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Cyan~Fire

My computer is hanging lately. It happens soon after I turn it on, but basically randomly after that. For example, it hung in Firefox just after I logged in, at the logon screen when I left it waiting for a bit, and even in the CMOS setup. I wasn't even doing anything in CMOS when it hung, I was actually looking up stuff on another computer. There are no suspicious messages in the event log. I am using Windows 2000, though I doubt it's a software issue.

So, anyone have any ideas? Temperatures reported by the motherboard seem normal. I am about to run that memory tester program recommended here a while ago, I'll tell you what I find from that.
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Dr Brain · Posted: Fri May 05, 2006 9:12 am *Post maybe stupid* Post subject:

Yes, test the memory first. Then boot to something like knoppix and make sure it crashes there too, to eliminate the possibility of a software problem.
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Cyan~Fire · Posted: Fri May 05, 2006 12:15 pm *Post maybe stupid* Post subject:

One pass in the memory tester came up with no errors. And since it hung in CMOS, I doubt it's a Windows problem.

Since it only occurs soon after the computer is started, I guess that means some part isn't functioning properly until it warms up. Any ideas? I have one harddrive that doesn't like starting up when it's already warm, so at least that one isn't the issue.

Specs:
CPU: AMD Duron (1.2gHz... yes, I should upgrade)
Motherboard: ASUS A7V880 with 512MB of RAM
Harddrives: Both Western Digital, 40g and 80g
Video: some PNY card with GF4
One floppy drive, a Sony CD-RW drive, and an Acer DVD-ROM drive.

Mr Ekted · Movie Geek Gender: Joined: Feb 09 2004 Posts: 1379 Offline

Run a RAM test for an hour. Memory going bad isn't going to fail in one pass. You'll get 1 bit failing every thousand times, and only when it changes from one specific value to another (eg 0 to 1), and only when neighboring traces are at specific values.

Next suspect is the power supply. If you have a spare, it's the easiest thing to try.

Then pull the h/d and boot from floppy.

It took me 6 months to figure out why my machine kept suddenyl shutting off all by itself. It turned out to be the Intel heat sink clamp was so tight it was bending my Asus mobo. A $5 replacement clamp solved the problen, but not until I bought a new mobo, RAM, CPU, and power supply.

Dr Brain · Posted: Fri May 05, 2006 4:57 pm *Post maybe stupid* Post subject:

Sorry, I missed the bit about hanging in the setup. That probably (not for certain, though) rules out HDD failure as a cause.

Check all the wires inside the case to make sure they're secure.

Cyan~Fire · Posted: Sat May 06, 2006 11:08 am *Post maybe stupid* Post subject:

Well the RAM test ran for about 30 minutes, one pass in this program consists of something like 8 different tests.

How could the power supply cause a hanging problem? Could it be a bad voltage, because my 12V seems a bit low (it hangs around 11.4V).

Maybe I'll just upgrade to 64-bit with a new mobo and CPU like I've been wanting to. At least that would rule out those parts. (And I don't have an Intel CPU.

)

Hookerella79 · Guest Offline

I once had a problem sort of like that where my pc would slow down or crash because I has 2 hd's in. I unplugged one and made sure it was master, set BIOS to default and it worked fine. Put old one back in and both hd's worked.

Cyan~Fire · Posted: Sat May 13, 2006 1:13 pm *Post maybe stupid* Post subject:

Well, it seems to have at least improved, if not stopped altogether. All I did since the last freeze was poke around in the case a bit (which I had done before), I guess is was some faulty connection.

Thanks for all the response.

Animate Dreams · Posted: Mon May 15, 2006 12:34 pm *Post maybe stupid* Post subject:

You know, every time I have a problem like this, it's something incredibly dumb. Like last time, my flash drive, it seems, was crashing my computer. I don't know how, but when I took it out, the problems stopped. But I ran memtest, which actually still reports errors, but memtest didn't find any until running for about 7 hours. I know your problem is fixed, but next time I would suggest running your memory checker program overnight, just to be safe.

Cyan~Fire · Posted: Mon May 15, 2006 2:58 pm *Post maybe stupid* Post subject:

Well, since it was happening every time I figured it would be an obvious fault in the memory that would probably be detected in the first set of tests. Maybe I'll re-run the program for longer later, though, thanks for the suggestion.