Intermittent lockups, need troubleshooting advice

On Sun, 23 May 2010 15:30:59 -0400, John
wrote:

On Sat, 22 May 2010 18:58:31 -0500, "Homer Jay Simpson"
wrote:


Have you looked at your System Event log in the Event Viewer to determine if
there were any Error events and the Source of that error?

It might be a Service that has failed to start.


The event log shows some warnings and errors but they nearly all seem
to be related to DHCP and apparently are non-fatal. And none of them
occur near the time of the last two lockups (which I happen to
remember).

John
Reply-to address is real

try all the event logs

On Fri, 21 May 2010 20:19:20 -0400, John wrote:

My computer has begun to exhibit some seriously flaky behavior lately
and I'm looking for some help in trying to figure out what's wrong.

The system is an M2N-SLI Deluxe with 2 GB RAM and an Athlon 64X2,
running Windows XP. It's about three years old and has been running
fine for all those three years except for a PSU failure about a year
ago. (I replaced the PSU.) There's been no new hardware added
recently and the only new software is some Yahoo games that my wife
DLs, plays for a while, and then removes. I run regular malware scans
and I've had no indication of any infection.

The problem that I'm seeing is intermittent and seemingly-random
lockups. By this I mean that the computer stops responding to mouse
clicks and keystrokes. The cursor still moves when I move the mouse,
but that's all. When this happens I have to do a hard reset, and when
I do it reboots and everything is fine again.

This started happening about 2-3 weeks ago, and it seems to happen at
random times and under no particular circumstances. Sometimes it's
fine for a week, other times it'll lock up several times in a day.

Today the problem got worse. It locked up and I reset it as usual,
and this time it failed to boot. It beeped once (as it normally does)
and displayed the first few lines of the POST screen (identifying the
board and the BIOS, I think) and then just sat there. I reset again
and this time it booted normally and it's once again running fine.

And here's another observation: On a couple of occasions, I was
working on our other computer (the "good" one) and found that I had no
Internet access. I walked downstairs to the "bad" computer and found
that it was in its locked-up state. I unplugged the bad computer from
the router and the good computer suddenly had its internet connection
back again.

In attempting to diagnose the problem, I've run the MS memory test (in
extended test mode) for about three hours without failure and I've run
chkdsk, also without failure.

So what the heck does all of this point to? Does anyone have any
suggestions either about what might be wrong, or what else to check?

In my experience, lockups tend to be caused by:

- Video issues (either card going bad or driver issue)
- Excess heat (bad cpu/vid card/chipset fan)
- Bad memory

Have you replaced your vid card driver recently (either manually or via
Windows Update)? Have you checked all your fans? The memtest utility
mentioned previously should address memory issues.

You say it happens randomly. Have you ever noticed it locked up when you
first sit down to use it, or do the lockups always occur *while* you're
using it. If it's the latter then try and be more cognizant of what you
did just prior to the lockup. If it happens right after clicking on
something then the likelihood is high that it's video related (the system
is trying to display something that it can't display).

On 24 May 2010 11:24:01 -0500, Foke wrote:


So what the heck does all of this point to? Does anyone have any
suggestions either about what might be wrong, or what else to check?

In my experience, lockups tend to be caused by:

- Video issues (either card going bad or driver issue)
- Excess heat (bad cpu/vid card/chipset fan)
- Bad memory

Have you replaced your vid card driver recently (either manually or via
Windows Update)?

Nope

Have you checked all your fans?

Yup. Dusted everything out, too (actually found it wasn't as dusty as
I expected, but blew everything out anyway).


The memtest utility
mentioned previously should address memory issues.

I haven't yet had a chance to try memtest 86+ but I will


You say it happens randomly. Have you ever noticed it locked up when you
first sit down to use it, or do the lockups always occur *while* you're
using it. If it's the latter then try and be more cognizant of what you
did just prior to the lockup. If it happens right after clicking on
something then the likelihood is high that it's video related (the system
is trying to display something that it can't display).

I've been watching for patterns of what I was doing and I haven't
noticed anything consistent. Sometimes it locks while in use,
sometimes while it's just sitting there unused (i.e., I've walked away
and come back later to fnd it locked up). It's hard to say if it
happens right after clicking on something because the only way I
notice it's locked is that I click on something and don't get a
response. But I don't know whether it locked at that moment or 10
seconds earlier or two hours earlier if I happened to be away for two
hours. I did on one occasion think to look at the tray clock when it
was locked and I found that it had locked several hours earlier while
I was out of the house and it was unused.

John

Reply-to address is real

On 5/23/2010 3:28 PM, John wrote:
On Sun, 23 May 2010 12:48:13 +0100, Peter Johnson
wrote:

On Fri, 21 May 2010 20:19:20 -0400,
wrote:

My computer has begun to exhibit some seriously flaky behavior lately
and I'm looking for some help in trying to figure out what's wrong.


I think I'd be inclined to look at the PSU.

What would you look for? And how would you look?

John
Reply-to address is real

I was going to say the same. I had a similar issue with random lockups,
screen freezing etc.
Turns out my original 550W PSU had gotten a little old and tired and I
had added in a newer CPU, more RAM and a few bigger hard drives. Once I
swapped it for a newer 700W, issues have gone.

J

--
Jethro[AGHL] aka Phat_Jethro
Reply Email: jethro86 (at) gmail (dot) com

On Mon, 24 May 2010 20:07:21 -0400, John wrote:


I did on one occasion think to look at the tray clock when it
was locked and I found that it had locked several hours earlier while
I was out of the house and it was unused.

That probably eliminates video driver problems as the issue, but doesn't
necessarily eliminate video as the culprit. I don't recall you mentioning
if you have a discrete video card or are using onboard video. If it's a
discrete card then be aware that many of those have fans too.

To eliminate excess heat as the issue, do you have any utilities that show
your system temps?

Phat_Jethro wrote:
On 5/23/2010 3:28 PM, John wrote:
On Sun, 23 May 2010 12:48:13 +0100, Peter Johnson
wrote:

On Fri, 21 May 2010 20:19:20 -0400,
wrote:

My computer has begun to exhibit some seriously flaky behavior
lately and I'm looking for some help in trying to figure out
what's wrong.

I think I'd be inclined to look at the PSU.

What would you look for? And how would you look?

John
Reply-to address is real

I was going to say the same. I had a similar issue with random
lockups, screen freezing etc.
Turns out my original 550W PSU had gotten a little old and tired and I
had added in a newer CPU, more RAM and a few bigger hard drives. Once
I swapped it for a newer 700W, issues have gone.

I had a similar problem with a way underused brand new 600W cheapo supply. After
about 3 months use, it finally smoked, solving the problem. The 400W brand name
supply I replaced it with had no more problems.