The Hanging Computer

[Vivitron]

When I am away from my computer long enough for my monitor to shut off (20 minutes), I come back and move my mouse, only to realize that my computer has stopped responding. It even did this a couple days ago when I didn't have a screensaver up; it just froze, causing me to restart.

I had just installed the Catalyst 5.2 software before this problem when it was giving me a CLI error, along with this hang error. Therefore, I naturally rolled back to the 5.1 driver, but to no avail, this did not help.

I do allow myself to idle on AIM when I'm away, though this has never caused a problem for me. Even when I check my logs, there is no error around the time I must restart my computer, and I'm wondering if maybe there is a process running that shouldn't be.

Any and all help is needed on this.

 

[Vivitron]

Bump

 

[imported_redlotus]

I'm running into a similar problem myself (on different hardware), so I might not be much help. However, you might want to get the basics out of the way. Do a complete run-through with Spyware and Antivirus utilities to see if anything is hijacking your computer.

There are also a few questions that you might want to answer to give anyone looking at this a better chance of determining the culprit:
Do you have Cool 'n Quiet enabled (not sure if it's supported by your mobo)?
When you say that it freezes, is this a complete freeze (mouse cursor is even frozen)?
Have you tried to completely uninstall the Catalyst Drivers and then reinstall the old (or even new) drivers?

Next time you are planning to leave your comp, open the Task Manager before you leave to see if any progs are using an unusual amount of CPU power when it freezes.

That's about all I can suggest.

HTH

-red

 

[jackschmittusa]

Besides updating the drivers, did you update any of the Ati apps at the same time?

 

[Vivitron]

1.) I do have Cool 'n Quiet enabled
2.) It does completely freeze (mouse cursor stuck)
3.) I uninstalled all the drivers, and put back the 5.1 drivers

I'll disable Cool 'n Quiet and see if that changes anything. According to ATI, I should update my BIOS and chipset drivers, but I already did this anyway, and it didn't help.

To jackschmittusa, I did get the full package with the drivers and Catalyst program. That's why I think this is somewhat of a software error.

 

[imported_redlotus]

It's been a couple of days. I assume that disabling Cool 'n Quiet didn't help. There is one other suggestion that I could make, but it's a little unorthodox.

Try creating a new user account, but only give this account Power User rights. Then completely log out of your current account and log in to the new one (don't just use the Fast User Switching). Then see if you get the same problem. If you get the same issue, I'm afraid that I'm out of ideas. However, if the freezing doesn't happen, you can pretty much rule out hardware as a possible culprit. You might want to run HiJackThis! on both the new account and your normal account. Compare the logs between the two to narrow down the list of suspect programs.

HTH

-red