Win XP - Chronic Crashes

[barryng]

I installed Windows XP Pro on our three home computers last October. We have had virtually no trouble with two of the three machines. The third machine ran trouble free for almost four weeks. Then suddenly, without apparent provication, it began to suffer from a chronic instability that corrupts files. Sometimes the registry becomes corrupted and sometimes chkdsk finds so many cross linked files the data on the hard drive is essentially useless. Sometimes the machine will run fine for a few weeks and nothing more provacative than rebooting triggers the problem. The problem occurred again yesterday when I rebooted after doing a routine clone backup. It was then I found both drives contained corrupted files.

I have been forced into cloning (via Ghost) my harddrive every day or so. Yesterday Ghost refused to restore my hard drive from the removable backup drive. Ghost's disk integrity check reported both the my main hard drive and the cloned backup drive corrupted, seemeingly with identical problems. There is a very extreme level of frustration here!

I doubt it is a software conflict because a few times the crashes occurred shortly after reinstalling XP (always a clean install) and before I had a chance to reinstall any application software. With the help of Microsoft pay per incident support, I discovered that my Adaptec 2910 SCSI card was not XP compatible. I replaced it with an Adaptec 2930 but that only decreased the frequency of the crashes. I also replaced my motherboard and CPU (twice), memory, modem, NIC, video capture card, sound card, power supply, and hard drive (twice). The only piece of hardware I have not replaced is a Hercules Prophet II Geforce MX although I cannot imagine a card as popular as the Geforce series is a problem. The two floppy drives, CD writer, and DVD drives have not been replaced.

I have searched the user forums and have found a small scattering of similar complaints. Howvever, none of the postings indicate any cause or solution. Any insight into this problem would certainly be appreciated.

 

[Richard98]

Did the machine run with another OS? Sounds like a hardware problem or conflict to me. Which devices are connected to the SCSI card - Have you checked termination? What size is your PS - you do have quite a number of drives and cards in that machine?

You should try removing all of the cards except the video card, then adding the cards one at a time to find the source of the conflict.

 

[barryng]

To specifically answer your questions, the power supply is a 350 Watt Enermax. The SCSI card carries an internal Iomega Zip drive and, externally, a HP 6250 Scanner. The scanner does have a connector for channing SCSI devices but I do not have a terminator plugged into it. This setup worked flawlessy for two or three years under W98SE.

The problem originally occurred with an ASUS P3V4X/800 MHz PIII with 256M Mushkin SDRAM (one stick). I briefly changed it to an Abit ST6/1.2 Gig Celeron with new Mushkin SDRAM. It is now an Abit TH7II with a 1.8 Gog Northwood and 512M Samsung RDRAM. Although I overclock the Northwood to to 2.16 Gig, the problem occurs even when it runs at its rated speed. I purchased the Enermax power supply when I upgraded to the ST6.

Right now, only for a lack of anything else, I am thinking that the GeForce II MX smells like the only remaining likely suspect. I am very tempted to buy a new graphics card tomorow but really do not want to spend any more money on this supremely annoying problem. You do have me thinking about terminating the connector on the scanner or using its USB connection. However, I find it hard to believe that what was never a problem with W98SE is a problem now with XP.

Thanks for the advice Richard.

 

[barryng]

The scanner only has a single SCSI port. There is not a second connector to chain another device. My mistake.

 

[Richard98]

<< The scanner does have a connector for channing SCSI devices but I do not have a terminator plugged into it. This setup worked flawlessy for two or three years under W98SE. >>


If the scanner is similar to my hp scanner, there's a small switch on the back to enable/disable internal termination. You probably have termination enabled if it worked in win98.

I would still suggest removing all the cards, except the video card, then add the other cards one by one, to eliminate other possibilities.
Since your setup is trashed anyway, you could also try re-installing win98 with your current hardware.

 

[Allanv]

I have read on this and many other forums that the geforce card sometimes (dont flame me here its my opinion and what i have read) causes problems with XP but most of the problems seemed to be linked to installing XP and not realy once its running....

and as its the only thing left that you havent replaced then it does seem the likely target.....