reoccurring PC problem - locking up frequently

[sansanatomy]

hi, anyone who can help me figure out the cause of this problem will earn my respect and admiration!

ok, i have a chaintech 7njl6 socket a motherboard with an athlon XP processor - i believe it's a 2200+ model
im running windows XP-
a few months ago my computer wouldn't even boot properly - it would just hang, bios wouldn't even load.
i tried replacing it part by part, i ended up buying ALL new hardware, except for the RAM and power supply.
that fixed the problem, BUT the computer will still freeze up in XP, sometimes after 10 min of use, sometimes after 10 hours. it just freezes.
that's what it does most of the time - but occasionally it will go to the Blue screen "PAGE_FAULT_IN_UNPAGED_AREA" or something like that. and it says "Writing memory dump to hard drive" or something to that effect at the bottom of the screen. it counts up to 60 or so and then it just freezes.
that happens about 1 out of every 5 times it crashes.
occasionally it also reboots itself, but that's even more rare.

anyone know what might be causing this? is this an internal hard drive problem? i've tried alternating boot drives, that doesn't change anything (i have 4 hd's)

thanks a lot peeps, i really REALLY appreciate your help!

Matt

 

[sansanatomy]

oops - i should also note, i did not replace my hard drives a few months ago when i bought new parts. they are the same ones ive had for a few years. so everything except hard drives, RAM, and the power supply was replaced.

 

[Crowley16]

hmm, judging by the error message, looks like something's going wrong with your page file...

page file is a file on your hdd that is used to simulate RAM memory when your actual ram runs out...

so, it could be you're running out of ram/diskspace in which case, get more ram, or increase your pagefile size (google for instructions on how)

or it could be your hdd or ram is corrupt, and whenever it tries to access the corrupt bit, it crashes on you, scan your hdd and do a memtest to find out...

or it could just be that your psu isn't beefy enough to handle all those hdd's and gfx and cpu and stuff...

--------------------
Procrastinate Now!

 

[Gloryhound]

Not likely the hard drive in my experience. Sence the time to crash is highly random as your post suggests I would suspect the ram. Try various methods of high memory usage programs. If the memory intensive programs cause a crash faster than the low memory programs, then the ram is constantly writing errors to the swap file, which later the computer can't understand, so it dies like some bad actor in a shakspearian play.

If the hard drive is bad it should be getting worse, and should invariably act the same when it reaches the bad/corrupt part of the partition. A clear sign that something is wrong is a steady increase in lost clusters, which people usually see as folders labels "Found00X". This is corrupt information that the OS tried to recover and simply dumped it to a folder so it wasn't Ultimately lost.

 

[sansanatomy]

i did just find a folder on my H: drive called Found000. 15 gb worth of corrupt data. i'm not happy.
but this isn't my boot drive, just a storage drive. still... ?

 

[garebo]

You can google for "memtest86". Its free and will test your ram. I do suspect its a ram issue.
I believe, based on what have said said, that these are what you need to check out:

ram - google memtest86 and run one stick at a time only
power supply - just because they boot to windows doesnt mean they arent going bad. A $5 to $10 multimeter and the tutorial you can get on google will allow you to test the various voltages that are supposed to be there and if not then you should replace the power supply.
Problem with motherboard - perhaps the ide controller

Wouldnt hurt to replace your ide cables as its a good idea to get that out of the way as a possible problem.
And run chkdisk to make sure the hard drive is ok.




Good advice + great people = tek-tips

 

[sansanatomy]

also - i should note that often, a minute or few before the crash, a very loud staticy noise will come through my audio (built into the board)

the motherboard is brand spakin new. i DO have a brand new power supply i can put in. i guess i'll run the memtest, and wait for the new memory i ordered. if that doesn't work, i'll try ide cables and putting that power supply in. Thanks!

 

[garebo]

Can i suggest swapping the ide cables first. Lets face it, if you got lucky and it cured the problem, you would be happy with that, right? Plus it gets the cables out of the way as the source of the problem as well.


Good advice + great people = tek-tips

 

[garebo]

The audio noise could be a hint. Have to think on that one a bit. Then again, it could be just a sign that the pc is about to lock up and not a clue that sound has any real part in the problem solving end of this.

One more thing, there is a correlation between the ram and the ram timing and, i believe, the fsb.
Go into bios and have a look around in that area, make sure your fsb settings are correct and have a look at the ram timing. Im not the best at working in that area, though, I just remember there is some sort of correlation. If your ram is set at 2, maybe move it to 2.5, if at 2.5 maybe move it to 3, these are settings you can play with a bit, could be the ram is set at the wrong settings, 2 is high and 3 is low.

And there is always the good old re-set of your bios. That couldnt hurt and could help.



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[pcdoc4christ]

Hey Sansanatomy:

You may find the solution to your problem via one of these links:

http://www.google.com/search?as_q=x...s_occt=any&as_dt=i&as_sitesearch=&safe=images

Hope that points you in the right direction.

=============================

"Freely you have received, freely give." --Jesus Christ
pcdoc4christ@yahoo.com

 

[garebo]

Have you tried a bios re-set yet?


Good advice + great people = tek-tips

 

[garebo]

Better yet, set bios to default levels and see if that helps.


Good advice + great people = tek-tips

 

[pcdoc4christ]

Good advice, garbo!

If that doesn't work, Sans may want to consider this:

"The Non-Paged area. Parts of the System which are so important that they may never be paged out - the area of RAM used for these is called in XP the ‘Non-Paged area’. Because this mainly contains core code of the system, which is not likely to contain serious faults, a Blue Screen referring to ‘Page Fault in Non-Paged area’ probably indicates a serious hardware problem with the RAM modules, or possibly damaged code resulting from a defective Hard disk. It is, though, possible that external utility software (e.g. Norton) may put modules there too, so if such faults arise when you have recently installed or updated something of this sort, try uninstalling it."

I got this from the link:

http://aumha.org/win5/a/xpvm.php

So, it may be a defective RAM, or a hard drive problem, damage to the operating system, or software wreaking havoc.

What do you think, garbo?

 

[garebo]

Normally i would say the ram, but notice he mentioned he had one drive with 15 mb of bad, formerly good files. That makes me think possibly corrupt windows files or processes, or even bad hard drives, or even a virus at work.
Too many possibilities, we need to start narrowing them down.
And there is the possible page file issue too!


Good advice + great people = tek-tips

 

[pcdoc4christ]

Sans:

Garebo makes a good point.

One way to determine if it is the hard drive would be to run error checking (CHKDSK.EXE) by opening My Computer, right clicking on the hard drive icon, choosing Properties, clicking the Tools tab, & clicking Check Now. It's probably a good idea to boot to Safe Mode to do this to put as little stress on the hard drive as possible. Better yet, you may boot to the Recovery Console (if you have it installed) & run CHKDSK from the command line.

But first, you should do a backup of all your important files to the second hard drive (if you have one) before you run error checking. If you only have one hard drive, you may be able to back up your files to floppy disks, or use a zip drive or CD-RW drive.

Once you run CHKDSK.EXE, if many bad sectors are found, it's a good bet the hard drive is to blame. If there are no bad sectors found, then a virus may be at work.


Hope that helps!
Doc

=========
"Freely you have received, freely give." --Jesus
pcdoc4christ@yahoo.com

 

[garebo]

pcdoc4christ, I wonder if sans shouldnt start with memtest and then do the hard drive test with chkdsk. As you say, he could lose his data. Course if its a memory issue then chkdsk wont do any harm either.

Sans, you can google memtest86 and only test one stick of ram at a time. Im not sure which you should do first, maybe
pcdoc4christ would like to make a suggestion. We are all just trying to help, and with me, its with the limited knowledge that i have. However, i do pretty good considering 4 yrs ago i hadnt seen the inside of a puter!
Very late to the game here, but i learn fast.


Good advice + great people = tek-tips

 

[pcdoc4christ]

Garebo:

If any IT Pro says he knows it all, he's a liar! From what i see, you have a pretty good head on your shoulders. You probably have a better computer sense than i do, but two heads are better than one.

When it comes to checking memory, i usually flip a coin to decide which to swap out first. But the tool you mentioned would likely do a better job.

Microsoft also has just come out with a new utility called the Windows Memory Diagnostic that is available for free. One may download it from here:

http://oca.microsoft.com/en/windiag.asp

The Microsoft site describes the tool: "The Windows Memory Diagnostic tests the Random Access Memory (RAM) on your computer for errors. The diagnostic includes a comprehensive set of memory tests. If you are experiencing problems while running Windows, you can use the diagnostic to determine whether the problems are caused by failing hardware, such as RAM or the memory system of your motherboard. Windows Memory Diagnostic is designed to be easy and fast. On most configurations, you can download the diagnostic, read the documentation, run the test and complete the first test pass in less than 30 minutes."

This beta utility just might show which RAM module is defective. I haven't had the chance to use it, yet, so i'm not sure.

Regards,
Doc

 

[garebo]

Thanks for the kind words, doc.

The ram test you pointed out would be similar to memtest86. Memtest86 has been around longer than i have and is likely the defacto standard that is used for testing ram. However, the m\soft model will likely do the same and it looks like it runs faster.
Memtest98 can be run from a floppy and in dos, though.


Good advice + great people = tek-tips

 

[pcdoc4christ]

garebo:

Good to know; i'll check it out. The Microsoft utility is still in the Beta phase, so Memtest86 may be more reliable, too.

 

[garebo]

I read more about the m\soft memory tester and that can be run from floppy or burned to cdr.
So it runs in dos.

Good advice + great people = tek-tips