Computer about to be thrown out of the window

["Followup-To:" header set to 24hoursupport.helpdesk.]
Trent SC wrote:

My colleague has mongrel PC with the following spec:
ECS P61WT-A+ board with a Celeron 766, 384MB RAM, onboard Intel i810
^^^

graphics, 10GB HDD and running Windows 98se. The BIOS is Award Modular v
6.00 PG; P61WT-A+ Ver. 1.0h 11/08/1999. Do you need any more information?

Having read (and snipped) your tribulations, my money's on the mobo. I
don't think ECS stands very high on the confidence chart, from what
I've heard here and there. (No, I've not used an ECS board myself.)

--
Blinky Linux Registered User 297263

Who has implemented Usenet Solution #45933:
Now killing all posts made with User-Agent G2

Hi There,

I Sympathise with you
I've had mine almost 8 years, I keep updating it at a helluva cost
and it's getting slower and slower and confusing
I have the monitor on the window sill
and my good lady has to stop me several times per day from pushing it out of
the window

Alf






"Trent SC" wrote in message
...
Bloody computers!

My colleague has mongrel PC with the following spec:
ECS P61WT-A+ board with a Celeron 766, 384MB RAM, onboard Intel i810
graphics, 10GB HDD and running Windows 98se. The BIOS is Award Modular v
6.00 PG; P61WT-A+ Ver. 1.0h 11/08/1999. Do you need any more information?

It's been hanging on a regular basis (3 or more times a day, often when
online - IE6), so I opted to install Windows XP this afternoon, and took
the opportunity to remover the slightly ancient Trident 9440 graphics card
and return to the onboard graphics. I also replaced the hard drive with a
spare, freshly formatted 15GB FAT32 Seagate drive, just in case it all
went pear-shaped. I also replaced the RAM, going from 128 to 384 with a
pair of fresh sticks which tested fine on two memory testers.

The installation went fine, but the computer hung during the installation
of SP2 (the very first thing I did after XP was on) and while SP2 took
fine once I'd rebooted, and Office 2000 went on fine, it's continued to
hang, most often when I'm in My Computer and mousing over an icon in Tiles
view format. And I didn't get a chance to go online before it hung, so I
just took out the new hard drive and shoved the old one back in before I
lost it completely.

This is driving me crazy - I'm using different graphics, new RAM, new hard
drive and new system and application software. The only common factors
which might have an influence are the PSU, motherboard and processor.
There are no heat issues going on and the two fans - PSU and CPU are
spinning efficiently. I can only think that there must be something
fundamental going on in the motherboard or processor, but if anyone else
has any brillinat ideas, I'd be very, very pleased to hear them!

I was walking down the street, minding my own business, when on Sun,
6 Feb 2005 21:27:14 -0000, "Trent SC" screamed
from behind the mulberry bush:

Bloody computers!

My colleague has mongrel PC with the following spec:
ECS P61WT-A+ board with a Celeron 766, 384MB RAM, onboard Intel i810
graphics, 10GB HDD and running Windows 98se. The BIOS is Award Modular
v 6.00 PG; P61WT-A+ Ver. 1.0h 11/08/1999. Do you need any more
information?

It's been hanging on a regular basis (3 or more times a day, often when
online - IE6), so I opted to install Windows XP this afternoon, and took
the opportunity to remover the slightly ancient Trident 9440 graphics
card and return to the onboard graphics. I also replaced the hard drive
with a spare, freshly formatted 15GB FAT32 Seagate drive, just in case
it all went pear-shaped. I also replaced the RAM, going from 128 to 384
with a pair of fresh sticks which tested fine on two memory testers.

The installation went fine, but the computer hung during the
installation of SP2 (the very first thing I did after XP was on) and
while SP2 took fine once I'd rebooted, and Office 2000 went on fine,
it's continued to hang, most often when I'm in My Computer and mousing
over an icon in Tiles view format. And I didn't get a chance to go
online before it hung, so I just took out the new hard drive and shoved
the old one back in before I lost it completely.

This is driving me crazy - I'm using different graphics, new RAM, new
hard drive and new system and application software. The only common
factors which might have an influence are the PSU, motherboard and
processor. There are no heat issues going on and the two fans - PSU and
CPU are spinning efficiently. I can only think that there must be
something fundamental going on in the motherboard or processor, but if
anyone else has any brillinat ideas, I'd be very, very pleased to hear
them!
You should really try different memory or check if you bios can set
slower timings for the memory.
Also, if possible, disable some chacheing (video or system bios) and
check if it can help you.

In agreeement with Michael do try different RAM, or try installation with
the old stick (128 ?) or just the new chip. The hang is probably from a
bad memory address in one of the chips.

I'll give it a go, although the problem was occurring with the old memory,
and that's now in a drawer - the computer has a new 256 and 128 stick, so
we're talking about completely different memory.

Thanks also to the other post - how do I disable L2 cache, please?

TIA


While the PC is booting, you have to go into the BIOS. Some, but not
all, BIOS will allow you to disable the L2 cache as one of the menu
features.


---
"I think you need to get bent, asshole. Bend over and let me shove a
vibrating dildo up your ass and give you a blow job. You need to learn
how to shut up, assballs"

Zittmutter AKA Dr Zonk offers McDougal some oral carnal knowledge in Message-ID:

I was walking down the street, minding my own business, when on Sun,
06 Feb 2005 22:29:25 +0100, Mxsmanic screamed
from behind the mulberry bush:

Trent SC writes:

Thanks for the reply. As I said, the memory is different, I'm now using the
on-board graphics instead of a graphics card, the hard drives are different
and the operating system is new, and yet the symptoms are the same as
before, so I'm not sure how your suggestions apply in this situation.

You can probably safely exclude everything that has changed: graphics
card, disk, RAM, OS and applications. So ... what has _not_ changed?
The source of the problem must reside in some part of the system that
has not changed. Motherboard, network card, other PCI or similar
extension cards, BIOS settings, etc. It's probably something that is
not continuously used, since the machine hangs almost at random.
Something that hasn't changed has a problem and hangs the machine when
it is used. I'd say extension cards should be looked at first, hardware
and software. With those ruled out, there's not much else left besides
tne motherboard, and the processor itself.

Another possibility is the motherboard as it warms up will have an
open or short because of metal expansion.


---
"I think you need to get bent, asshole. Bend over and let me shove a
vibrating dildo up your ass and give you a blow job. You need to learn
how to shut up, assballs"

Zittmutter AKA Dr Zonk offers McDougal some oral carnal knowledge in Message-ID:

Trent SC writes:

There's only an HSP56 modem on the machine (no NIC) and the machine has
frozen with that both enabled and disabled in the BIOS. So it MUST be
either PSU, CPU or motherboard.

I can't think of a PSU problem that would abruptly cause the machine to
freeze. If the fans are running and the disks are turning, the PSU is
okay. That leaves CPU or motherboard.

Has the machine ever been subject to power surges or overheating?

The last time I had a CPU get sick, it produced exactly this kind of
mystery freeze-up, along with mysterious segment violations in programs
that had never shown the slightest trace of bugs before. For a long
time I thought it was an OS problem or a peripheral problem. But the
CPU got worse and worse and finally it became obvious that the
microprocessor had failed. This happened originally because it had
overheated for an extended period (12 hours at a stretch on multiple
occasions) because of a CPU fan failure. In the beginning it was a real
mystery.

--
Transpose hotmail and mxsmanic in my e-mail address to reach me directly.

There's only an HSP56 modem on the machine (no NIC) and the machine has
frozen with that both enabled and disabled in the BIOS. So it MUST be
either PSU, CPU or motherboard.

I can't think of a PSU problem that would abruptly cause the machine to
freeze. If the fans are running and the disks are turning, the PSU is
okay. That leaves CPU or motherboard.

Has the machine ever been subject to power surges or overheating?

The last time I had a CPU get sick, it produced exactly this kind of
mystery freeze-up, along with mysterious segment violations in programs
that had never shown the slightest trace of bugs before. For a long
time I thought it was an OS problem or a peripheral problem. But the
CPU got worse and worse and finally it became obvious that the
microprocessor had failed. This happened originally because it had
overheated for an extended period (12 hours at a stretch on multiple
occasions) because of a CPU fan failure. In the beginning it was a real
mystery.

The computer gets very light usage, although that doesn't mean the CPU isn't
failing, just that it might be taking longer to finally give up the ghost.
It sounds from the general opinion that I need to get a new board &
processor.

"Alf Keiles" wrote in message
...
| Hi There,
|
| I Sympathise with you
| I've had mine almost 8 years, I keep updating it at a helluva cost
| and it's getting slower and slower and confusing
| I have the monitor on the window sill
| and my good lady has to stop me several times per day from pushing it out
of
| the window
|
| Alf
|
Yeah - I upgraded over and over and eventually had such a mixed up batch of
parts, I finally started over. But thankfully it wasn't quite bad enough to
throw out the window - I gave it away.

This is driving me crazy - I'm using different graphics, new RAM, new hard
drive and new system and application software. The only common factors
which might have an influence are the PSU, motherboard and processor. There
are no heat issues going on and the two fans - PSU and CPU are spinning
efficiently. I can only think that there must be something fundamental
going on in the motherboard or processor, but if anyone else has any
brillinat ideas, I'd be very, very pleased to hear them!

I had a computer that would give intermittent problems. An Acer
P2. Nothing I could do would fix the problem. It was obviously
hardware, as is true of your situation, but I couldn't find the
defect. I always figured it must be the power supply or the
motherboard.

On Sun, 06 Feb 2005 23:07:10 +0100, Mxsmanic
wrote:


I can't think of a PSU problem that would abruptly cause the machine to
freeze. If the fans are running and the disks are turning, the PSU is
okay.

I've had that happen with an Enermax 365P PSU. Everything would seem
fine for a bit then I would get random freezes. It was an a bad PSU. I
put in a 400w Antec and the problem was solved.

Mxsmanic wrote:
Trent SC writes:


There's only an HSP56 modem on the machine (no NIC) and the machine has
frozen with that both enabled and disabled in the BIOS. So it MUST be
either PSU, CPU or motherboard.


I can't think of a PSU problem that would abruptly cause the machine to
freeze. If the fans are running and the disks are turning, the PSU is
okay. That leaves CPU or motherboard.

How do you say the PSU can't cause lockups?


Has the machine ever been subject to power surges or overheating?

The last time I had a CPU get sick, it produced exactly this kind of
mystery freeze-up, along with mysterious segment violations in programs
that had never shown the slightest trace of bugs before. For a long
time I thought it was an OS problem or a peripheral problem. But the
CPU got worse and worse and finally it became obvious that the
microprocessor had failed. This happened originally because it had
overheated for an extended period (12 hours at a stretch on multiple
occasions) because of a CPU fan failure. In the beginning it was a real
mystery.


I'm having symptoms similar to those of the OP, and have reason to
suspect past CPU overheating and/or past power problems. Am leaning
toward the P4 CPU as the cause.