On Apr 9, 10:52Â pm, "Jack B" wrote:
> I thought I licked my pc crash problem, but apparently not.
>
> The pc locks up and I need to give it a hard shut down.
>
> But if I move the mouse afterwards, the pc powers on just as if I pushed the
> power on button! Â Does this give anyone a clue as to what the problem is?
>
> Jack
"A crash problem" is pretty general and offers few details and crash
does not mean the same thing to different people.
When you invoke your "hard shut down" does that mean you use the power
button? Keep that up and things will get worse, but sometimes that is
what you gotta do.
Does move the mouse mean click the mouse or does it really mean move
the mouse?
I am not sure how it is possible to provide information (other than
guesses) about your BIOS features unless we know what your BIOS is.
If you want to see if your system BIOS has some feature that allows
the computer to power up fro the mouse, we can help look at your
documentation for your system if you provide the following
information:
Please provide additional information about your system:
Click Start, Run and in the box enter:
msinfo32
Click OK, and when the System Summary info appears, click Edit, Select
All, Copy and then paste the information back here.
There will be some personal information (like System Name and User
Name), and whatever appears to be private information to you, just
delete it from the pasted information.
This will minimize back and forth Q&A and eliminate guesswork.
Of course you have run decent malware scans?
Reduce the chances of malicious software by running some scans.
Download, install, update and do a full scan with these free malware
detection programs:
Malwarebytes (MBAM):
http://malwarebytes.org/
SUPERAntiSpyware: (SAS):
http://www.superantispyware.com/
These can be uninstalled later if desired.
If you want to run a RAM test, it may help you to know how:
Run a test of your RAM with memtest86+ (I know it is boring and will
cost you a CD).
Memtest86+ is a more up to date version of the old memtest program and
they are not the same.
The memtest86+ will not run under Windows, so you will need to
download the ISO file and create a bootable CD, boot on that and then
run the memtest86+ program.
If even a single error is reported that is a failure and should make
you suspicious of your RAM.
If you have multiple sticks of RAM you may need to run the test on
them one at a time and change them out to isolate the failure to a
particular single stick. Always keep at least the first bank of RAM
occupied so the test will find something to do and there is enough to
boot your system.
Sometimes, reseating the RAM in the slots will relieve the error but a
failure is still cause for suspicion.
The file and instructions are here:
http://www.memtest.org/
If someone says to run memtest86, you can say that you know memtest86+
supercedes memtest86 and here's why:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Memtest86
Let' say you boot on a Linux or PE CD and your system doesn't freeze.
What do you do now to figure out why XP freezes? You are truing to
figure out why it freezes in XP - not why it doesn't freeze with
Linux. I think the more often it freezes in XP, the happier you
should be because it will be easier it is to find the problem.
There is a way to get to a point to be able to say - Aha the reason
for freezing is...
MS has a built in feature built in feature (normally disabled) that is
designed specifically to help debug systems that lock up. This will
make it easy to spot the problem and achieve the "this is the broken
gizmo" information you need to fix it.
It is not a mystery, no trial and error, no might be, no could be, no
guessing. There is a reason for the lock up or hang and you can find
out what is going on and focus your attention in that area. Figure it
out and fix it.
Here is more standard copy/paste:
If your system stops responding, hangs or freezes and you can't figure
out why, you can force a BSOD which will create a crash dump file that
you can analyze and see what is running at the point of the freeze and
get some ideas that do not involve guesswork. It is good to create a
few crash dumps if you can and analyze them for a patter - maybe a
certain driver or program that is in every crash dump.
While it may seem odd to think about purposefully causing a Blue
Screen Of Death (BSOD), Microsoft includes such a provision in Windows
XP. The feature is built in to XP specifically to diagnose the problem
when a system stops responding and there is no trail in any of the
Event Logs, etc. about what might have happened.
Here's how to force your system to create a BSOD:
Before making registry changes, backup your registry with this popular
free and easy to use tool:
http://www.larshederer.homepage.t-online.de/erunt/
For PS/2 keyboards, launch the Registry Editor (Regedit.exe) and
navigate to:
HKLM\System\CurrentControlSet\Services\i8042prt\Parameters
For USB keyboards (it is a rumor to me so far):
HKLM\System\CurrentControlSet\Services\kbdhid\Parameters
Click Edit, select New DWORD Value and name the new value
CrashOnCtrlScroll.
Double-click the CrashOnCtrlScroll DWORD Value, type 1 in the Value
Data text box, and click OK.
Close the Registry Editor and restart Windows XP.
When you want to cause a BSOD (when your system has stopped
responding), press and hold down the [Ctrl] key on the right side of
your keyboard, and then tap the [ScrollLock] key twice. Now you should
see the BSOD and you will have a crash dump file to analyze.
In just a few minutes after the next incident, you will know exactly
what the problem is and where to start looking.
If you decide to pursue this debugging method, we can teach you how to
analyze the crash dump to spot your particular issue.
Here is an FYI MS article about this feature:
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ff545499.aspx