XP Pro freezes for long periods..

[GhaLeoN]

I have a big problem here....

XP is starting to freeze on me now, for like 5-10 min at a time. It does it in a variety of settings. For example : It froze last night when i was running a movie, cuteftp, icq, and IE browser. Just 10 min ago, it froze while I clicked the "show desktop"shortcut, and only cuteftp was running <- this happened like 1 min after I had just rebooted....

Now to describe the 'freeze' itself : The computer will lock up, not crash, for periods of up to 5-10min. During this time the HD activity light is not flashing, I can still move my mouse around the desktop, and the mouse icon changes to a 'loading program' animation when I hit ctrl + alt + delete... when it has come out of the freeze before, 39 taskmanagers were open.

What is going on here? I haven't made any changes to my system to make this start happening...

Someone suggested to me that my system files might have got corrupted somehow. Is there a prog that will tell me if they are corrupt or not? I've ran a virus check which came out clean, reinstalled my via chipset drivers, and reinstalled some other appz as well. I've ran regcleaner, and it came out fine.

The crashing seems to happen only when some specfic programs are running - is this logical? Would certain software do this to a machine?

Please help : I really dont want to have to reformat

 

[GhaLeoN]

I have more info, but it might seem wierd....

My system seems to freeze, almost certainly, whenever I click my "show desktop" shortcut on my quick launch bar.

I click the shortcut, it goes to my desktop, but all my desktop icons are missing momentarily.... after about 10 full seconds or so, the icons reappear, and the system precedes to freeze for 5-10 min.

Please help.

 

[jcs83md]

Are you overclocking anything?? If you are, set the speeds back to default and see if that fixes anything. I've seen momentary freezes as a result to extra heat from overclocking, RAM specifically.

 

[GhaLeoN]

The only thing Im OC'ing is my ram... its DDR333 CL 2.5 ram. Im pushing it down to CL 2.0

Ive checked my case temp: mobo temp is at 35 degrees, CPU and aux temps are at 42 degrees

Im pretty sure these are within normal ranges, plus I have 4 fans cooling the thing

 

[jcs83md]

Well maybe it would be a good idea to set it at 2.5. I really doubt a 2-3% performance increase is worth sacrificing system stability. What do CPU and motherboard temps matter when you're OC'ing your RAM?

 

[gothic]

You want to try Process Explorer from http://www.sysinternals.com/ntw2k/utilities.shtml This utility will display ALL running processes and services and has opened my eyes!!

TOK

 

[GhaLeoN]

thx I'll try process explorer

jcs : my system has been running extremely stable until very recently, and I've been overclocking the ram the entire time. Im not convinced thats my problem, but Ill try it for awhile at CL 2.5 to see if it makes a difference.

Update : my system just froze again while I had these progs running: cute ftp pro 2.0, icq lite, winamp 2.81, a browser, and MS powerpoint. During the freeze, the music in winamp never stopped playing. I could move my mouse around the desktop, but nothing responded to any clicks. I've since re-installed my via chipset drivers, and I've installed the new WHQL detonators.

 

[GhaLeoN]

My system just froze again. I was working in MS Word, on icq lite, and was listening to music on winamp. The desktop is still there, with music playing, and there was a "busy" mouse icon while I hovered over the start bar area. Nothing on the desltop responds to any mouse clicks, and the HDD activity light is doing absolutely nothing.

I just ran a full scandisk and defragmented my 120 gig drive yesterday. I also changed my ram clock to CL 2.5 from CL 2.0.

Can anyone give me any help on this? Nothing is being recorded in the event viewer that is of any help. What else is there that I can do?

 

[gonaads]

Small idea... Why don't you "roll back" the system to a day before this started and see what happens. It is possible something got corrupted or an App that got shut down incorrectly or even an App that you installed.

Also maybe??? depending on how long you were O/Cing your Memory it might have been damaged???

 

[GhaLeoN]

Posted by gonaads
Small idea... Why don't you "roll back" the system to a day before this started and see what happens. It is possible something got corrupted or an App that got shut down incorrectly or even an App that you installed.

Also maybe??? depending on how long you were O/Cing your Memory it might have been damaged???

How would I even check if the ram has been damaged or not? Is there a program or a benchmark I could run to find this out?

I do have a Hard Disk image that I haven't tried yet. Its going to be a fairly intensive process reorganizing my HD to accomodate fitting the image on there, but I think its going to be my last resort before reformatting.

 

[gonaads]

Just use the "System Restore" first to see if that fixes it.

(All Programs/Accessories/System Tools/System Restore)

Couldn't hurt.

 

[egghead]

Posted by GhaLeoN
How would I even check if the ram has been damaged or not? Is there a program or a benchmark I could run to find this out?

try one of these programs

http://search.yahoo.com/search?p=bad+memory+test+program+download


also goto
www.lavasoftusa.com

and get a program called ad-aware
you might have a ad-server messing with you system

delete every spy it finds

if your fed up and are about to re-format

get atomicxp
xpantispy

run these on your computer to disable some xp processes
i do these with every fresh install of xp pro

i had a similar problem with xp and formated my disc and it froze on formatting and had to rma my drive

it was a defective drive

this is most likely not the case with your drive but to be cautious i would go to your hd manufacturers website and get there hd utillity to check you drives status

hope this helps a little

egghead

 

[Tiesto]

You wouldnt happen to have a link to either of those progs would you?

 

[Lighter]

Quick question GhaLeon: Does this freeze/hang problem only occur when you're online?

Ya'll gonna think I'm nutz but the freeze sounds like a network or NIC problem. I only know this because through creative stupidity, I created this problem for myself a while back.

 

[GhaLeoN]

Lighter : yes someone else has suggested this as well.... interestingly enough, I've some diagnostic tests with Sisoft Sandra, and it gave me a weird error on my nic, something like the PCI latency was too high or something.... anyways, I've since downloaded and installed the newest Realtek lan driver...

egghead : I've already run XP-AntiSpy, but I'll try ad-aware

thanks so much for all the replys guys, Im late for school but will reply more later...

 

[morgand]

Computer freeze

It might have to do with your RAM as others have already suggested. How many modules is your RAM in? Is it one stick of 512 MB or 2 of 256 MB? If it is two, how many DIMM slots do you have on your motherboard? Some mobos have problems if all the DIMM slots are filled (mine is one of these troublemakers). The only fix I could find for my freezing problem was to free up one of my DIMM slots.

Just a thought because your problem sounds similar to what happened to me. Hope you get everything fixed.

David

 

[GhaLeoN]

Thx morgand for the kind words today's my birthday

I have 1 512 meg stick of DDR333 ram. All the benchmarks and stress tests I ran in Sisoft Sandra all came out fine, right where the ram should be performing.

Im now running Ad-aware to see if it catches anything, but looking at my processes under task manager, everything seems just fine, no malicious programs running or anything....

I'll post back with an update soon.

 

[egghead]

Posted by Tiesto
You wouldnt happen to have a link to either of those progs would you?

hello

atomicxp

xpantispy

freeware and i run them with every fresh install

i also disable everything except tcp/ip in my local area connection settings in network connections in control panel
i have adsl

should be the same for cable and dial-up

i get killer boot times

hope this helps

cheers
egghead

 

[GhaLeoN]

i just ran Ad-aware and it appears to have cuaght a few things...

I've been up and running for 2 days and 3 hours. So far so good.....

I still have a bunch of things I'd like to try when I get the time.

Great sig egghead lol

 

[GhaLeoN]

Something wierd just happened.....

I left my computer on during the day, and came home to it at about 10pm

Winamp is open, along with icq lite and MS Outlook. Outlook is set to auto send/reicieve every 5 min.

When I get home, theres an error message in Outlook, saying something like "error blah blah".... so i close that, manually try to send/reicieve, and I get an error like this : "Can't complete action - unsuffcient page file".... something like that, definately mentioning the page file.

I try to open a browser, and it gives me another error to do with the pagefile - won't open. I can't even expand my quick launch bar, it says its empty. I try to open task manager, and it gives me some wierd error, saying insufficient resources or something.....

So, I close winamp, icq, and outlook. Everything is back to normal. WTF

!??!?!!??