Having this PC problem.

[therick]

Alright, I am by no means a PC newbie. I have built many a system and worked in IT support and all that blah blah. What I have now though is a weird problem. My machine locks up every once and a while. It locks like no machine has ever locked on me. The screen freezes. Dead. No control-alt-delete, no hitting the harddrive, nothing. You can see my specs up there in the right, if you are interested. Now this is by no means the speed demon machine, but hell I think I built it for like $200.

At first I thoght that it was the subpar memory(not crucial, kingston), but I subbed out the 256MB simms in turn with the same problem occurring. Then I subbed them in turn to a friends machine. Long story short he wanted to keep them . So it isn't the memory.

It might be the hard drive, but scandisk doesn't turn up any errors and in my experience hard drive crashes behave differently. Just to be sure, though, I loaded Windows 2K on my 60 gig drive. Locked up 4 times in a week, right on average for the course.

Here is my final theory-my power supply. I have never had one go bad on me, but I think that it is all that is left. And every once and a while it starts making strange noises. Then it stops.

To all the PC wizards out there, does this sound like a power supply problem? As I have said, I have never run into a bad one before, so any help would be much appreciated. Now, this is not a terrible problem, it happens maybe twice a week. But it is still annoying. Thanks in advance to any suggestions.

[AceYu]

Unlikely to be a power problem, a brown out could cause your system to halt but it equally could be an IRQ or resource conflict. Start by installing the latest service pack from Microsoft for 2k on your system (SP3 or 4 I think is the latest).

Is it any particluar program causing it? or is it just "at random"? other things to look at is power managment on your system, this can cause lockup like this if setting are wrong or even due to some programs and hardware combinations, try removing one or all of the cd/cdr etc.

Have you checked that the bios settings look ok and have updated your bios? Switch off any intergrated hardware not being used (ie USB, network card, video) Have you tried to overclock anything? (video card/processor etc)

Just a few things to look at before looking at drastic solution such as replacing hardware. Also you may find (as did I on one system) that there is no solution as such, a particular compaq I have come to loath locks up about 1 in 6 boots without any response. It is caused when initlising the hardware but there is no fix for it.

Hope this helps BRETT

[MOVIEGEEK]

therick,
It could be your CPU.I had a computer do the same exact thing as yours,
1 month later it was fried.Try better cooling(open case,larger heatsink,more fans)but save up some money just in case.

[therick]

well, I am running a duron...so I won't have to save up any money....well, maybe $50...hehe gotta love the old AMD...oh yeah, they do have cooling issues...maybe that is it

AceYu - I am trying some of your suggestions...but it will take a while as in I am changing one thing at a time..and as I said this happens maybe 3 times a week...but I will post results

[mrtristan]

I just want to add my three cents, minus one for taxes. Okay, so that joke sucked.

Anyway, I strayed away from installing sp3, for Windows 2000. Half of the reviews that I've read say that sp3 caused system failures. There's also some kind of spyware or monitoring thing that comes with it. I'm not entirely sure on the details, so I just didn't install it.

[therick]

neither did I, for similar reasons...is there going to be a sp4? or is there one already, I thought that I heard they had stopped it..

[MOVIEGEEK]

I don't use Win2000,but Microsoft installs the "Alexa"spyware on just about
everything you download.Good news is that Ad-Aware will remove it from your registry.http://www.lavasoft.de

[therick]

A few more details. Thanks for the replies, sorry I haven't been able to post progress, been busy lately.

I changed around some of the power settings in 2K. Switched to "always on" (cause my machine is). And also changed the settings that turned off the hard disks and the system.

Got a lock up last night at 4 AM when I got home and was checking mail. That is the first in 3 days, but it is still annoying me

I am now moving on to some of AceYu's bios suggestions. I admit that I am not familiar with some of the newer settings in this BIOS, but I will be reading up. I have an ECS K7VZA motherboard-if anyone has a similar kt133a maybe they could post their settings. Alright, rebooting to scout the BIOS.

Also, no, I don't overclock.

Thanks all.

[mrtristan]

I think I know exactly what your problem is. I have the KT133A chipset. Set your memory driving strength to "Lo."

The motherboard has some kind of issue, when large amounts of RAM are run at the "Hi" setting.

[therick]

@mrtristan- thanks for the help. my bios settings don't have a "memory driving strength"-but could it be SDRAM cycle length? Lemme know, I dropped this value down from 3 to 2.

I am just switching settings left and right here, hoping for no more lockups

[therick]

alright, that backfired...badly...locked up burning a CD...first coaster in almost 2 months...

[mrtristan]

Dropping the cycle length to 2 would make your RAM more unstable. Between 3 and 2, 2 is faster. The number refers to the CAS latency, which is just a fancy way of saying timing.

Anyway, try loading the fail safe defaults. The BIOS should have a setting to do so, somewhere. If your computer doens't suffer a performance loss, then leave it like that and don't poke the angry monkey.

[zzyzzx]

If you think it might be a heat related issue, then try leaving the cover off and see if the problem occurs.