Lockup problems.

[hawkeyewx]

Ok, this is the third time since I upgraded my system back in November that I've been hit with repeated lockups. You would think by now I'd have some kind of idea why the lockups are occurring, but I'm actually getting more confused with time. The first time lockups happened was shortly after I upgraded my mobo, cpu, and ram. I installed the via 4in1 drivers and my system proceeded to work fine for about one month. After one month, the lockups hit again. I was so fed up with my system I didn't even bother booting up again for two weeks. Two weeks later, I decided to try pushing the two ddr dimms and the video card into thier slots very hard. Guess what, the system worked fine! That was at the end of January. My system again worked great until today, a little over one month later again. I was writing an email when the system locked up. This time, pushing the video card and dimms in harder had no effect. Just as with the other two times, once the first lockup hits any reboot results in another lockup within three minutes after windows loads. I am officially stumped. I would kill for a solution to my problem and I'd greatly appreciate any help. Does anyone think the fact that about one month passed before each of the last two lockup attacks is important? I did leave my computer off for two weeks after the previous occurrence. Could some kind of electric charge buildup be a factor? I don't know anything about power supplies, but I'm just throwing out ideas.

By the way, I have already eliminated the video card itself as the problem. I swapped in my old tnt video card and it still locked up. Also, I haven't ran any 3d application of any kind for the past month. The lockups occur even while just sitting idle at the desktop.


__________________
Windows XP
Athlon XP 1600+, no overclock
alpha 8045 hs w/ panaflo 39cfm fan
Soyo Dragon+ mobo
VisionTek Geforce 3 Ti 200, no overclock
512 MB Crucial DDR
IBM 40 GB 7200rpm hard drive
Plextor 24/10/40 cdrw
Pioneer 32x cdrom
onboard sound
onboard lan
2 sunon 39 cfm case fans, 1 ps fan
latest video drivers
latest mobo bios
latest via 4in1 drivers

 

[DaiShan]

make sure there isn't anything is pci slot 1 4 and 6 (if at all possible) slots 4 and 6 share irq with the usb, slot 1 is right next to the video card so it is usually best to leave taht one open. Are you running any usb devices? go to www.usbman.com navigate to the via section of the drivers page and grab all files that apply to your situation, I recommend grabbing the usb filter patch, I was having a similar problem and this was what solved it. Also run a virus check, and defrag your hard drive.

 

[hawkeyewx]

I am not using any pci slots and the only piece of hardware using a usb port is the printer.

 

[hawkeyewx]

I'm desperate for a solution to my problem so I'm getting this thread back to the top.

 

[hoihtah]

hawkeyewx...

your specs look good from what you've listed.

but you haven't stated what your powersupply is.

the way you can trouble shoot your problem is to keep a track of when your computer locksup.
at the moment, what were you doing?

without having all info... i'll try to take a stab blindfolded.

i see that you have ibm 40gb 7200rmp.

is that 75gxp? if so... it might be the cause of your trouble.
currently there's a lawsuit against that model.

from my experience of that hd... though it is very fast (used to be one of the best)
it really isn't worth your trouble. replace it asap.

and also ... check your power rating at 5v rail.
if that drops below 4.8v... (in your case... it might even act up at 4.8v)
your system will become very unstable.

i hope that helps.

 

[optimistic]

I also think it could be your power supply. They can cause more problems than you think.

Oh and for some odd reason, if my Floppy power cable or ide cable is not plugged in tightly, it won't power up. And I had one fdd that caused my computer to lock up. And when I removed it everything was fine. The drive must have been haunted!:Q or giving off a magnetic charge

 

[DaiShan]

I don't think it is the hard drive, hard drives once they start to go bad go bad very quickly and usually won't even boot, so I don't think the lockups could be the problem, I would also like to point out that the problem with the 75gxp series was only the ones produced from a certain factory in scandanavia or something (not the only factory) Did you try the usb filter patch?

 

[hoihtah]

daishan,

from my experience of 75gxp, it could still be a hd problem.
if it really is the case that hawkeyewx has 75gxp, then his problem is all very possible.
i had an incidence with this hd before where it wouldn't boot unless i physically held the drive in my hand while booting up.
once booting was completed i could let it go and it would work fine afterwards ... until i had to reboot again.

the drive crashed irratically.
but from time to time... i would sustain a normal usage for weeks before acting up again.
hence, it doesn't have to be the case where if it's a hd problem then it shouldn't load up.

it is true that only one factory was manufacturing with this defect...
however, that doesn't not mean that only a small percentage of 75gxps were affected.
that particular factory didn't just manufacture one or two. it was quite substantial amount.

all in all, hawkeye's problem could be caused by many different things.
but i'd say that it's way to early to cross out the HD from the amount of background that we know.

 

[hawkeyewx]

Sorry, I thought I put my power supply details in my post. I am using a Powerman 300W ps that came with my in-win s500 case. From what I've seen so far, the 5V of the ps is always a little below 5(maybe 4.88) and the 12V is always a little below 12.

My hard drive is an IBM 60GXP. I did have this hard drive installed in my old system for a couple weeks before I upgrade my mobo, ram, and cpu. My system ran fine(except one thing which I will elaborate on below) and didn't begin locking up until day 2 after the upgrade.

The lockups occur at any time... surfing the net, playing a 3d game, sitting idle at the desktop.

Okay, the problem I mentioned above had to do with my old system not working properly upon pushing the power button. Starting last summer(there had been no changes to my system for a few months), when I pushed the power button only about 40% of the time would my system boot up properly. About 40% of the time the power would come on and the fans would start up, but nothing else would happen. No windows bootup, no bios screen, nothing. The other 20% of the time, the system would let off a loud constant beep like it is supposed to do when something is very wrong. If my system would not boot properly I would just have to push the reset button and everything would then work fine. For awhile I thought my power supply(the same one I'm still using with my new system) might have messed up or something, but I decided to wait til I upgraded my motherboard to see if the old motherboard was the problem. When I installed the new mobo, that powerup problem went away so I figured the old mobo just croaked. One thing I have noticed around the last two times my sytem was locking up... twice I restarted my computer from windows and the system did not reboot, it just did nothing like it used to sometimes. Of course, now the potential of a power supply problem came back into my mind. I sure wish I had a nice new power supply at home so I could test it out. I would certainly prefer not to fork out a bunch of money to order and ship a new power supply and then find out that isn't the problem.

 

[altonb1]

When you lockup, how long do you wait to see if the system will stay frozen? My system does this occasionally, too. Hit caps lock ONCE and see if the light goes on (or off). If nothing happens, walk to the kitchen, get yourself a bevergae, snack, whatever, and come back. In other words, give it a few mins. See if the caps Lock status light ever changes. If it does, then something is freezing your computer and eating up the CPU time.

One thing I learned about 6 weeks ago when I got DSL, if you have a network card in your system and are using a dial-up connection with "Obtain an IP Address automatically" selected, your system will look to fill in those IP values every 'x' amount of mins. Since you will never fill in the IP address or the values for DNS, etc for the NIC, the system is constantly fighting to fill in values it can't get. By manually assinging a 'safe' IP to this address, the NIC no longer looks to fill in the values from the network and therefore stops causing the freezes/lock-ups. If the above describes your scenario, try filling 192.168.1.10/subnet 255.255.255.0 for your IP in the TCP/IP settings FOR YOUR NETWORK CARD. and see if that fixes your problem. Let us know if this solves it!

 

[hawkeyewx]

Well, I've elimated any software problem as the cause of my lockups. The system locks up even when it is at the bios settings screen. Someone can correct me if I'm wrong, but it appears to me that the lockups are being caused by either the power supply or the motherboard.