Sudden Lock-Ups!

[Turbo55]

Ever since I bought my IBM 30GB 75GXP drive, my system seems to freeze after an hour or so. What happens is that all of a sudden my mouse completely HALTS and no key functions work, NOT even ALT-CTRL-DEL! However, my WinAmp still plays MP3s in the background. At first, I thought it was Win Me, so I formatted my drive and clean installed Win2000. Even on Win2000, I still get freeze-ups. What could be wrong?

Here is my current system info:
950MHz T-bird (non-overclocked) [How do you overclock this sucker?]
Asus A7V
256 MB High Perfomance Mushkin RAM
30 GB IBM 75 GXP
40 GB Maxtor
Viper 770 Ultra
SB Live! Gamer

 

[corkyg]

My guess is that it is your video card and how it is set up. It looks like the weak link in your system.

 

[Turbo55]

Corky-g, could you provide me more details.

 

[SaturnX]

After I bought my 75GXP I had lock ups, though mostly duing heavy cpu processing tasks, turned out my PSU was dying, got me an Antec PP303X 300W solved all my problems. Whats the wattage of your PSU?

--Mark

 

[Dulanic]

I had the exact same problem. It happened only in Win2K... what I found fixed it was turning off Optimal and setting it to Normal. This is a known problem in Win2K.

 

[Turbo55]

Tharyn, is PSU = power supply? I have a Fortron 300W power supply, and it's providing a lot of juice. I'm sure that's not the problem.

Dulanic, where do you change the settings from Optimal to Normal?

 

[Syborg1211]

Is that cpu an overclocked cpu? If so, what is the original speed?

Also, even if you are not overclocked, are you using an AMD approved heatsink and fan?

Here's an idea, take out your otehr hard drive and your sound card in order to get down to the barebones. Then, see if it freezes. If it doesn't, it must be your other hard drive or your sound card conflicting with something. Check and see if your sound card is sharing an irq with anything. Sound blaster lives do not like charing irq with anything.

 

[DioCassius]

check out this thread:
http://forums.anandtech.com/messageview.cfm?catid=27&threadid=257647

 

[Turbo55]

Syborg, my CPU is not overclocked and I have just purchased an Alpha HSF for the CPU to minimize heat. It's currently in a very stable temp. Also, my sound card is not in any conflict. I think its' the IBM drive that's causing the freeze-ups, b/c the problem started after I purchased this drive. Before that, I never had that situation. I suspect it has to do w/ the problem everyone's discussing on the the thread DioCassius posted. However, I'm running on Win2000, NOT WinMe, so according to the thread, it should not affect my system.

 

[ColdTech]

Just a question.... I Have a system thats pretty close to yours.... I Have been having lock ups for a while now. All Of Mine occured while surfing the internet. Not Gaming Or even running 3dmark2000 800 consecutive times. In a thread I saw in the hard ocp forum I head that there may be a conflict between the 1004 bios flash for the A7V and IE.
Anyways are your problems occuring while online or just randomly?

 

[Syborg1211]

Have you tried taking out that other hard drive yet? They may be conflicting with each other. Coldtech has a good point with the bios. Maybe a good bios flash is in order.

 

[FlyingPenguin]

Could be a PCI IRQ Channel Sharing problem. More details here: http://www.voodooextreme.com/flypenguin/glfaq5.htm#5_9

 

[Syborg1211]

FlyingPenguin- that is what I was thinking... taking out his hard drive should clear up an irq.

 

[Turbo55]

Coldtech, I'm currently on the A7V 1004c bios and I always use IE. It does seem like you're right that my system freezes while I'm online using IE, but that's b/c I'm usually online.

Here's an interesting note: Even when my PC freezes, Winamp still plays music on the background until the end of the song. Then everything just stops; no activies! I hope someone can come up w/ an explanation for that.

I don't think there's any IRQ conflict, b/c I used to have my Maxtor running Win Me as the primary drive and it still freezes (w/ the IBM drive intalled). I made sure there were no conflicts and everything else was running properly. Before I bought the IBM drive, everything else was running fine.

Shouldn't the Device Mananger display an exclamation point if there's a conflict w/ the drive IRQs? Well, maybe my drives are conflicting and I don't know, but I'm too busy and lazy (like most) to crack the case and disconnect a drive, UNLESS it's my last resort. *sigh* This PC is stealing too much of my calories.

 

[Syborg1211]

I don't trust the device manager since not all conflicts are spotted by windows. Just go ahead and try just running on your ibm drive alone. What have you got to lose?

I have noticed that when I freeze in a game like Unreal Tournament, it keeps on playing the background music. I am not really sure what that means though. Have you updated ALL drivers? even windows and drivers for a modem if you have one.

 

[The Wildcard]

Hmm also try not to have any devices share the same IRQ as the Video card so don't put anything in the PCI slot next to the AGP video card.

 

[Turbo55]

Yeah, I'm going to run the IBM drive by itself when I get a chance this Thursday. The thing is that I won't know if that solves the problem, b/c I still don't know why, when and what casuses my system to freeze. Sometimes, my system freezes (w/ both drives on) after an hour, other times, it can last up to many hours. The thing is that I don't know what is triggering my PC to freeze. *sigh* This is a tough one.

 

[Dulanic]

I told you! Turn off Optimal and set it to normal! I had the EXACT same problem and that fixed it 100%.... Also setting AGP Drive Strength to FF helped.

 

[Turbo55]

Dulanic, I read your previous post, but I didn't know what you were referring. I'm assuming you are talking about the settings on the bios. I will make the change immediately.

 

[Dulanic]

Yes I was refering to the BIOS setting