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OT-ROT - stupid computer

Hi everybody,

Another Rule of Tim post for you.

For the last week or so, my damn computer has kept locking up. As in freezing. No mouse movement, no disk activity, no power off button, no nothing. The hard reset button is the only thing that brings it round. It does it every few hours.

Sometimes when it does this, as it restarts, when it's about to go to the Win XP Pro login screen, it flashes up a blue screen of death (not long enough to read it) and reboots. The only way to get it out of this is to start up in Safe Mode and use System Restore to take it back to a previous restore point. This works for a while, but then it happens again.

I've used System Restore to take the whole thing back to early December, and this doesn't stop it crashing, even though it was running fine then. I've also tried unplugging all my USB peripherals (there are about 6), but this doesn't help either, so I don't think it's a peripheral thing, unless it's a CD drive playing up.

I'm properly virus protected (using AVG), use Spybot, and I'm hiding behind a router. I've not installed anything in the few days run-up to it starting crashing. The last few things I installed were a card reader (which I've removed and restore-pointed back over), and an iPod (which is now not connected, I've also restore-pointed back past this as well to no avail). I've now used System Restore to move everything back to normal again as it wasn't doing any good.

Any ideas? In the good old 486 days this happened to me and it was a faulty processor. Recommendations? My next port of call is to blow everything away and reinstall the O/S, but it will take me days to get it all back right again, and I have a nagging suspicion it won't solve the problem.

Thanks, David.

Reply to
David French
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David,

Check the CPU fan is running properly.....then try running with different RAM/Half your RAM

Neil

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But for work :

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!

Reply to
Neil Brownlee

no disrespect to neil, but i would go into

safe mode,

RUN

then type in,

msconfig

press enter

then disable everything thats listed in the far right hand tab, ( dont worry this can be reversed if you want later )

restart.

it sounds like a access violation, abit like trying to put your landy into reverse at 50 mph, just aint gunna happen. so your pc shuts down pronto.

hope this helps

Andy

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Reply to
Andy

David French posted ...

Is the card reader still installed ? You don't say who the manufacturer is but Kodak and their OEM supplier, Lexar Media, have some issues especially with USB card readers. I helped a friend solve his problem with this type of hardware doing exactly this same 'freeze' thing .. he had to do a BIOS update and a driver update .. In the end he swapped his card reader and everything worked well ..

There should be updated drivers on the Kodak and Lexar websites that address the problem .. ;)

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Reply to
Paul - xxx

Check your CPU fan. This is a classic symptom of the CPU getting too hot. Had the same issue myself a good few years ago (when I had a Cyrix P166+ and thought it was fast!) and took me ages before I took the lid off to find the fan motor had died and it wasn't turning at all.

Paul

Reply to
Paul Everett

Hmmm...not a bad idea.

But David says "Sometimes when it does this, as it restarts, when it's about to go to the Win XP Pro login screen, it flashes up a blue screen of death (not long enough to read it) and reboots. The only way to get it out of this is to start up in Safe Mode and use System Restore to take it back to a previous restore point. This works for a while, but then it happens again."

Which implies it's BSOD'ing before it runs the login startup programs. This points to a service causing the access violation.

What hardware have you installed recently? Have you "upgraded" along with MS updates. Are you running SP1? Lots of questions I know!

Neil

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Reply to
Neil Brownlee

Reply to
G Jump

My 2p worth........

My old system exhibited these exact symptoms, was told it was down to 'leaky capacitors'

Look at your motherboard, if the capacitors have bulgy tops, then you need a new board.

Do a goggle for 'bad capacitors' for more info

Reply to
SimonJ

In article , SimonJ writes

'Ping!' back on topic again. That sounds very Land Roverish to me :)

Regards,

Simonm.

Reply to
SpamTrapSeeSig

I use the MS auto update feature so I have whatever patches MS choose to give me. But rolling back the system seems to get rid of those (?) so it shouldn't be that. I'm on SP1.

I've checked the fan and that's fine. The CPU temp (which the BIOS monitors) is fine. I've done a thorough POST on the memory and it looks OK but the next step is to take it out and swap it around.

I'm just about to try the msconfig suggestion. Thanks for your input everybody, this is really irritating...

David

Reply to
David French

Just rebuilding a colleagues machine with a similar fault. For some reason the BIOS had reset the processor speed from an XP2500+ (the correct setting) to a 3200+ which had overclocked everything and corrupted the hard disk in a big way. Thankfully all his documents are intact but a full system rebuild is required. Answer: Check the processor is still running at the speed it is supposed to and not faster.....

Reply to
Phil Gardiner

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