System Crashes all the time

[Driverx.x.x]

I am not sure why its happening , but the system just keeps crashing all the time. I have tried formatting and installing windows again and again but after you use the computer for some time it just stops working and responding.

Here's my Config:

AMD athlon 2000+
asus nforce motherboard a7n266vm
2*256MB@266Mhz DDR Hynix Ram
60 gb samsung spinpoint HD
Samsung dvd drive
Lately I have added an Xpertvision radeon 9800 pro 256 mb grafix card , but the problem used to occur even before I added this card.

You install Windows xp pro and you might be able to use it fine , like for an hour or so , if you're lucky the hour may extend to few days but then it happens. All of sudden (maybe when you try to open a program , load a game etc) the windows pointer stops and it doesn't respond, the whole system hangs and yo would have to restart the system. The second time this happens quicker than when it happened the first time it happened after installing windows , maybe a few minutes or so. The third time you restart Windows might fail to boot properly.The fourth time you restart , you would have the windows safe\normal boot up screen. Another thing I forgot to mention was that I hear a sound when the system hangs , quite mechanical, must be from the HD and the hd light turns on and stays constant without flickering.I am not sure what the problem might be .I had faced this problem earlier and formatted an installed windows a few times untill my HD crashed but I was able claim the warranty and got this new HD and its the same problem.

Any Ideas ?

Thanks,
Driver

 

[mailpup]

Your power supply might be failing. It's not an all or nothing proposition either. It might seem to power some things but it may be going out.

 

[nork]

I honestly believe, by the sound of what you are saying, that its almost guaranteed to be your power supply (ps).
Your ps is responsible for a good 35% of all problems!
Power supplies that come with an older system were cheap when new and become very suspect as they get older, be it a Dell, HP, Compaq, home-built, whatever.
To test a power supply you need an analog or digital meter. These can be found at hardware stores for around $10 U.S, a very good investment for your pc tools. The testers you buy at bestbuy, compusa, etc, are worthless. they only tell you if the ps will start up, but that doesnt mean its working on all voltage levels.

Here is info on power supplies, which are good, which are bad/poor, how to test, etc.
http://www.fonerbooks.com/power.htm
http://www.pcguide.com/ref/power/sup/funcVoltages-c.html
http://techrepublic.com.com/5100-1035_11-5566528.html?part=rss&tag=feed&subj=tr
http://www.informit.com/articles/article.asp?p=31105&seqNum=2&rl=1
http://www.directron.com/psu.html

 

[Driverx.x.x]

Changed the Power Supply, Now what ?

I guess it was the power supply cuz that's the only explanation I guess to what was happenin to my system. I was thinking more towards semi faulty RAM as the reason for the crashes.
I changed the power supply today morning and tried to install windows again , loaded the xp cd and the setup starts up normally , no problems there, formatted the drive and the set up starts copying files to the hard disk , no problems there too, but then when the system tries to reboot after copying the files to continue with the installation , after the initial screen , it goes to the second screen , press any key to boot from cd ..... I don't press any keys here and the installation is supposed to continue but it doesn't and gets stuck in this screen and theres a reddish rectangle appearing just above the words - press any key to boot from cd ..... :dead:
I tried installing windows again , formatted the drive , windows files copied to HD and still the same thing. I ran chkdsk (windows recovery) and no errors with the drive.
I didn't have the time to do much tinkering since I had to come to work today, I am not sure what the problem might be though ?

Thanks,
Driver

 

[kodrutz]

Try to check your ram and use one of these:

- Memtest for Win hcidesign.com/memtest/

-Memtest86 http://www.memtest86.com/

I would sugest you go for this last one, since it doesn't run under Windows

 

[nork]

Do the ramtest first.
However, i have seen this happen before with a hard drive that had virus/trojan/malware on it.
Before you install win xp on any pc the best thing to do is to go your hard drive mfgrs website and download the latest diagnostic software. It usually runs on a floppy so you have to copy it to a floppy and go in and set your bios to boot from the floppy and have a win98 boot disk in your floppy.

Once you boot to dos using the win98 boot disk take out the win98 boot disk and put in the diagnostic floppy. Then run the main executable. At some point you will get a list of diagnostics. The diagnostic to run is the one that says "write zeroes to the hard drive". Go ahead and do that one.

When done, take the diagnostic program out and put the win98 boot disk back in, let it boot to dos and then run fdisk.
Run fdisk to partition the hard drive and then reboot and format the drive.

Then take win98 boot disk out, reboot and make the first boot your cdrom and put win xp cdrom in and reboot.

Now you can eliminate one step in that you dont really have to partition and format the hard drive. But i go the extra step to ensure that:
The drive is free from virus\trojans\malware and i will have a better pc and a happy customer.
The hard drive has been reset to its factory specs.
The hard drive will not give me any problems during os install.

I bet if you do as i say your win xp install will go fine!

 

[nork]

By the way, the "zero write" program i mentioned. What is does is to set the hard drive back to the same condition it was when it left the factory, only minus some wear. And, as stated, it defeats any virus\trojan\malware that is on the hard drive, which is often the case!
You could copy and paste that info into a doc as this should be done to all hard drives before installing any win os.

 

[Driverx.x.x]

System seems to be fine now.

I guess it was the Power supply after all. I changed the power supply and I was able to install xp on another drive since the original win xp drive was reluctant to have xp installed on it. The thing is after installation the system seems to detect two os's and before boot up gives me the choice of os, both winxp. I formated the original windows xp drive but still it shows around 45MB of occupied space on it. Everything else is A ok.


Thanks for your help guys, appreciate it
Driver

 

[nork]

Glad you are up and running. I dont know if you took my advice on using the diagnostic disk for the h drives. But if you did then either drive should work fine.

 

[Shenango]

I need help, too

Hello!

I wasn't sure if I should start a new thread or not, so I figured I would post in a similar topic.

I have an older PC that has been fairly reliable over the years. Recently, it started rebooting itself for no apparent reason. Sometimes it does it right away before I've run any programs, other times it doesn't do it until I start running several things at once.

After doing some reading through forums, I figured it was probably an old power supply causing the problem, so I took out the old 230W that was in there and put in a new Rosewill 450W power supply. This didn't help. So then I figured it was the video card. I had an old Voodoo3 in there, so I replaced it with a new Radeon 9250 AGP card. This didn't help, either.

The most frustrating thing is that everything seems to be running just fine. The video card installed with no problems. I get no errors any time from Windows or any other program. It just decides to reboot on me for no apparent reason. Any other suggestions? It would be greatly appreciated. Here is my computer:

Motherboard: Intel SE440BX-2
OS: Windows 98 SE
RAM: maxed at 768mb (3 @ 256)
VIDEO: crucial Radeon AGP 128MB
HARD DRIVE: 12GB IDE

Let me know if any other specs are needed. Thanks!

-Shenango

 

[kodrutz]

Try to use a memory tester, first; if nothing bad comes up, run a mainboard full diagnose program from UltraBoot Cd or Hiren's Boot Cd. Also, you could use a LiveCD linux to start your computer and use it for some hours/days and see if you have the same problems.

Read the previous posts here and you will find out a lot of things to do

 

[Shenango]

Hi, thanks for your help. I ran memtest86 on it and let it go all night -- no errors or crashes. Then I downloaded and ran Hiren's Boot CD (great program, by the way). I didn't find any errors on my motherboard, hard drive, processor, etc. In fact, everything seems to be running great! So why does it keep crashing??

Anyone have any other ideas? Thanks!

-Shenango

 

[kodrutz]

Use a Knoppix Linux livecd to boot and run for some hours. Listen to music, browse the web, use office applications and the Gimp, see how it works.

You may have some strange Windows issues, I really can't say...last days I had some really strange problems too, and I can't tell if they are gone or not, I am still living with the fear of hard drive failure/reboot/who knows else...

Good luck!