Question Week 1, WinXP PC locks up every time. Week 2, no problems, Week 3 locking up again. Help!

[Muse]

~2 weeks ago I turn on my mid-tower PC that's nowadays relegated solely for HTPC duties. Couldn't get it to get past sudden unexplained lockups. 1 week ago I turn it on again to see if I can fix the issue and there's no issue. I used the machine all weekend to record and watch (i.e. timeshift) all 6 NFL Wildcard Weekend games. Not a hint of a problem.

Today, i.e. one week after everything fine, I want to again watch NFL playoffs, and I can't get the machine to not lockup almost immediately like it did 2 weeks ago. No clue what's wrong. Sometimes Windows freezes before it's loaded. Sometimes it loads but a second or two after I open my HTPC's DVR application, complete lockup. Mouse cursor freezes, nothing to do but turn off or hit reset button.

There are 3 boot partitions on the machine, all Windows XP (I do this in case one installation goes bad for some reason, I can generally then boot to a different OS/apps partition in the interim). The HTPC application is MIT's MyHD PCI card and app. I have its data go to onboard 2TB WD HD but the machine boots off a 120GB HD, with it's 3 bootable partitions. Doesn't matter which partition I try to boot into, I get the same problems, not just on the customary E drive, IOW happens to C and D too.

I booted into Safe Mode, looked in Device Manager and everything appears OK, no obviously borky device.

What do you make of this? What can I try?

Machine specs:

GIGABYTE GA-EP45-UD3R LGA 775 Intel P45 ATX Intel Motherboard
Q8200 (2.33Ghz 45nm Core2Quad), copper core stock heatsink/fan
PNY GeForce GT 620 1GB DDR3 PCI Express 2.0 x16 Video Card VCGGT620XPB
2x2GB GSkill blue DDR2-667 RAM
EVGA SuperNOVA 550 G2 550W 80 Plus Gold Modular Power Supply
MIT MyHD-130 HDTV PCI + daughterboard
Hercules Game Theater XP (GTXP) PCI sound card + breakout box
120GB IDE HDD for OS/Apps
Western Digital 2TB Red 5400 SATA III HDD for secondary storage
Midtower case
2x 120mm fans

 

[Muse]

Event viewer showed no errors of note, lots of information, however I think the last info before the crash had two warnings, same time, and they look like this:

 

[Muse]

So, I reboot, no hang, Event Viewer looks clean. I open my DVR app, no hang. I DON'T open my browser (last time I did that I got a hang). Instead I program my DVR app to do my timeshifts on Sunday, reboot, go into BIOS, power management and set up the machine to start automatically before my OTA programs start. I shut it all down. What will happen Sunday, don't know. I know that machine will not wake from suspend. The other machine, the Win2000 one, does come out of suspend. I'm going to experiment with setting up the Win2000 machine to timeshift TV and use it instead of the XP machine if it passes the tests, one of which is waking from suspend when a recording is scheduled to begin.

 

[mikeymikec]

mrxsmb is just Windows filesharing services. I've never heard of an issue with it causing freezes/crashes.

 

[Muse]

mrxsmb is just Windows filesharing services. I've never heard of an issue with it causing freezes/crashes.

Yes, I figure something else is causing the crashes. It now appears to be one of those oh-no, now it happens, now it doesn't, technical issues that is not predictably reproduceable.

 

[VirtualLarry]

bump up CPU vcore / lower clock-speed? Maybe some longer-term degradation at play?

 

[Muse]

bump up CPU vcore / lower clock-speed? Maybe some longer-term degradation at play?

Yeah, I have no idea how used it was before I got it. I haven't used it a whole lot compared to typical usage. Plus, the MyHD card (and daughterboard) does it's own processing as I understand it, it doesn't lean on the system's computing powers.

 

[mxnerd]

Think your stuff is getting too old.

Maybe it's time to consider a 64GB Windows 10 mini PC and network based tuners like HDHomeRun products from SilliconDust?

Believe you can find something cheap on eBay.

There are MediaPortal or NextPVR that support TV recording.