Please Help With Mysterious Wxp System Freezes*

[Tomboy]

Hi,

This could be either hardware or software related.

I recently changed out the motherboard of my systems to a dual CPU ABIT board with only one 1 GHz P3 CPU (the other socket has a broken tab so I can't mount a heat sink, but the board was given to me by a friend). I have 1 GB RAM, a 30 GB IBM HD, Creative SB Live sound, Windows XP Pro, and the system is running 24/7 with no obvious configuration problems (clean device manager...etc.). My problem (which has been getting gradually worse for the past 2 months) is almost every morning the system is frozen (monitor is in the sleep mode so I can't see any error messages) and many times I see the HD LED continuously lit. The only solution is to hit the reset button to reboot the system. The interesting thing is that normally when you reset a WXP system like this, it wants to run CHKDSK during the reboot. However, whatever the cause of this lockup, it has never prompted me to run CHKDSK on the drives. I have been suspecting a bad RAM module, but solicit the advise of others who may have seen this kind of problem before. I am seriously considering going back to my very reliable 600 MHz P3 that I was running before.

Thanks,
Tomboy

[HotRod]

Not sure if same problem, but I have dual MSI board and dual abit board. I have to turn off hibernation and set up power schemes to always on. Also have problems with screen savers. Won't come out of hibernation and sometimes can't get out of screen savers. Once the monitor goes black only thing I can do is hit reset. Have never had it run chkdsk or prompt for safe mode.

[Tomboy]

Hotrod,

Thanks for the reply. This seems like a reasonable explanation. I'll turn off the power saving stuff for a while and see if it helps.

Thanks,
Tomboy

[Tomboy]

All,

Well I gave up and returned the system to the original motherboard. I started getting freezes/lockups while doing large memory intensive tasks (like: burning CDs, creating ISO files, copying/moving a large number of files, playing DOOM II while downloading files....etc.). Thanks for the advise.

Tomboy

[GSD]

Rule out software first.....in other words..Reinstall windows...if you have the same problems then you know its hardware related. this is the logical order

Zo