Sudden instability in Win2k - can I get some ideas?

[Muse]

My system was quite stable until the last day or so. First time I noticed a problem was TODAY. See below for my system specs. As seen in the specs, I multiboot, however my OS of choice and the only one I've used this week is Windows 2000 Pro, SP2. I made a couple of changes this week:

1. I swapped out my 2 sticks of Crucial 256 MB ECC PC2100 for a stick of PC2700 (Samsung chips on generic PCB) I bought for another machine that I will be assembling next week (MSI KT3 Ultra2 with XP 1700+). At first it worked fine. The vendor says on the receipt that I have one week to swap or get credit so I decided to test it in my current machine.

2. Yesterday I swapped out my cheap Enlight 300w PSU for a new Antec True430, again everything seemed to work fine except that I got an error the first time I booted from Motherboard Monitor. It was a tiny dialog saying "Privileged Instruction", and an OK button. After that one hiccup, no problems on reboot.

I actually slowed down my CPU yesterday from the overclocked 1.4 to 1.2, since my immediate goal is to quiet down this machine, hence the Antec PSU, which is supposed to be pretty quiet. I had experienced no problems running at 1.4.

Today, I booted the machine and played an MP3 file that I wanted to hear. It's always sounded fine and I've never had any issues with playing MP3s before with this machine. However, I noticed some nasty distortion around 10 seconds into the recording. Other MP3s were behaving similarly - weird distortion occasionally. Also sometimes little blips where it seemed to skip. Now this is probably a big clue: Twice I tried to download my email via my DSL connection, 5 messages. When it says downloading message 2 of 5, both times I was listening to this same MP3 and the sound would stop, resume after a few seconds for a second and stop again. Couldn't get into Task Manager. The whole system sort of locked up and I had to reset the machine. I've noticed that my MS Intellimouse USB optical mouse is jumping around sometimes, too. Usually it's stable and smooth. I ran memtest86 on the stick this morning, just the default tests, not the full set, and I got no errors with one pass through the tests.

Thanks for any help. Here's my system (except that I've swapped the PSU and RAM like I said, and I've slowed my T-bird down to 1.2 GHz):

Epox 8K7A motherboard
Athlon 1.2 GHz CPU running at 1.4, 133 CPU clock (At 1.2 now, though)
2 x 256 MB Crucial DDR ECC PC2100 266 RAM (512 MB Samsung PC2700 on generic PCB now)
MSI geforce2 Pro 64 MB DDR videocard
Hercules Game Theater XP soundcard
USR Model 2977 PCI hardware modem
Promise Ultra100 TX2 IDE controller
IBM Deskstar 60GXP 60 GB HDD ATA-100 IDE (Promise IDE1 Master) - Boot drive
IBM Deskstar 60GXP 40 GB HDD ATA-100 IDE (Promise IDE2 Master)
Pioneer 16x 106S Slot loader DVD IDE (Motherboard IDE1 Master)
Liteon 24102B CD-RW IDE 24x (Motherboard IDE2 Master)
Iomega Zip 250 IDE (Motherboard IDE2 slave)
Mitsumi Floppy
Enlight midtower case with 300 Watt PSU (swapped for Antec True430 PSU)
Nanao F2-17ex monitor
Windows 2000 Professional Service Pack 2 (OS of choice)
Windows 98SE
Windows NT4 SP6a
Run NAV 2001 in background

Does anyone have an idea what's wrong? I could swap the RAM and see if things clear up and if that doesn't work, the PSU. I'm NEVER going to buy generic RAM again, NEVER!

 

[Muse]

I found that I could not download that one email, the 2nd. Win2k would freeze. I couldn't stop the download or close the email client (Forte Agent). I could only reset! Since I multiboot I decided to try Win98SE. I couldn't get that message there either! However, I could end task on the Forte Agent. I sent an email to the guy who sent me the message asking him for help. I decided to try my Windows NT 4 SP6a, not expecting anything significantly different, but there appeared to be no problem and all my email messages downloaded fine, AFAIK.

 

[Muse]

bump

 

[Muse]

My RAM timings are not overclocked and "Normal", not fast.

I swapped the RAM out with my previous RAM, but the problem persists - very occasional unmistakable distortion when playing known good MP3s. If I play the file again in the same section it doesn't necessarily distort in the same places, and if it does, not the same way, so it's not based solely in what's in the MP3 file. All I can think to do now is swap out the PSU I just installed Friday with my old one, a royal hassle, but I can't think of another stone to turn over. Any ideas appreciated.

Here's another clue for sure! I'm listening to a known good MP3 and it suddenly distorted for a 1/2 second. Sounded kind of like when you blow out and flap your lips, ya know what I mean? Well, my MS Intellimouse Explorer USB mouse cursor stuttered and strayed at exactly the same time as the distortion happened! What's going on? Thanks for any ideas.

 

[satyr451]

Do you have any virus software installed? I got one that messed with .exe's and it really fragged a good amount of my programs, and gave me some "amusing" behaviors, such as mouse jumps, random colors showing up on my screen, general slow performance, inability to open task manager etc.

 

[Muse]

Originally posted by: satyr451
Do you have any virus software installed? I got one that messed with .exe's and it really fragged a good amount of my programs, and gave me some "amusing" behaviors, such as mouse jumps, random colors showing up on my screen, general slow performance, inability to open task manager etc.

I have Norton AV 2001 running in the background. Are you saying that AV screwed up your system? What you describe does sound very similar to what I'm experiencing except for the random colors. Should I maybe uninstall the AV? I think I'll try disabling it and seeing if the instability goes away. If it does I'll try uninstalling NAV and reinstalling. I hate to run without some kind of AV running. I just did a full system virus scan but didn't come up with anything. Truly, I'm not terribly impressed with Symantec software. I've long suspected that they are best at selling you an interface that looks like it's doing a great job, but under the surface is questionable. That's my take, but it's personal, maybe.