[B-Real]

Hello people, I got my PC for over a year now and never had this problem. 2 days ago it started and the random crashes occured. The PC just freezes, nothing reacts anymore (no CTRL + ALT + DEL or anything). If you played any music, that stops aswell. The current picture stays on the monitor and you can just shutdown the hard way.

The freezes occur from anywhere between a few minutes to 1 hour or in rare cases a little longer.

My PC configuration:

Operating System Windows 2000 SP4 and all patches
AMD Athlon FX-57
Motherboard: Asus A8N32-SLI Deluxe
2x 512 MB Corsair PC3200 DDR Ram
ATI Radeon 1900 XTX 512 Ram
Power Supply: Levicom 450W
I didnt change anything on the hardware for a long time.

What I tried already:

- It isn't the OS, because the PC can freeze in the BIOS and when using a memory diagnosis bootdisk in DOS aswell.
- I cleaned the PC of all dust and checked CPU temperature. It starts at 37° and goes up to 45° and stays constant there. Note that in 1 year of using the PC I never had any problems with overheating, even when I had it turned on for 2 days on a hot day.
- Removed my 2 Ram blocks and replaced it with a new Ram block (fresh from the shop). Also tried the new one in all ram slots. Didnt help, same freezes again.
- Replaced my graphics card with a graphic card from a friend to check if it was the graphic card thats causing the problems. Didnt help again.

So I would be very grateful if anyone can give me a hint where to go from now. Is it the motherboard? The CPU? Or what should I try next? Thanks for your help, it's greatly appreciated!

[B-Real]

A friend mentioned it could be my power supply that is slowly dieing. But if it's indeed the power supply that's causing the freezing, why does the last picture still stay on the monitor after the crash? Also all cooler fans are still running after the crash.

[biagrin]

a dying power supply can still supply enough power to a pc to keep a picture and run fans. even if a PSU dips in power on 1 line then it could crash the pc. you can buy a PSU tester for very cheap.

[hanoihancock]

I started having the same problem a few days ago. Random freeze, but the fans and screen stay running.

Did you resove your problem? If so, how? Was it the PSU? Can you recommend a tester?

Hanoihancock

[pguglev]

Hi guys,

I am on the verge of getting insane so you have to help me out please. I have the very same problem, as described above: random pc freezes, the whole system just stops, the cursor freezes at one position (and I think HDD also stops) Ctrl+Alt+Del does not work. After a reboot it goes on again, as nothing happened. For the past several weeks I've been trying to track down the event that triggers the freeze but so far unsuccessfully. Here is what I've done so far:
- bought a new 550W PSU
- run various tests on the CPU, HDD and memory
- thoroughly cleaned the CPU fan from the dust, which lowered its temp by 15-20 degrees, and after the problem happened again it crashed my beliefs, that it could be a temperature issue, into pieces.
A friend from another forum advised me to switch to Ubuntu Live CD for a couple of days to see if it is a hardware issue but I am reluctant to do it because there was a period that this problem hadn't occurred in months. Then suddenly it started happening again. Generally this thing doesn't happen at a regular intervals but I am inclined to think it is triggered by something specific that I do. In my case actually it used to happen at a 1 hour rate before I replaced my PSU and almost randomly afterwards. Yesterday it happened once today twice. I Also have noticed that almost every time this happens an intensive torrent download was present or other such things that actually trigger a frequent HDD access. But on the other hand my HDD passed numerous tests.
Let me know what measures and tests you have taken and done. Any conjectures and tips are highly appreciated.
I already specified the details of my system but here it is once again:

P4 Prescott 531 3 GHz with hyperthreading, 2x512 ddr2 nanya ram modules running on dual channel, Samsung 160 GB HDD, ASRock 775 Dual880Pro, GeForce FX 5200 128 MB;

Thank you very much beforehand for helping me.

[hanoihancock]

I tested temp/voltage on everything for days, and no spikes correlated with my freexe ups. Then... I pulled the D-link wireless card from my machine. Voila! I have no logical reason why the wireless card would cause a problem, but... If you're running wireless and are behind a router using UPNP or some kind of port forwarding, it's be worth a try pulling the card.

Hanoihancock

[tovele]

This is exactly the problem I am having just in the past week random freezes and sometimes restarts by itself.
Have pentium 4 cpu 2.66ghz 512mb ram
Any help major appreciated.

[pguglev]

Hello,

Well, amazingly, it seems that the problem was caused by, you won't believe it, the WLAN
network. hanoihancock, you were right (99% sure)! Thank you very much for your suggestion, dude - it really helped me.
So, apparently my wireless USB adapter (Level 1) and my router (sinus 1054 from Deutsche Telekom) don't get along particularly good and, moreover, I had the problem that if my BitTorrent is downloading very intensively the WLAN network would crash and need restart, because of the router's CPU overloading. I didn't find these problems myself -
it was TOO IMPLAUSIBLE for me that the reason for the whole system to freeze could be a WLAN issue. I read about the Wireless network crashing in a forum, and HERE from hanoihancock I learnt that he was having the same trouble with the freezing and followed his advice. Total Mystery! Actually it's been only 1,5 days since I replaced my router (still being with the same Wi-Fi adapter though) with another one and the old problem with my system freezing dead could still appear. I'll wait for a couple of weeks and post here if
the problem persists. For the time being I am happy. Thank you!

[dogged]

pguglev....have you tried increasing your virtual memory? try setting it to atleast 2 times your physical memory amount. the reasoning is you said your freezing "almost every time this happens an intensive torrent download was present or other such things that actually trigger a frequent HDD access"....which basically means your physical and or virtual memory is not able to keep up with the processes your running and also keep in mind that when you torrent other people or torrenting from your machine as well. hanoihancock<---nice fix and solution. also pguglev.....running a live cd would not affect your OS in any way. live cd's only run in memory and do not touch your operating system whatsoever unless you tell it to....running the live cd is actually a great idea to test the hardware.

[pguglev]

It's not a memory issue, I've been monitoring my RAM intensively. I think really the reason was the WLAN adapter (or router), although I cannot a reasonable explanation of the occurence. The fact is that the problem hasn't occured since I replaced my old router with another one.

[dogged]

ah cool then hehe....:P

[lili1126]

Originally Posted by tovele

This is exactly the problem I am having just in the past week random freezes and sometimes restarts by itself.
Have pentium 4 cpu 2.66ghz 512mb ram
Any help major appreciated.

I am having a same problem here, with AMD 2.4 1G ram, thought about hardisk bad blocks...but nothing been found after a scanning....any thought...guys???

[deadishduck]

HI All,

Out of intrest are you all using a USB Keyboard?, If yes try normal ps2 one.

[lili1126]

Originally Posted by deadishduck

HI All,

Out of intrest are you all using a USB Keyboard?, If yes try normal ps2 one.

why?? are you trying to sell it or what?? i thought everybody is using USB keyboard already..coz it is very hard to find a ps2 one in my market...

[deadishduck]

no had same prblem at home, removed usb keyboard and it did'nt do it again.