On Mar 1, 3:29Â am, "RJK" wrote:
> in XP Home SP3+ Windows Normal mode, my old :-
> Asus M3N78 (no suffix to mb model no.)
> Athlon 64 x2 6000 Windsor cpu + Arctic Cooler heatpipe job
> 2x1gb Crucial Ballistix
> 3xSataII hd's (connected to mobo Sata ports),
> 1xIDE LG dvd-rewriter connected to motherboard IDE port,
> 1xPCIe x1 SIL3132 Sata card with a dvd-rom drive connected to it.
> Camera card reader connected to internal USB pin header,
> ...in Antec Solo case + Antec modular psu with no dust bunnies in there, no
> temp. problems btw !
>
> running lovely for over a year, probably 2 years, ..or more,
> During the past couple of weeks in Windows Normal mode, PC stops responding,
> and ignores me, and I have to reboot.
> Last night, swapped out memory for 2x512mb Crucial ddr2 667 modules,
> and this morning changed set swap file size to min. 1536 and max. 2048, and
> offline defragged with PerfectDisk 10,
> rebooted to Windows Normal mode and started a PerfectDisk defrag, and after
> a few minutes  - PC sailed off into outer space again !
>
> Booted up with bootable Spinrite 6 cd and started a full hd scan (Spinrite 6
> mode "4"), and after it had scanned a few sectors - PC sailed off into outer
> space again !
>
> ...am I looking at a new motherboard ?
>
> regards, Richard
The crystal ball called in sick today.
What is your definition of sailed off into outer space?
System lock ups can be sometime be quickly diagnosed by forcing a blue
screen of death when the system is hung and then examining the crash
dump file.
Is there some reason you are focusing on hardware? Have you tested
your RAM or just replaced it? Why not test it:
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/
Why are you changing the paging file size? Do you suspect that is an
issue and why? Not letting Windows manage it adds a another variable
into the troubled equation. Unless you know more about managing
memory than XP, I would leave it alone.
To eliminate questions and guessing, 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.
Perform some scans for malicious software, then fix any remaining
issues:
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/
They can be uninstalled later if desired.
Look in the Event Viewer for clues around the time of the incident
Here is a method to post the specific information about individual
events.
To see the Event Viewer logs, click Start, Settings, Control Panel,
Administrative Tools, Event Viewer.
A shortcut to Event Viewer is to click Start, Run and in the box
enter:
%SystemRoot%\system32\eventvwr.msc /s
Click OK to launch the Event Viewer.
The most interesting logs are usually the Application and System.
Some logs may be almost or completely empty.
Not every event is a problem, some are informational messages that
things are working okay and some are warnings.
No event should defy reasonable explanation.
Each event is sorted by Date and Time. Errors will have red Xs,
Warnings will have yellow !s. Information messages have white is.
Not every Error or Warning event means there is a serious issue. Some
are excusable at startup time when Windows is booting. Try to find
just the events at the date and time around your problem.
If you double click an event, it will open a Properties windows with
more information. On the right are black up and down arrow buttons to
scroll through the open events. The third button that looks like two
pages on top of each other is used to copy the event details to your
Windows clipboard.
When you find an interesting event that occurred around the time of
your issue, click the third button under the up and down arrows to
copy the details and then you can paste the details (right click,
Paste or CTRL-V) the detail text back here for analysis.
To get a fresh start on any Event Viewer log, you can choose to clear
the log (backing up the log is offered), then reproduce your issue,
then look at just the events around the time of your issue.
