Arrrgghhh PC lockups are doing me head in :-(

[dav0]

Can anyone suggest why my PC locks up? It mostly locks during disk intensive tasks like creating ISOs on HD or copying a large file from another PC but sometimes it locks up while idling.

Config is:

WinXP (base version)
KR7A-133 (standard voltages, etc)
Athlon 1.9XP
1 Stick of 512Mb Crucial DDR-2100
Radeon 8500
SonicFury
3Com 10/100 NIC
Maxtor HD

CPU temp hovers around 50c and I've got the latest BIOS, Via 4-in-1 & other hardware drivers.

Any ideas?

Cheers

dav0

 

[Embattle]

50 on load or idle?

Have you changed any thing recently?

 

[Summo]

Are you getting any errors in the system log of Event Viewer? Partularly entries related to SCSI (even if you don't have any SCSI hardware).

 

[Xavier]

heh, from the top - let us know the configuration including resources (IRQ's) on each device, it could be something as simple as resource sharing thanks to the demon of ACPI, alternatively it could be heat or voltage related but lets eliminate the obvious first

basically any devices sharing irq's isn't great - what we really need is to avoid any system-critical parts such as SCSI, Sound, Video, IDE or modems using any already-allocated resources....

so post a list below and we'll go from there...

 

[dav0]

47-50c using Nero & browsing this site Dunno how to measure the temp under load as I just use Winbond Hardware Monitor to get temp under Windoze. I dunno if this temp is high for a 1900XP but the GlobalWin HS&F I'm using is rated to 2100XP.

It's a relatively new PC.. well I'm using my old HD & GFX card but new mem, mobo, soundcard, PSU (Enermax 431W) & NIC.

I even tried reinstalling the PC from scratch.. removed ALL the hardware components from the case, screwed it all back together - even reapplied thermal grease - and reformatted the HD. XP took a couple of attempts to install as the PC locked up again

I should mentioned that the only hardware in the box when I was reinstalling XP was the video card, DVD-ROM & CDRW. I installed the soundcard & netcard once I finally got XP up & running. I don't think it's a conflict but you never know.

Idle CPU temp dropped about 2/3c cos I rearranged intake/extract fan & cables to improve airflow. I also slapped in an extract fan.. ..sounds like a small jet now

There's nothing of interest in the eventlog - no disk related stuff anyway.

IRQ settings are...

Radeon IRQ 11
3Com NIC IRQ 10
Santa Cruz Soundcard IRQ 12
Primary IDE Channel IRQ 14
Secondary IDE Channel IRQ 15

Hope you can help cos this is a real pain

dav0

 

[old.Avatar261]

Ive had similar problems with my PC locking up. Its conflicts caused between your DCRW and your DVDROM drive.

Its very difficult to get around. As putting a CD Drive on an IDE channel along with a HDD is a big nono due to speed issues that will suffer.

It seems yours is a lot worse than mine though. I did sort the cooling on my PC as i find anything over 50 is bad for athlons. mine now idles around 40 and peaks bout 48.