[kingtaz]

hi there. i have posted in here: http://www.geekstogo...-t-t164381.html

......and have no malware apparant on my pc. The user who helped me out, Essexboy, has advised me to post in this thread as the problem appears to be hardware and not any kind of malware.

brief summary of what has happened:

* I cannot click the active window in whatever program i am running. I can see the window and everything looks normal but i cannot click on it at all. It happens on every program i run and at random times. i temporalily solve it by presseing Ctrl+Alt+Del and closing the task manager window


* PC just crashes for no apparant reason at startup and at times, during normal use. It is then a struggle to reset the pc to start-up fully again and requires several attempts to startup.

* Variuos hijackThis and spyware searches have been carried out ( see original post for details ) and no malware is apparant on my PC

Any help here will be greatly appreciated

Kingtaz

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I love a challenge.....!

Ok, can you please clarify the following for me :

1. Re. unable to click on active windows...what exactly happens? EG Does the mouse pointer disappear when placed over the active window or does it behave normally but clicking the mouse button simply has no affect on the window?

2. Re. crashing at start up & during normal use... Does the system completely freeze up or do you get a blue screen (BSOD) or does it randomly reboot?

Also could you post your system specs please? If you have a branded system such as a Dell or HP etc, then the system make/model will probably do. Otherwise, can you give me the specs for the cpu, memory, video card, motherboard (if possible), hard drive, power supply etc. Also the version of Windows plus any service packs would be very useful.

[Samm]

I love a challenge.....!

Ok, can you please clarify the following for me :

1. Re. unable to click on active windows...what exactly happens? EG Does the mouse pointer disappear when placed over the active window or does it behave normally but clicking the mouse button simply has no affect on the window?

2. Re. crashing at start up & during normal use... Does the system completely freeze up or do you get a blue screen (BSOD) or does it randomly reboot?

Also could you post your system specs please? If you have a branded system such as a Dell or HP etc, then the system make/model will probably do. Otherwise, can you give me the specs for the cpu, memory, video card, motherboard (if possible), hard drive, power supply etc. Also the version of Windows plus any service packs would be very useful.

[kingtaz]

Hi there Samm. Thanks for responding. Glad you like a challenge cos i think this one is a bit of a challenge!!

with regard to the first point, the mouse behaves normally but has no effect on the window at all. the only way i have found out how to temporalily address the problem is to press Ctrl+Alt+Del and then click on the close button of the task manager window twice and the window closes and things return to normal.

with regard to the second point, the system just freezes. everything looks normal but i just cant move the mouse or the keyboard. there are NO blue screens or messages. I always then press the reset button on my PC and it takes several attempts for the PC to load back up again. i sometimes even have to pull the plug out the mains to switch off the machine and then try to statrt the PC as normal.

With regards to my system, i have:

an AMD Athlon™ XP 2000+ 1.66GHz
1024MB RAM memory
Connect 3D Radeon 9550 graphics card
115GB Hard drive
320GB External hard drive
Windows XP Home Edition version 5.1.2600 Service pack 2 Build 2600

as for my motherboard and power supply, how do i find this out?


thanks and hope to hear from you soon

kingtaz

[Samm]

Ok, thanks for all the specs etc.
As for the motherboard info, can you download winaudit (see link below) and run that please.

http://www.pxserver.com/WinAudit.htm

When you run winaudit, wait for it to compile the report then save the report as an HTML Only file. Can you then email it to me as an attachment please? Email address is: [email protected]
This report will give me all the hardware & software info I need without having to ask you every time!

NB. winaudit actually creates 3 html files - eg if you call the report 'myreport' for example, it will create myreport.htm, myreport_left.htm & myreport_right.htm. I need all 3 files please.

Also, could you check the CPU temperatures? Check after the system has been in use for at least half an hour. You can use something like speedfan to check the temps :
http://www.tech-faq....mperature.shtml

When you run speedfan, obviously make a note of the cpu temperature but also, if there are any other temperatures reported above 45C make a note of them as well & let me know what they are.

[kingtaz]

hi. emailed you the winaudit files (the 3 of them) and heres the pther things you require:

from speedfan:

Temp1: 33C
Temp2: 46C
HDO: 41C
Temp1: 46C

also on the results: Fan1: 3184 RPM

is this enough? is there anything else on the results i should tell you?

cheers

kingtaz

[Samm]

Hi kingtaz

Thanks for the winaudit report & the temps. The current cpu temperature is OK but keep an eye on it & let me know if any of the temps go above 55C or if the HD0 temp goes above 45C.

I'm going to have a good look over the winaudit report now & will get back to you asap. In the meantime... the next time your system locks up etc, make a note of the time using the clock in Windows. After you reboot, check the event logs (in Administrative tools) for any errors that occured at that time. I already have your event logs in the winaudit report but obviously I have no way of knowing if any of them coincided with a system crash.

Also, check the power rating of the power supply. You'll need to open up the computer so you can see the power supply. There should a label on the side with max power output rating in watts. Let me know what this rating is & let me know what the brand name of the PSU is as well.

One other thing very quickly - have you noticed if having the external USB drive connected makes any difference to the problems you're having? i.e does the system lock up regardless of whether the drive connected or not.

Edited by Samm, 26 July 2007 - 05:46 PM.

[kingtaz]

hi

checked the power supply in the pc. The max rating is 375W. the brand of the power supply is called 'advance CWT-375ATX.

secondly, the external hard drive makes no difference to the crashes as at the moment, the external HD does not seem to be working and therefore is switched off. When trying to get the external HD to work, the lights on the power pack are working fine but the lights on the actual external HD itself do not light up and the Pc does not recognise that there is a external usb device connected.

Thirdly, here some info on when the ncrashes happen.

Fri 27th: 13.27, 19.04 and 5 times between 19.35 and 19.55

at 19.57, the screen went blank and into 'powersave mode' this is the first time this has occurred.

Sat 28th: 12.36


hope that all the info you're needing right now.

hope to hear from you soon

cheers

kingtaz

[kingtaz]

hi samm

you have any ideas yet about the probelm?

cheers

kingtaz

[kingtaz]

hi samm. ive just noticed something when the pc starts up. when its doing the memory test, the temperatures and fan speeds are displayed at the bottom. one however, called 'SYSFAN' reads at 0 RPM while the CPUFAN reads at around 3000 RPM. Do you think this is having an effect on the problems or should the SYSFAN be 0 RPM normally?

Cheers

Kingtaz

[Samm]

Hi Kingtaz

This is just a quick post to apologise for not getting back to you sooner. I was struck down with some type of gastric flu on Saturday morning & have only just recovered enough to get back online.

I will post again in a short while (ie tonight) once I've had a chance to go over all the info you've supplied me....

[Samm]

Okay, I'm back!

As I can't find anything obviously wrong, I have some suggestions that may help narrow it down instead.

1. Re. the system fan RPM. If you have a system (case) fan and it's connected to the motherboard as opposed to directly connected to the power supply, then you should get a non-zero RPM reading. However as your temperatures 'seem' ok at the moment, I wouldn't worry about investigating this just yet. That said, keep as eye on the temps, i.e check every half an hour for example to see if any of them have increased significantly as overheating would explain the type of symptoms you are receiving.

2. Re the PSU. 375W is not a lot of power to be honest, especially for a generic brand power supply. This may therefore be causing you problems. Best way to eliminate this possibility for now is to simply unplug any devices you don't absolutely need. In your case, I would suggest unplug all optical drives except one.

3. Re the optical drives... according to the winaudit log, you have 3 optical drives. Is this correct? If so, what interface does each one use? Winaudit reports one of them as being a SCSI drive but as it doesn't identify any SCSI controllers, then this seems unlikely. I am assuming that 2 of the drives are IDE and on the secondary IDE controller. Is the 3rd one also IDE & on the same controller as the hard disk or is it a USB device instead?

4. Re. the USB hard drive, as it doesn't work at the moment anyway, I suggest (if you haven't already done so) that you disconnect it completely from the system.

5. Can you run chkdsk please? Go to Start -> Run.. and type cmd into the run box. In the command window, type:
chkdsk /f /r c: <press enter>
You'll receive a message about it being unable to run chkdsk right now & do you wish to run it on reboot instead. Answer yes.
When it runs on reboot, check the summary message at the end for any bad sectors or other problems it may have found.

6. While I think of it (should have asked you this earlier really!), did anything in particular happen just before these problem began? i.e did you add or remove any hardware or software for example?

7. I noticed in the system event log in winaudit, there are a lot of CRT Invalid Display type errors messages listed. The log in winaudit only goes back as far as 24th July. If the log on your machine goes back further than this, can you check to see when these errors started? According to your previous thread in the Malware forum, you were advised to update your video card drivers. Assuming you did this, I'm interested to know whether these errors have only started since the update.

[kingtaz]

hi samm. thanks for replying. sorry to hear you were under the weather, hope your feeling much better now!


here goes......


Re. 1. when i opened the case up the fan did appear to be connected to the actual computer (screwed into a metal square type thing) rather than the power supply. i will keep checking the temps as well to see how they're going.

Re. 2. Do you suggest getting a new power supply that can cope with more wattage? is there any way of finding out what appliances are using what amount of wattage of the 375 available?

Re. 3. the 3 optical drives that i have will be my DVD R/RW drive and the DVD drive that i originally had in the pc when i bought it and i also have another one that is not an actual physical drive. i use that so when i play computer games on the pc, i dont need to insert the disk to play it. this 'drive' acts like a real drive by 'fooling' the pc game im running into thinking theres a disc inserted so the game can run. i need to run Daemon tools to make this work.

Now that i think of it, is there any need for a DVD R/RW and a normal DVD drive? i bought the DVD R/RW drive last year and installed it myself, removing the Rewritable CD drive i originally had in the pc from when i bought it. will this be using more power unneccessarily?

Re. 4. external USB hard drive is now disconnected

Re. 5. I will run chkdsk it after i post this reply and then post the results once i do so

Re. 6. the only hardware i have added is the DVD R/RW drive i mentioned eariler, the external hard drive and i also have a wireless router to enalble me to play online games on my PS2 console. the problem existed before the wireless router and the external hard disk drive were installed. However, i cannot remember exacltly when i installed the new DVD R/RW drive.

I had problems with my pc before (last august) and posted on this forum. the problem was spyware and it was resolved. after this i totally formatted my hard drive and reinstalled windows XP ( dont know exaclty when, is there any way of finding out?) Now i cant remember if this was before the DVD R/RW was installed or after it but the reason i reinstalled XP was due to the problem of not being able to click active windows (which now appears to have gone, touch wood!!) and the pc crashing at times. i figured that the problem would go away if i did this but it never. The not being able to click active windows was very common and i just got used to it but the very regular crashing of the system is fairly recent, last couple of months or so.

Re. 7. how do i go about checking this log and what am i looking for? (sorry but this is all new to me!!)


Finally, sorry for such a long post but im trying to describe exact details in depth to give as much info as possible on my pc etc. hope you can manage your way through it without too much trouble. i will now run chkdsk and post the results in the next reply soon.

You will know best but i think the DVD R/RW drive addition might be touching upon the root of part of the probelem here (could be so wrong tho) but i assume the regular DVD drive i have is using unneccessary power when i dont actually use it!!


Thanks again

Kingtaz

[kingtaz]

hi again. i ran the chkdsk and the report came back saying the volume is clean. i didnt see the exact summary message as the screen went away too quickly to see them but the screen following the restart said 'volume is clean'

thanks

kingtaz

[Samm]

OK, cool. Let me know how you get on with the other things then

[kingtaz]

can u tell me how to check the logs in point 7 of your post?

responded to all the points you made the best i could. let me know what you make of them when you get round to it.

cheers

kingtaz