Strange Lockup Problem

[Max Power]

I have this box I built, specs as follows: P2 celeron 500, Abit vl-6 mobo(latest bios revision), 640meg pc133 sdram, Nvidia Geforce2 MX400, SB Live 5.1 soundcard, 40gig WD WDC400BB(system drive), 60gig WD WDC600BB(storage drive), Linksys LNE100tx nic card, Logitech cordless optical mouse.

Here's the problem;

When I ran Win98SE on it, it ran great, never a problem.
Now I have switched it over to Windows XP Pro SP2, and ever since then
it has a tendency to hard lock (require a reset to reboot). The only thing
in common I can see with these lockups is that it occurs whenever I browse
a page that contains a Flash animation with a fair amount of motion. It's not even that predictable, I can go to the same page and it won't lockup at times
or will freeze immediately. I've tried redoing the os, then placing hardware items back in one @ a time, and it works fine. This only seems to happen while it's browsing a webpage. It occurs sometimes when you go to Windows Update, but not always. I have other machines that I can browse with, but I'd really like to try and solve this problem someway other than by taking it back to Win98SE. Any suggestions you may have would be greatly appreciated. Thanks.

P.S.
I've tried disabling animation in Internet Explorer, and no dice, if you're going to say try that.
Thanks again

 

[RealBlackStuff]

Welcome to TechSpot
Your CPU is only borderline able for running XP. XP is a lot more resource-hungry than W98 and I suspect your power-supply to be at the very edge of its capacity.
Can you give us the complete specs of it?

 

[Max Power]

Hmmmmm

Borderline!?! I've installed the same version of XP on machines with less processors\ram and it works fine, albeit slowly. The power supply is a 350 watt
Aopen model, should be plenty for 2 drives and a cd-rom. What other specs would you require other than what I've supplied already?

 

[Max Power]

and one more thing.....

Maybe I didn't make this clear enough in my first post.
This machine does EVERYTHING but browse, I can burn cd's
on it, play mp3's, it has also run for 2 days short of a month
while on the IRC and running a ftp server at the same time,
before requiring a reboot.
(The reboot being required by an update downloaded by Automatic
Updates.)
I have tried booting the machine with just 1 256meg stick of ram,
vid card and system hd only, the floppy and cd disconnected.
Went to MSN.com after XP loaded and BAM!!!, locked up solid.
Even tried a different vid card just to see if perhaps a line of code
was being run that the Nvidia card didn't like, same thing.

 

[RealBlackStuff]

What happens if you install Firefox and browse to the same site?
It may be on oddity in IE (not unheard of....). I don't use IE at all, unless for Windows-updates.
Have you tried updating the Flashplayer? v7 is the current one I think.

 

[Max Power]

Still the same....

I went to Macromedia's page and installed the lastest version of Flash.
Machine locked up immediately upon completion of the install. (I knew it
would the installer plays a movie, instant death) I then went and downloaded
Firefox and installed it. (Although I wouldn't consider this fixing the problem,
just dodging it.) Went back to Macromedia and tried to install Flash again, machine locked up upon completion of the install.
Guess I just can't use this box to browse, huh?

 

[RealBlackStuff]

Can you go and get HijackThis from http://www.tomcoyote.org/hjt/.
Make a separate directory for it, then install it in there. Run it, and post your log as hijackthis.txt as an attachment here. Maybe you have some nasties.

 

[Max Power]

HiJack this log

Enclosed is the logfile I got from HiJack This. I don't see anything
unusual in it, but have a look for yourself.

 

[RealBlackStuff]

Looks quite clean. To be sure to be sure, boot in Safe Mode, then run HJT stand-alone and mark these 2 items for HJT to "fix":

O16 - DPF: {6414512B-B978-451D-A0D8-FCFDF33E833C} (WUWebControl Class) - http://v5.windowsupdate.microsoft.c...ls/en/x86/client/wuweb_site.cab?1105987255898
O17 - HKLM\System\CCS\Services\Tcpip\..\{F55F815C-D5B1-4407-8753-578AC0295B78}: NameServer = 216.254.95.2,216.231.41.2

Those servers might block your Flash experience.

 

[Max Power]

still the same

Used HJT to fix those 2 aforementioned entires and still no good.
I'm really beginning to wonder if maybe the mobo might be heading
for the last roundup, as this problem only seems to have cropped
up in the past few months. Can't quite recall if it was pre or post
SP2.

 

[RealBlackStuff]

The Soundblaster file devldr32.exe has been known to play havock.
Can you UNinstall your soundcard drivers, then try again?
If it works, re-install the latest drivers for that card and keep your fingers/toes/arms/legs etc. crossed.

 

[Max Power]

Been there, done that....

As I stated earlier, the machine locks up without the SB card installed. (Fresh OS install, hd and cd only, one 256meg stick of ram.) There may be hope yet
though. The other day, just for a lark, I went into the bios and disabled the onboard soundcard AND the AMR modem. (Previously I had only disabled the
onboard sound.) So far it seems to work alright, so I'll give it a shot this way
and see if it holds up. Sorry I didn't get back on this sooner, as I've had another disaster with my main box. (Power supply blew out due to a power
outage during a snowstorm, taking the vid card and quite possibly the mobo
with it. Been working on that machine trying to bring it back to life.) If this
fix holds, I'll post back and let you know.

Thanks again,
Max

 

[Max Power]

Problem Solved!!!

Sorry I didn't post back sooner, life's been a little crazy last few weeks.
Well after my other box died, I decided to take a chance and see if I could
boost the power of the one I was having trouble with. To that end, I found a P3 866mhz chip online fairly cheap. ($39 US with shipping.) I installed the cpu, and Voila!!, no more problems machine runs great now. After my last post
it had really gone downhill, all sorts of proggies were crashing. The new cpu seems to have fixed everything. Guess the Celeron processor was a little flaky.

Thanks again for your help,
Max Power