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| Thread ID: 53304 | 2005-01-13 21:08:00 | Computer Freezing | oxygen (6861) | Press F1 |
| Post ID | Timestamp | Content | User | ||
| 313687 | 2005-01-13 21:08:00 | Lately, my computer has been freezing a lot. One day it was fine. Next day, it would freeze constantly. On average, it will freeze 5-6 times daily, which isnt good, especially on a 2.6 ghz Pentium 4 with 512 ram . I havent scanned for viruses as of yet, I am planning on doing soon. The only start up programs running are the firewall, virus scanner, on acssess scanner, MSN, and the extreme graphics driver. |
oxygen (6861) | ||
| 313688 | 2005-01-13 21:17:00 | List could be endless but here are a few of the likely ones: Virus (maybe) Spyware (maybe) Ram (unlikely as freezing would prolly occur shortly after bootup, or not boot at all) Power Supply (quite likely if it's an el cheapo) Graphics Card drivers (quite possible if it's a Nvidia & you downloaded the drivers thru windows update, prolly an Intel onboard chip if your description of extreme is correct though) One of the Windows Updates (possibly conflicting with an app) Can u do a system restore to pre-problem? Have u installed or updated any new apps or drivers lately? If it's a cheap power supply & the lockups are at random times, my money is on the Power Supply If you have Intel onboard graphics that would be my next stop (try another PCI or AGP card) |
bartsdadhomer (80) | ||
| 313689 | 2005-01-13 22:01:00 | Ram (unlikely as freezing would prolly occur shortly after bootup, or not boot at all) I agree that it could be a number of things but I wouldn't dismiss the RAM too quickly - I suggest you test the RAM by downloading the free tester from MemTest86 (http://www.memtest86.com/) |
andrew93 (249) | ||
| 313690 | 2005-01-13 22:05:00 | I agree that it could be a number of things but I wouldn't dismiss the RAM too quickly - I suggest you test the RAM by downloading the free tester from MemTest86 (http://www.memtest86.com/) Good idea, although I have found with XP (assuming that is the OS) that it is much fussier than 98/ME etc & if the Ram is at fault then you won't get to desktop & if you do it will freeze within minutes. Worth a try though |
bartsdadhomer (80) | ||
| 313691 | 2005-01-13 22:22:00 | yes, I do have intel extreme graphics, but it always has worked perfectly. I am planning on getting a ATI radeon soon but I dont have the money at the moment. I have scanned the computer for viruses and im currently scanning for spyware. There were no viruses. But, I looked in the virus cheast of my Avast! anti virus, and I found explorer.exe was infected by Win32: Trojan-gen. {VC} . I thought this might be the culprit. I also cleaned my cache files. |
oxygen (6861) | ||
| 313692 | 2005-01-13 22:55:00 | Your on the right track,First step is to ensure the software enviorment is clean and examine the startup, I would take it a step futher and disable every entry under startup,then use the comp and see if the problem goes away. It may well be a legitmate program that is crashing rather then malicious software upto hijinks. Then its time to look at the hardware,During this time of year heat can be an issue (not so much this year,but after we lynch the woman who owns a black cat that should change).It is a good idea to look at your cpu heatsink and see how much fluff it has sucked in, I see them near solid with gunk quite often, That has to impede airflow in a big way. As noted the PSU is quite often a weak link, As to the ram I have seen it cause intermitent errors in all and any stage of running windowsXP so don't discount the possibility. Memtest86 is a good start, But a run with no errors doesn't discount it entirely, The only action that does is replacing it with a known good item. |
Metla (12) | ||
| 313693 | 2005-01-13 23:46:00 | A memory test programme can only prove that the memory works with that memory test programme. :D More realistic severe tests are installing an OS or compiling a linux kernel. |
Graham L (2) | ||
| 313694 | 2005-01-14 00:41:00 | Amazinlgy, nobody has suggested what I consider to be the first step in throubleshooting freezes. Right click My Computer, and click Manage. Go to Event Viewer and then System in that. Look around the time of the crash, you should see an Error event just before the time of the crash (or at the time of the crash). To help find it, look just before the starting up events, the first of them being something like: Microsoft (R) Windows (R) 5.01. 2600 Service Pack 2 Uniprocessor Free. You will have to doubleclick the events to see their information. This one's Source will be "eventlog". Hth, Cheers George |
george12 (7) | ||
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