[squeek500]

Hi,

I'm hoping that someone might be able to help me with a problem on my system please.

I run a 1.5Ghz Pentium 4 with 512MB RAM, WinXP SP2. I have recently started getting a problem where my PC will just crash and freeze completely. It semi resembles the PC in hibernation mode, but without waking up. This can happen at any point, and any frequency. For example, this morning, it happened 3 times during 3 separate boot ups. Yesterday it happened when i was surfing the net using Opera, but I did have times when it wouldn't freeze, like for the last hour it hasn't frozen on me (yet). What happens is the PC becomes unresponsive, so no keyboard press or mouse click starts it again, the power remains on, the CD-ROM light stay permanently on and the screen goes completely blank.

I know I have enough power in the PSU, and the PC had no problems before, nor have I installed any new software, in fact I've uninstalled loads to try and sort it. I've run AVG, Spybot and Defender, but nada...

One other thing was around a month ago (when I didn't have a net connection temporarily), everytime I started my PC, it would have a pop-up box asking me to switch-to or cancel, the cancel was blanked out, and when I pressed switch to, the start menu popped-up. This doesn't occur now?

Any help on this would be invaluable... thank you!!

Cheers
Squeek

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Oh, sorry, and one thing to add. I had a look through the previous posts on other topics, and so have run also Security Task Manager, and this found the Java platform to be the highest risk. I'm not sure if that is of any relevance...

Thanks again

[squeek500]

Oh, sorry, and one thing to add. I had a look through the previous posts on other topics, and so have run also Security Task Manager, and this found the Java platform to be the highest risk. I'm not sure if that is of any relevance...

Thanks again

[Titan8990]

Start by downloading speedfan here: http://www.almico.com/speedfan.php. Report all your temperature and voltages.

[squeek500]

Hi, thanks for getting back to me, the results are...

Win9x:NO 64Bit:NO GiveIO:YES SpeedFan:YES
I/O properly initialized
Linked ISA BUS at $0290
Linked Intel 82801BA ICH2 SMBUS at $0500
Found nVidia GeForce2 MX / MX 400
Linked nVidiaI2C0 SMBUS at $3D403E3F
Linked nVidiaI2C1 SMBUS at $3D403637
Scanning ISA BUS at $0290...
Winbond W83627HF (ID=$21) found on ISA at $290
SuperIO Chip=Winbond W83627HF
Scanning Intel SMBus at $0500...
Scanning I2CNVidia SMBus at $3D403E3F...
Unknown Winbond1=$3535 ID=$20 on SMBus at $28
Unknown Winbond2=$5000 ID=$56 on SMBus at $28
Address $30 appears to be WRITE ONLY...
Scanning I2CNVidia SMBus at $3D403637...
SMART Enabled for drive 0
Found WDC WD1200BB-00RDA0 (120.0GB)
Found ACPI temperature (40.5C)
End of detection

Temp1 = 21C
Temp2 = 44C
Temp3 = 128C
HD0 = 22C
Temp1 = 41C

I'm guessing that the temp3 is way too high, but no idea what it is connected to?

Thanks

[squeek500]

Sorry, and...

VCOREA = 1.68V
VCOREB = 1.46V
+3.3V = 3.22V
+5V = 5.08V
+12V = 11.55V
-12V = -11.21V
-5V = -4.75V
+5VSB = 5.35V
VBAT = 3.22V

[Titan8990]

We need to find out what temp 3 is. I suggest refraining from use of your computer until we can get this figured out. 128C is hot enough to fry any componant you have in your system. I'm surprised anything is even functioning under that heat. Hopefully it is an error in the speedfan program...

While your computer is running remove the side pannel from your computer. Don't touch anything while the computer is running but just take a look and see if notice if there are any fans that are not running.

If you see that all your fans are running then we will check your system BIOS for temperatures. You can enter your system BIOS by hitting F2 or Del on startup. There should be some kind of hardware monitoring in the BIOS. The BIOS should tell you more specifically what each temperature is.

Let me know the results of these checks.

Edited by Titan8990, 23 May 2007 - 03:35 PM.

[squeek500]

ok, i've checked the fans and they're all on. There are three in the system. PSU, CPU and case fans. All are running and circulating air. According to the BIOS, the CPU fan is running, the system fan is not. The CPU s 43C, but that's th only temp in the BIOS.

I've now turned the machine off and using a laptop

[squeek500]

I've been doing some digging on the net, and found that the 128C may be just an indicator of a limit, so I downloaded everest which indicates that the temperatures are 17C for M/Board, 46C for CPU and 33C for HDD. The CPU fan is running at 2637RPM, and all the voltages are the same apart from the +5VSB which is 4.85V.

I hope this adds to finding the resolution. If you need specs or anything, please let me know. I recently installed an extra 256MB of RAM and I've only got 9% HDD storage left on my C: where XP is. (Equates to 919MB free). The only system change I can think of was installing a HDD fan which I have now turned off. This used the same power cable as the HDD's one. Nevertheless, the problem only occured at least a month after installing these components.

[Titan8990]

Your temps look good. I don't think this causing the crashes but it is best to always have atleast 15% of your HDD free. I will post back tomarrow once I have thought about this a bit more.

[anzenketh]

Lets Go ahead while he thinks about that take a look at your hdd.

Download HDtune in my signature and give it run.

You want to do the slow scan not the fast scan.

[squeek500]

Thanks guys, I'll run the HDTune as soon as I'm back at my desk this afternoon and let you know the results.

[squeek500]

Hi, I've run HDTune, and have 0.0& blocks damaged, so all looks good there, details are...


HD Tune: WDC WD1200BB-00RDA0 Error Scan

Scanned data : 114427 MB
Damaged Blocks : 0.0 %
Elapsed Time : 38:51

I will say that the temp went up during the scan from 23C to 41C...

[squeek500]

I have managed to uninstall a load of applications so have approx 15% space free. I'm temped to reformat the c: drive and reinstall windows XP reinstalling all my apps to a larger partition. Do you think this might help?

It has happened again twice last night. I was using Opera during the first time, and IE7 during the second. It also crashed to it's weird state twice during the boot sequence after the first time. Once almost straight away after switching on, and once during or literally just after completing the automated chkdsk function. I've hunted through the event viewer and cannot find an error instance of anysort, although that's not to say I'm necessarily looking in the right place.

Thanks for your continued help

[anzenketh]

We need to run memory diagnostics

Download MEMtest86 in my signature.

Here is a guide for MEMtest86

Go ahead and run this test overnight and report if you got any errors.

[squeek500]

Hi, I ran MEMtest86 overnight last night and there were no errors reported.