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Doran
Chief Marshal
Galactic Navy
Joined: March 29, 2003
Posts: 4032
From: The Gideon Unit
|  Posted: 2006-10-23 21:00
since roughly a week ago, my computer's been having stability problems, it will lockup without any rhyme or reason (tho lockups right after login are common, particularly on my dad's account, again for no apperent reason). whatever's currently being displayed on the monitor will cease changing, will not respond to mouse/keyboard input, and will need to be shut off and turned back on via ye olde power button.
hardware is unchanged, and of recently installed software, only the ATI Radeon catalyst 6.9 drivers (128mb saphhire radeon 9600) fall into the appropriate time frame to be messing with me in this regard (IE7, and windows media player 11 beta 2 are also new, but only as of last thursday)
friday i did a thorough wipe of the hard drive and reinstalled windows xp saturday. lockups persisted while trying to download updates. this pretty much rules out a software cause and (hopefully) points at a hardware problem.
on the off-hand that it might be bad/failing ram, ive been running memtest86/memtest86+. of the 3 sticks (2x 128mb Pc100 SDRAM in DIMM 1&2 (original with system), 1x 256mb Pc133 SDRAM in DIMM3), memtest consistantly reports ~20 errors at 0001573fdbc, and the Chan column will contain a 1 (which i either correctly or incorrectly read as Channel, to indicate the problem's in the memory in the 1st slot). attempts to isolate the bad stick (by way of moving sticks to different slots in hopes of changing that Chan number, or removing sticks altogether) are so far proving fruitless.
the interior of the case has very recently (today) been dusted out, very light dust build up on the cards, more on the heatsink/fan and heatsink-facing side (back) of the DIMM1 stick, but i doubt its an overheating-related issue.
motherboard's a compaq 06E4h (also known as UWAVE or a FIC, mobo says UWAVE on it) with a compaq 786K1 bios (old, and while there does seem to be an update for it on the HP site, i have no reason to be fiddling with the bios), chipset is a VIA of some variety, probably KT133 (cant seem to pin that one down), original system as a whole is a Compaq Presario 5011CL
kinda at a loss here, this got me looking into the motherboard/cmos/bios, and may explain lockups after the xp reinstall, but not before. some additional windows behavioral problems have cropped up since reinstalling, but im thinking they're unrelated and are probably from something getting messed up while restoring backed up files and settings after the reinstall, nothing that cant be worked around eventually, but this constant freezing is whats killing me
[small][ This Message was edited by: Doran on 2006-10-23 21:07 ][/small]
[ This Message was edited by: Doran on 2006-10-23 21:13 ]
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NiteHawk
Fleet Admiral
Joined: September 16, 2001
Posts: 209
From: Sag Hothha
| Posted: 2006-10-23 21:21
With regards to your computer first thing I'd say is I don't think its the graphical card. Usually a graphical card error will first result in artifacts and then ventually locking up with lines going through the screen or just plain more artifacts all over. You can also check the hard drive to make sure its still spinning when it crashes and doesnt sound silent, but I doubt it is that.
Did you check the fets on the motherboard? If one is buldging it could be a error on that part and either need a new MOBO or new fet if your good with a saulder. If it looks okay, then I'd check the CPU and RAM, which is probably is. If it is CPU its generally hard to detect, so it might be good to see if any of your friends have a CPU they can test on your computer.
About the ram, have you tried removing the two 128's and just using the 256 to see if it works? Or the other way around. It could be two sticks dying together, you could even try one at a time, doing all of them to see if one at works. I highly doubt its anything to do with the bios and such if it was fine before. Specially if its before I doubt its anything like a virus or spyware that does that.
Also make sure if you have a soundcard thats external, I'd pull it out to test. Could be causing crashes if you have one, I've seen alot of them do that.. External cheap sound cards can be evil.
I wish I could take a look at it, I am not the best at it but just throwing out ideas for you since no one has. 
[ This Message was edited by: NiteHawk on 2006-10-23 21:25 ]
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Doran
Chief Marshal
Galactic Navy
Joined: March 29, 2003
Posts: 4032
From: The Gideon Unit
| Posted: 2006-10-23 21:54
Quote:
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On 2006-10-23 21:21, NiteHawk wrote:
With regards to your computer first thing I'd say is I don't think its the graphical card. Usually a graphical card error will first result in artifacts and then ventually locking up with lines going through the screen or just plain more artifacts all over. You can also check the hard drive to make sure its still spinning when it crashes and doesnt sound silent, but I doubt it is that.
im pretty sure its not either of those, hard drives are the newest parts in the box, and theres nothing to make me think the vidcard itself is anyway remotely problematic
Did you check the fets on the motherboard? If one is buldging it could be a error on that part and either need a new MOBO or new fet if your good with a saulder. If it looks okay, then I'd check the CPU and RAM, which is probably is. If it is CPU its generally hard to detect, so it might be good to see if any of your friends have a CPU they can test on your computer.
whats a fet? ram's easy enough to swap out and im persuing that path, but i dont have any access to any other cpus
About the ram, have you tried removing the two 128's and just using the 256 to see if it works? Or the other way around. It could be two sticks dying together, you could even try one at a time, doing all of them to see if one at works. still trying to sort out which one/both/any it is. if it IS the ram, ive got a good guess as to which stick it might be.. I highly doubt its anything to do with the bios and such if it was fine before. Specially if its before I doubt its anything like a virus or spyware that does that.
Also make sure if you have a soundcard thats external, I'd pull it out to test. Could be causing crashes if you have one, I've seen alot of them do that.. External cheap sound cards can be evil. no such luck, onboard sound
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ive got my best guess sitting out of the computer atm..waiting to see if its absence improves anything..
[ This Message was edited by: Doran on 2006-10-23 22:04 ]
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[2006] - Codex09
Admiral
Joined: August 16, 2006
Posts: 187
From: Sydney Australia
| Posted: 2006-10-23 21:57
Hmm in regards to your computer it sounds like some of your memory might be having problems, whether it is the memory on th graphics card or the memory on the M/B I am not sure, but it might be worth just having a look at that.
Hope this helps in some way, cause there is nothing wrse than having your system locking up all the time and not being able to find out why.
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NiteHawk
Fleet Admiral
Joined: September 16, 2001
Posts: 209
From: Sag Hothha
| Posted: 2006-10-23 22:08
Alright, what I ment was capacitors, not fets, stupid me.
Basicly make sure those are not leaking or bulding, bulding is when it looks like its going to explode (not really, but just a example), heres image example of bother.
If you already knew about that sorry 
About the ram yeah, just stick em in one at a time and push it. Might be slow yeah running 128 for instance but if it works it won't crash. It does sound like a ram error though.
If that doesn't solve it, could be a error within the motherboard, perhaps something that deals with how it uses the ram. Mobos are generally cheap though, its the CPU thats more pricy, go EBAY if you need to. And don't bring it in a shop, you can buy both a CPU and motherboard, even ram too rather then going in a shop and them fixing one thing for double the price..
I'd play with ram first, but if that fails, it's probably the MOBO rather then the CPU. (Even if there are no caps that are messed.)
Sorry I couldn't be much help, if anything else happens post it
[ This Message was edited by: NiteHawk on 2006-10-23 22:13 ]
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$wiss
Admiral
Joined: November 08, 2002
Posts: 640
From: Prancing in the meadows with Jesus
| Posted: 2006-10-23 22:46
The memory my dear friend!!
For the love of god, chuck the 128s and go buy a 512 for god forbid like 30 bucks!!
For the love of memory!!
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Ospolos
Grand Admiral
Joined: January 31, 2004
Posts: 567
From: ON, CANADA
| Posted: 2006-10-23 23:05
Before you try the CPU, swap the harddrives with another and install the OS on it, and see if you still have the same problem.
If you recently modified bios settings for what ever reason, put them back to default if you can.
It is also possible your power supply is dying, swap that out and try with another also.
Save the CPU for last, its the most expensive replacement.. Leave the MOBO alone unless all else fails.
edit: try unplugging the power supply from the source in the wall (obviously you would hit the switch on the back off if it has one) and then wait a minute. Then plug it back in, and wait for something to happen again.
Also after If you can, go in your bios and look at the power statistics, and see if it fluctuates greatly. Also, make sure your home doesnt have any new power problems, if it does, you may want to get a UPS, because any variation of the such would cause a power sag and lock up the computer because the hardware is lost..
[ This Message was edited by: Ospolos on 2006-10-23 23:13 ]
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Osp
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Borgie
Chief Marshal
Pitch Black
Joined: August 15, 2005
Posts: 2256
From: close by
| Posted: 2006-10-24 00:06
Quote:
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On 2006-10-23 21:00, Doran wrote:
on the off-hand that it might be bad/failing ram, ive been running memtest86/memtest86+. of the 3 sticks (2x 128mb Pc100 SDRAM in DIMM 1&2 (original with system), 1x 256mb Pc133 SDRAM in DIMM3), memtest consistantly reports ~20 errors at 0001573fdbc, and the Chan column will contain a 1 (which i either correctly or incorrectly read as Channel, to indicate the problem's in the memory in the 1st slot). attempts to isolate the bad stick (by way of moving sticks to different slots in hopes of changing that Chan number, or removing sticks altogether) are so far proving fruitless.
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your memory sticks have to to match, if your computer runs pc100sdram, you have to stick with pc100 any other memory will not work and cuase problems for ya
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