, there should be VERY little swapping to disk. You can run as many programs as fit in RAM before hard drive speed matters.

 

[Sickpuppy]

The 13 gig hardrive is in UDMA4 mode, and I seriously doubt that the speed of the drive has anything to do with the pauses.

I always try updating my drivers although I did not update my via 4in1's after the one that came with the board. I will do that and double check ASUS's website.

BTW Thats a gig of ram: (2x) 512 mushkins

Hmm it definitely has something to do with the loading, but not sure exactly why it would freeze... after migrating from a much slower SMP rig, I am not accustomed to any hangs save for the occasional serious error. This situation gives me very little to work with to try to fix it and I dont want to blame hardware until I am certain that is the problem.

Edit: I was working on paper and the pc randomly rebooted again and wasnt doing ANYTHING on it. IRC/AIM was running, not much else. I dont think it is a network driver issue, however I cannot seem to find the network card driver at ASUS's website, they have the deluxe model info, but not the standard... which surprises me.

 

[Sickpuppy]

Now I have another issue:

When i try to open the winrar GUI, it takes over a minute. If i just use the command to "extract here" it will work right away.

When i open winamp, it takes 2 minutes before the gui finishes loading and the music starts.

In either case ther CPU utilization is 0%.

Ironically the bloatware windows mediaplayer9 opens in a second.