Freezing problem in Windows XP Pro

[ShoobieRat]

I agree with almost everyone who's posted. You've either got a RAM issue, a power issue (too little power causing brown-outs), a temperature problem, or you could have a faulty HDD. Lots of things can cause a computer to hang.

If XP is locking up on you, you know it's XP by the way it either never comes back on, or if the active-desktop crashes. Otherwise you almost always have something hardware realated going on.

 

[MrBleeble]

Thanks for your reply but:

You've either got a RAM issue

See memtest86 results above

a power issue (too little power causing brown-outs)

I have a 400W PSU. I know I didn't state that before though.

a temperature problem

There is no way it is a temperature problem. The computer is idle, and the temps for my system are quite low even under a lot of stress.

or you could have a faulty HDD. Lots of things can cause a computer to hang

I could have yes, but I don't really see anything that suggest this....I mean I *only* get this problem when the computer is idle, and never during normal use

If XP is locking up on you, you know it's XP by the way it either never comes back on, or if the active-desktop crashes

Could you describe the active desktop crashing please? Maybe it's that....

 

[ShoobieRat]

When all the icons go away, and the start menu goes away, and the right-click menu won't work, etc, etc...and all yer left with is the background wallpaper...that's an active-desktop crash. Usually you just have to wait for the time-out throw for Windows to restart the desktop.

So you know it's not a temp problem, huh? With a poor cooling setup (or a faulty one) even at idle things can get hot. Still, we'll put that aside.

You know, I was just thinking about this for a minute, and I remembered that there used to be (still is in some cases) a problem with certain mobo's and RAM combinations causing computers to freeze during periods of idle-time. What is your mobo and RAM?

Here's another brainstorm you need to check out. What do you have as your Power settings in Windows? You know, for putting the computer in standby, when to turn of the screen, hard drives, etc? Power management, in the control panel. Unless this is a laptop you should never have your HDDs turn off. That can often cause problems. What else do you have set in there?

 

[MrBleeble]

Motherboard: Gigabyte GA-8IEXP
RAM: 2 x 256MB PC2100 (Samsung I think??) consecutive serial numbers

 

[neversleeps]

i also tried the turning off the hdd feature after a certain amount of time on my desktop and it caused quite a few problems crashes and such, turned it back off and all was well.

i would maybe think about some of the services and processes that start when ur computer is idle such as indexing and all the other bs that microshit puts in there. if its trying to run a corrupted file(s) when the computer is idle and that may be crashing it but i agree i cant c it bein hardware or nething when u can stress it for hours playin system intensive games like doom.

i saw u didnt have ne antvirus installed i would at least do an online scan at sites like trend micro's housecall or something also some viruses r named ctfmon.exe altho it looks like u have office installed and its a pretty much worthless but legitimate process for office.

also i havent installed sp2 as im sure its still problematic with certain hardware, i kno some software is, so that could b causing some problems as well. if u have sp2 installed i assume u have all the windows updates as well as current drivers if not do that as well.

and i dont kno how bittorent will like it when the hdd's shut off cuz the computers idle when its tryin write the stuff uve dloaded unless somehow it keeps it all in memory etc.

thats my 2 cents

 

[MrBleeble]

Bittorrent makes it die after about 10-20 minutes and the hard drive was set to turn off after 2 hours or something....even with that off I get the same problem

I had the same problems before SP2

Thanks for the help so far guys....

 

[Joeisalsocool]

Have you thought about Virtual Memory. When I run FarCry with low VM it uses 700MB it's self, then steals ram from other running processes. I would guess that its stealing too much from explorer.exe which is the desktop. How much VM do you have?

 

[MrBleeble]

You've completely lost me....

one more thing: When I run winamp and play mp3s continuously I can leave it for like 6 hours downloading and it doesn't freeze....anyone got any ideas?

 

[neversleeps]

start it in safe mode with networking and start bittorent and see if it crashes it, maybe we can narrow it down to windows crashing itself or another piece of software running in the background conflicting

 

[Joeisalsocool]

Check the Virtual Memory please!