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Random freezing and crashing in windows xp


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#1
rmco2003

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I've recently upgraded my PC's CPU and Graphics Card to a Pentium 4 3.2 Ghz processor with Hyperthreading and ATI Raedon X850 AGP graphics card. After upgrading I've experienced a lot of random freezing when doing simple tasks, and when I play 3D games, it randomly crashes the first time it crashed with no BSOD and I had to restart and the second time it crashed with a BSOD with an IRQ_ something error message. I haven't needed to reformat as it hasn't given me an error when starting up with the new hardware inserted as it usually does as I took precautions with uninstalling my old graphics card drivers. However I've not uninstalled my processor drivers before inserting the new one so I'm not sure if that's what's causing the problem. I've noticed however that in the Task Manager (CTRL+ALT+DELETE) that in the performance tab it has 2 graphs for my single processor, and 2 instances of the same processor in the CPU tab on the Device Manager, I'm not sure if this is supposed to happen or not with Hyperthreading enabled, but it is odd.

Both pieces of hardware are new and there's no evidence of them being tampered with, I've inserted them properly and everything works fine except for this case of random crashing and freezing that keeps happening.

Most, if not all of the freezing happens when I use Firefox, I'm not sure if this it's just the program itself that's messing around, but it never used to randomly lock up when I was browsing the internet, Internet Explorer hasn't locked up on me as of yet though so I'm really confused as to what the problem might be and if there's even a problem in the first place...

Could anyone help me?

Edited by rmco2003, 11 December 2005 - 03:38 PM.

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#2
wannabe1

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rmco2003...

Try uninstalling the Firefox from Add or Remove Programs. Then download a fresh copy and install it. Lst us know if that eliminates the system hangs.

wannabe1
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#3
rmco2003

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I've tried reinstalling Firefox, and reinstalling windows, both have had no effect, so I'm guessing it'd most likely be the power supply not feeding enough power to the CPU/Graphics Card since it seems to freeze when it's heavy on resources like when playing a demanding game. Is there any sites where I can get a cheap power supply that'll give me around 500-600 watts?
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#4
superjaded

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cheap power supplies provide cheap power in my opinion, spent an extra 20 bucks or so and get good power
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#5
rmco2003

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Well I don't really have that kinda money at the moment, so I just found a 500 watt PSU for £20, hopefully this will get it working
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#6
rmco2003

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I've installed a new PSU and it hasn't helped... I got a response on an error report after my several crashes half an hour ago, and it said that upgrading my motherboard's bios would be the solution, I have the latest bios and I've checked my motherboard's supported CPUs and every one listed is supported. This left me with thinking it could be the FSB rating as there's a certain FSB level that most of them don't support but mine turned out to be one that it did support, so I'm stuck for a solution now, my PC works fine for the most part when doing normal tasks like browsing the internet, but when I try to play games that are demanding on hardware I get it freezing randomly within 1-5 minutes of play. Is it a faulty motherboard? CPU? Graphics card? I just don't know anymore, and it's just so much hassle to have to return all 3. Is there any way forward?
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#7
rmco2003

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I've investigated further and discovered that my Graphics card and my Belkin USB 2.0 PCI card share the same IRQ -> 16. Unfortunately they're both Non-PnP so I can't change either of their IRQs, the only solution I can think of is to remove the USB 2.0 card, but I'm not sure if there's any way I could have my cake and eat it too...
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#8
abdulla

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I have the same problem you are experiencing, recently i bought a 3500+ Athlon 64 with 1 Gb of memory, and nvidia Geforce 7800 GT.
And i am experiencing the same problems, such as fire fox crashing, but not windows explorer. In addtion whenever i tried running a game it crashes 5 seconds into the game and returns to windows. Moreover, the games i am using are the ones that came with the graphics card, i tried installing SP1 SP2 and reinstalling windows, plus downloading the latest drivers, and running tests on bth the RAM and the graphics card, but it seems to be no problem, plus i have a 600 W power supply. I am beggining to think its hardware compatibility.
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#9
superjaded

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i had a a similar problem with an asus board and NV 6800 , after long hours of trouble shooting and re installing both 32 bit and 64 bit windows, various driver versions and changing out various eguipment (including the board) we finally discovered it was the video card, system ran fine after replacing the 6800 with an identical replacement. a bad comoponent can seem ok and cause havoc on your system. Try a different video card and see if it helps.
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#10
mcpscomp

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ATI Card is some thing that I Like to have but I hate to deal with. They are so power full but only for some things and when you want to run some things else you will need different drivers...... And more than likely you will find the exact answer to your problem at ATI.com
What I would do if I in your shoes is I will Try all diffrent driver packages that ATI has to offer to that Model. For ATI card older driver doesn't mean bad. Find out the one that works for your use. Still buying ATI when I have Money but hornestly I hate it. Telling this story from years of using ATI and as a CANADIAN to. 99% it is your problem.
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