Strange freeze problem?

[MikeMoss]

Hi

This is a problem that I have been having for a long time and since it’s not that big a bother I kept putting off posting this.

When I run applications that take a long time, such as my AVG virus scan or Spybot eventually the graphics become corrupted and the computer grinds to a halt.

The mouse is still active, but some of the windows have missing type or other elements and nothing is clickable. Even Task Manager will not open. The only out is to shut down the computer and start over.

The computer runs fine on normal applications; this doesn’t happen running memory intensive games, like Lord of the Rings Online or Oblivion.

My regular applications such as Adobe Photoshop CS2, InDesign CS2 and Illustrator CS3 all run fine even handling really big files.

My computer is a Dell XPS desktop, running Windows XP Media Center Addition, 3 GHz dual core, 2 gig of ram, Nvidia 7800 GTS video card and a Soundblaster Audigy sound card. I have two internal HDs and 2 external HDs. The internal drives are in normal master slave config. The external drives are not turned on unless I am backing up data.

Every driver and all the Windows updates are current.
My hard drives are defragged, and I use Registry Cure regularly to get rid of errors.

Does anyone have any idea why this happens and what I can do about it?

Mike

 

[DTracy]

How much memory is on that video card?

Check the memory on the video card.

Check the system memory.

Check the addressing of the video and the conventional memory, making sure that there is no possibility for overlap.

David.

 

[MikeMoss]

Hi

The video card has 256 MB of memory.

I have no idea how to check the memory on the video card or check the addressing other then to look at the properties and see that it says no conflicts.

How would I check for overlap?

How would I diagnose whether there is a problem with the memory on the card?

I use Memturbo and it never shows that I am low on system memory when this happens.

Thanks for the help.

Mike

 

[MikeMoss]

Hi

A little more info.

Today I had just opened Photoshop when my nephew came over and I left the computer sitting for a long time doing nothing. No file was open in Photoshop.

When I came back the computer was in the same condition.
The display was corrupted, type was missing from the dialog boxes and I couldn't open anything. Task Manager would open but with no text in the windows, though the mouse was active.

This problem may be more related to long periods of mouse inactivity then what the computer is doing. I realize now that the common factor between all the times, is that there has been no mouse activity for a sustained period of time. Making a Ghost backup, running a virus scan, and running spybot.

Does this make and sense?

Mike

 

[DTracy]

Try to find some good diagnostic programs for your workstation, specifically one for the video card and one for the system memory. Intel has a pretty good utility program that will check for problems and stress test the whole sytem at the same time. Also, one of your perhiperal devices could be causing this problem. Try removing each device and testing, or replace with a known good device and test.

And, if it's still under warranty, call Dell.

David.

 

[MikeMoss]

Hi

Thanks for the information I'll check out the diagnostic program.

You reminded me that my Nvidia software has a stress test application.

I hadn't thought of that I'll give it a try.

Mike

 

[linney]

Does the Video Card have its own cooling fan or otherwise overheating, or it just could be faulty?

NVIDIA Forums

http://forums.nvidia.com/

 

[MikeMoss]

HI Linney

The video card has its own fan.
I have been checking the temperature using the program suggested above.
I guess I should open the computer up (not easy to do where its at) and see that the fans are all running.

It appears that the temps are good, cpu temperature don’t go higher 46c (this is well below the listed max for a P4 dual core and everything else looks good as far as I can tell.
I don’t quite understand what all this stuff in this program are. Pretty interesting how you can see the temp go up and down when you do something.

It is obvious that the highest temps are generated when I am doing something like playing 3D games and that's not when I run into problems. I can play WOW for hours and the computer runs fine.

I have turned off all the power management options and things that act when the computer is not being interacted with and I’m waiting to see if this makes any difference.

I ran the Nvidia stress test for 20 minutes and the computer did not frees up.

I have run full check disk on both of the internal drives and defraged, devirused, deadwared and cleaned the registry of all errors. The computer is running great except for this one instance.

Now I am going to run the applications that freeze again and see what happens.
I am going to run them both, unattended, (no mouse activity) and while using the computer and see if it makes a difference.

I’ll let you know what happens.

Mike