Computer freezing

[Balrog]

Since February my computer has been behaving bizzarly. It locks up when I perfom certain functions with the same symptom the original poster mentioned. The mouse freezes, not only that the keyboard stops responding and a high pitched continous sound comes out of the speakers. The computer also reboots itself for no apparent reason from time to time.

Anyway to make things clear


Complete stall
--------------
- Mouse cursor freezes
- Keyboard stops responding
- Power button stops responding (the only way to reboot is at the wall)
- Fan changes noise slightly
- High pitched noise emmiting from speakers


What functions make it stall
----------------------------
- Filling a selection box in v6.0 of photoshop
- Saving anything in 3D Studio Max 2.5 or 3.0
- Loading some maps in CounterStrike
- During gameplay occasionally in CounterStrike
- Launching Unreal Tournament
- Launching Operation Flashpoint
- Checking hotmail (used to but now resolved)
- Using Flash MX

PC Specs
--------
PIII Slot 1 550
128 SD 100 Ram
Asus 5pci/1agp mobo
5500rpm 4.0gb HDD (primary)
7200rpm 19.0gb HDD (secondary)
300w power
Geforce 64mb 400mx
Creative 1024 Live!
Creative 8x DVD-ROM
HP 4x/2x/10x CD-rewriter
Floppy disk drive
Ethernet 10/100 mbs

Win98

Additional perehpherals

HP 3300 Scanner
Logictech Cordless keyboard
Microsof Wheelmouse

(n.b) My 17" sony draws its power from the pc.


What I have tried
-----------------
Re-installing Windows
Taking out the components listed in the next bit (what i know its not)
Using minimum set of drivers on startup
Changing ram slots (not the actual ram though)
Checking every component is properly installed.
Taking out components then running it.
Running the monitor off its own power source.
Limiting the ram to 64mb through msconfig

What I know its not
-------------------
HDD's either of them
Video Card
Sound Card
Network Card


Any help would be appreciated.


Thankyou for your time, patience and help.

------------------
Benjamin Kelly
kellydesign@hotmail.com

[Whyzman]

Hi Balrog,

I certainly would be concerned about the noise emanating from your speakers during this "deep freeze" situation! http://www.PCGuide.com/ubb/frown.gif

Freeze-ups are often caused by heat, RAM, or PSU. Just checking the number of devices you currently have running on your 300W PSU has me leaning to an overload situation. Or, at best marginal!

However, the sound might be your PSU running low on oxygen...er, I mean "coolness!" http://www.PCGuide.com/ubb/cool.gif

Have you some sort of monitoring (thermistor) on your MB? You might try entering the BIOS and check to see what temps are running. You could just let it idle with the BIOS screen on and see how it fares.

Oops, just reread your post and you're running an ASUS MB...I think these come standard with the PROBE utility. For sure I would bet a PSU Thermistor that will give you readings in the BIOS.

------------------
May all your dealings in life be win/win!


Whyzman
----------------------
Reserved for Punishing Humor...A Pessimist's blood is always B-negative!

[This message has been edited by Whyzman (edited 05-26-2002).]

[Balrog]

Ok, ive tested it and after a 'deep freeze' the tempurature is around 55 degrees C.

Im pretty sure that its not the temp though. Simply due to the fact that even if my room is freezing cold, I can make it 'deep freeze' the second I fill a selection box in photoshop, so within a minute of pressing the power button. From what I know and have read I'd be very suprised if the comp could overheat in 60 seconds from 1 command.

This has been bugging me since feb and really appreciate your help.

Thanks


Anyone that can crack this is a master...


------------------
Benjamin Kelly
kellydesign@hotmail.com

[mjc]

Asus mb and Creative soundcards can be a little hard to make "play nice"...in the manual for your board it should have a chart that details exactly what each PCI slot uses and shares with the other slots, I am leaning toward the sound and video sharing a resource that sometimes ends in a conflict/crash.

The vid card, being AGP, obviously, has only one place to go, so the 1st PCI slot should be open...(I believe most Asus boards shre PCI 1/AGP).

You did not mention a modem, slot 4 or 5 should be safe for the NIC and slot 2 or 3 should be ok for the sound card (depending on what the exact details are for your board)

------------------
mjc
Links list:Computer Links (http://www.dreamwater.org/tech/mjc/index.htm)

Celts are the men that heaven made mad, For all their battles are merry and their songs are all sad.

[Whyzman]

Ok, let's talk RAM! http://www.PCGuide.com/ubb/wink.gif

What do you have running in Task (Ctrl+Alt+Del)?

After you're booted up would you check your System Resources and see how much RAM is available? Start>Programs>Accessories>SystemTools>SystemInfor mation.

Came in slightly later than mjc, but yes would you let us know which slots you have the devices plugged into....

In Device Manager...do you have any (!)?

------------------
May all your dealings in life be win/win!


Whyzman
----------------------
Reserved for Punishing Humor...A Pessimist's blood is always B-negative!

[This message has been edited by Whyzman (edited 05-26-2002).]

[Balrog]

Thanks for the feedback guys its much appreciated.

Ok, after booting up my system resources are 92% free. Im guessing thats ok if not good.

The programs running are:

Explorer
Point32
Rundll
Systray

Point32 if the ms mouse driver (im 99% sure) and the rest are standard I believe.

There are no errors in the Device Manager.


About the PCI conflict, I checked that a while ago and it seems that alot of the PCI cards seem to be sharing the same IRQ, I moved some of them around in hopes of it solving something but I didn't get very far.

The PCI's are

- PCI 1 / AGP --- Geforce 2 440 mx
- PCI 2 --- Not in use
- PCI 3 --- Creative 1024 Live!
- PCI 4 --- 10/100 Network card
- PCI 5 --- Not in use
- PCI 6 / ISA (i think???) --- Not in use

If you want I can list all the IRQ's I can do that.

However I dismissed IRQ conflicts as being the source of the problem as the same problems occured when I took all the PCI cards out. And yes PCI 1 is not in use and never has been.


Despite this if you guys think I should change everything then I will be more than happy to do so http://www.PCGuide.com/ubb/smile.gif

One other thing I should mention is that originally when I assembled my PC I had an ultra 66 PCI card which I only recently took out and put the HDD's back into the mobo IDE slots. I did that after the problems started app

The HDD's are set up correctly, im sure of that.


(n.b) As I was typing this the computer shut itself down of its own accord. It has reset itself a few times before whilst I have been playing Counter Strike but it has never done that before. This suggests to me that there might be a sinister power problem somewhere.


Thanks again guys.

------------------
Benjamin Kelly
kellydesign@hotmail.com

[This message has been edited by Balrog (edited 05-28-2002).]

[Balrog]

In addition I thought I would add tempuratures and voltages incase any of you think it might be a power related problem. I don't know what the voltages mean but the temperatures look ok to me.


Mobo tempurature: 23C/73F
CPU tempurature: vareis between 47C/116F and 50C/122F
CPU fan speed: 4821 (looks good to me)

VCORE Voltage: 1.98V
+3.3 3.41V
+5 4.76V
+12 12.35V
-12 -11.95V
-5 -5.06V


Im not sure what to make of that but I hope someone can tell me its fine http://www.PCGuide.com/ubb/smile.gif

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Benjamin Kelly
kellydesign@hotmail.com

[ski]

The temps look good, but that 4.76 volt reading for the +5V leg looks a little low. And it may be causing your problems.
Normally a 300 watt PSM should be plenty sufficient to power your system, but unfortunately they are not all created equal.
Any chance that you can borrow a different 300 watt(or higher) unit to test this theory?

[Balrog]

Ah, its all starting to make sense now.

I just double checked and its a 250w. Would this explain the freezing, a power spike or lack of or something?

Thanks for that, I always thought it was the ram or mobo, im going to rip apart my other computer and see if its got a 300w.

Lets hope its the cause of the problems.


http://www.PCGuide.com/ubb/biggrin.gif


fingers crossed it might solve my problem.

------------------
Benjamin Kelly
kellydesign@hotmail.com

[ski]

RAM would be the next thing to check if a higher capacity PSM does not fix the problems.

[Balrog]

Ok,

At last I managed to dig up 64mb of sd100 ram, tried it and the same problems happened. Ive already tried different ram slots so I think we can easily eliminate RAM as a problem.


To test out the power I removed everything, the dvdrom, the cdrw, the network card, the soundblaster, the 2nd HDD and even the floppy drive and the exact same problem happened. In my opionion I think that its not a lack of power thats causing the problem. Please correct me if I am wrong.


I went through the asus manual and checked everything was set up correctly and as far as I can tell everything is set up fine.


I really do not know what the problem could be, ive tried everything I can think of...


I really do know what to do now. Im stuck, big time without a clue what to do.


Ski, thanks u are a great help.

------------------
Benjamin Kelly
kellydesign@hotmail.com

[joea64]

Looking over the symptoms, I'm pretty sure that what you have is similar to what I got faced with at the beginning of this month; an inadequate power supply coupled with a "marginal" heat situation. I had a four-year-old 250W PS, built before anyone had ever heard of Athlons or Durons, trying to run a system with two HD's, a CD-RW, a DVD, 56K modem, video capture card and 32MB video. It managed well enough from mid-September up into the beginning of May, though there were always the occasional inexplicable freezes - but then, about three weeks ago, the computer started freezing up if I so much as looked at it sideways. I fumbled around for a bit, then decided to try installing an AMD-certified 300W PS (guaranteed to work with my Duron) along with boosting the PC's cooling system (by installing an exhaust blower fan), and the results are pretty dramatic. I haven't had a _single_ hard-reboot freeze since then, and only about two application crashes (both with Netscape, notoriously crash-prone). Temperatures have been steady since then; the CPU has been running at about 103-104 degrees F, though since I put in a new secondary HD on Sunday (Western Digital 40GB ATA100/5400 RPM to go with my primary, a Maxtor 20GB ATA100/7200 RPM), the CPU has been running a few degrees hotter, about 109 - 112 degrees F (still very much within standard tolerances for Durons), and the CPU fan has been running at 3900 - 4000 rpm. System board temperatures have been rock steady at 75 - 77 degrees F. I don't have a way to measure the in-case temperature.

So, I would say your solution is fairly simple, and twofold; get that 300W PS installed, and look into getting a second fan for your system, preferably one with exhaust.

-Joe-

P.S. I'll have to try to look sometime into just how much power each component draws when operating and when idle.

Originally posted by Balrog:
Ah, its all starting to make sense now.

I just double checked and its a 250w. Would this explain the freezing, a power spike or lack of or something?

Thanks for that, I always thought it was the ram or mobo, im going to rip apart my other computer and see if its got a 300w.

Lets hope its the cause of the problems.


http://www.PCGuide.com/ubb/biggrin.gif


fingers crossed it might solve my problem.





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Alternate email: joea64@yahoo.com

[ski]

Balrog,

What is the voltage reading for the +5V leg with those cards and drives removed from service?

[Balrog]

Ok, I looked on ebuyer and came up with this, im going to the extreme I know but I wanna get a good power supply because I have loads of cards Im not even using and I wanna http://www.PCGuide.com/ubb/smile.gif

Plus its one less thing I will need to get when I replace my comp.

Ebuyer 550 Watt PSU P4 ready Twin Fan Retail Boxed £25.96 inc VAT (thats about $35)

Product Information


Very GOOD VENTILATION, Hot air is driven out at the back.
Meet global safety standard.
PROTECTION CIRCUITS:
over-loading
over-current
over-voltage
short-circuit


What do u think, should I go with that or should I go for a more expensive one from a more trusted brand?


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Benjamin Kelly
kellydesign@hotmail.com

[ski]

I've always been a believer in 'you get what you pay for', and hence am suspicious of low priced, high powered components.
If possible, see if you can get specs on it and compare them to the following for an Enermax 550 watt PSM:
3.3 volt - 40A
5.0 volt - 46A
12 volt - 24A
3.3V + 5.0V - 270 watts

If the specs for the Ebuyer unit are 80% or more of the above, then it's a good buy.
But if any of them fall way short, then pay the few extra $ and get a decent unit, like an Enermax or Antec 350 watt.

[Balrog]

Thanks for the advice I will look into it.

http://www.PCGuide.com/ubb/biggrin.gif

U've been a great help ski.

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Benjamin Kelly
kellydesign@hotmail.com

[ski]

Glad to try and help out, Balrog.

[Balrog]

My new PSU is on its way, ill let u know if it works http://www.PCGuide.com/ubb/smile.gif

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Benjamin Kelly
kellydesign@hotmail.com