XP random freeze.

[NEVERwinter]

System:
EPoX 8RDA
1700+ XP @ 2100+, temp 42-46C
Standard 2x256MB DDR2700
Radeon 8500LE @ 283/283
Standard 350w PSU
Seagate 80GB 7200RPM 8MB
Lite-On 52x24x52 CDRW
Lite-On 16x DVD
56K modem external
Turtle Beach St.Cruz
WinXP Pro SP1

- ATI Catalyst 3.2
- TBSC driver 4161
- Dx9.0

Problem:
WinXP froze on random time, it will always loop any sound that is being played (sometimes it just took 3 minutes, sometimes it took 4 hrs to wait for the crash).
On random occasion, it only froze the taskbar.. all running programs seems working fine. I can save my works, and then pressing ctrl+alt+del to reboot, but it doesn't respond.
After rebooting, it seems those "saved" works are actually not saved and some programs lost its settings, such as:
- Opera 7.x won't run
- Opera 6.x lost it's bookmarks, history, bookmark and windows setting
- MSIE lost it's URL history
- MSoffice opens those "saved" files as recovered docs
- Winamp lost it's last playlist
- mIRC (with script) lost it's scripts settings
- mIRC (plain) lost the general setting
- GetRight can't resume the download that is broken during the crash.
- last time, I lost my boot.ini file

- Sometimes Windows gave error message like these:
-> Unknown Hard Error
-> The memory address at blabla1xblabla2 could not be accessed, the program is terminated.
-> look HERE


I tried to reinstall a couple of times.
on 1st install, everything is running fine for about three days. Then suddenly it happens after.

2nd install, I didn't overeclock everything, Didn't run Windows update, rollback to Cat3.1, no MSoffice, using nForce sound. Problem appears.

3rd install, I underclock my system, didn't run windows update, rollback to Cat2.5, Dx8.1, and didn't install soundcard. Still happens.
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some guys here also experienced similar problems, but note that this problem is also happens when I am offline. So I am really confused..... I am suspecting the modem driver, because I think this does not happen when I don't install the modem.

 

[XxCowboyxX]

I have the same problem but it's not the modem on my end. Allready tried removing it.

 

[NEVERwinter]

UPDATE:

some people from pcuser.com.au forum suggested to check these things:
1. Virus problem
2. change your power supply & cables (try to change with a new PSU?)
3. check the power connectors of all devices.

I am trying those, will update again after I have confirmed something. Try it and hope it will help.

 

[XxCowboyxX]

Well it seems it was my video card.

 

[NEVERwinter]

and for me it seems like my PSU to HDD power cable... >_< that's why those files aren't saved... because the HDD got not enough power

 

[Prfstrkr]

On the taskbar freezing issue, diable the speech recognition and an update to SP1will definitely solve the problem.