pc hanging

[pcg79]

after a two days of not nusing my pc, when i turned it on, it hung after about 5 mins of getting into windows. i mean nothing worked at all - ctrl+alt+del didnt do anything; no input would work.

resetting it made the fan whirr lots but no POST.
the only solution was to take the power cable out.

then after having hangs for a few attempts, it finally turned on again and worked fine until yesterday

i was watching shawshank (.avi) and it hung. again, lots of resetting but this time the problem hasnt gone away by itself. each reset the time in windows before hang seemed to get shorter and shorter

i thought it could be a hdd problem, but the maxtor diag tool (on a cd) just hung too; so maybe its a mobo fault?

i use my pc for music mostly, so i guess that could be fucking with the hdd. but it doesnt seem to happen for any reason. like, it doesnt happen when im switching tracks (so not when its seeking or whateveR) but in the middle, randomly.

it also happeend in cs:s, again; randomly. and randomly at a point in the film.

well anyway i udnno what to do, but its driving me mental. ive had this shuttle for a while and tbh its been nowt but hassle but i dont have the money for a new pc.

hdd : maxtor 120gig 6Y120P0
shuttle
memory : 2x512mb of geil something or other (there was a shuttle thread i made before with the details; you lot recommended the memory)
athlon xp 3200+

 

[inactionman]

What temperatures are you getting in the bios, as it sounds like it could be overheating.

 

[SheepCow]

the crashing when playing video sounds like graphics card / gfx RAM / RAM problem. My girlfriend had onboard gfx and it kept crashing when in games / playing films. We changed the RAM and it worked fine (onboard gfx used the system RAM).

 

[pcg79]

the crashing when playing video sounds like graphics card / gfx RAM / RAM problem. My girlfriend had onboard gfx and it kept crashing when in games / playing films. We changed the RAM and it worked fine (onboard gfx used the system RAM).

its nto overheating. the case has been left off, plus it was working fine in the hot hot summer with the case on

the video problem is just an example of the times its crashed. video has played fine before. and its not just games/video that causes crashes. it happens randomly.

the RAM i changed already (the old ram was causing reboots and stuff)

 

[pcg79]

seriously i need help with this. its driving me absolutely mental.

i have lots of stuff i need on my pc, for uni and just stuff in general. and i have no cd/dvd burner!

if anyone can recommend other forums or something?

 

[inactionman]

I doubt it's this, but are you overclocking your processor or anything?

It could be a problem with your graphics card, as sheepcow says. Do you get any errors in the system log on xp? If so can you post them here, they should help us figure it out.

 

[pcg79]

I doubt it's this, but are you overclocking your processor or anything?

It could be a problem with your graphics card, as sheepcow says. Do you get any errors in the system log on xp? If so can you post them here, they should help us figure it out.

not overclocking no.

there are no errors in the system log at all.

i seriously doubt its the graphics card. why would the graphics card make windows crash ON LOADING, or just when its idling and playing some music in winamp?

its a full blown on crash too; like, the music doesnt stutter or anything. it just gets cut off completley.#

gfx card is a radeon 9800 pro btw. by sapphire i think. i think ive got the latest drivers too.

 

[Dommers]

Buy a memory stick put all the stuff on there and format. All I can think of.

 

[inactionman]

Is it stable running something like knoppix? If it is then it's down to the os. If not, it's hardware related.

I remember a friend of mine having similar problems, and it was down to his power supply, it was on the way out, and eventually died, taking his graphics card with it. You may want to get a replacement shuttle psu.

Strange that I'm always asking about power supply's, it's the most important part of a computer, but it's the thing that most people skimp on!

 

[pcg79]

i dunno about knoppix (googling it gives some linux crap that i dont use).

someone on another board suggested a new PSU. hmm it may have to be done.

luckily however, its been behaving today. fingers crosssed it was a temporary glitch.

 

[smurkin]

Fans whirring but no post...has to be hardware or bios. My guess would be memory...but you changed that already...so psu is a good possibility. psus are also a common cause of damaged memory. First, you might want to try a memtest86 (http://www.memtest86.com/) just in case you still have a memory problem. I'd seriously consider swapping your existing memory around into different banks to see if thats a fix...I've had that problem a few times with similar symptoms to those you have experienced.

First of all though, I would be tempted to back up all that precious data. Personally, I keep a spare drive on the shelf onto which I cloned my os and data drive using Norton Ghost - creates a perfect os-working copy of your boot disk and data (even clones RAID 0). Restoring is ALOT quicker than reinstalling windows with everything working just perfect.

 

[inactionman]

i dunno about knoppix (googling it gives some linux crap that i dont use).

Knoppix is a live linux cd distribution, you can boot off it and use it without touching your hard-drive. The reason why I suggest it a lot is that it's a good indication if it's a hardware problem or a software problem (i.e. if you use it, and you get no problems it's a software problem, so look at servicepack/reinstall, if you still get problems it's very likely to be hardware), it also has a number of programmes you can use to repair problems, particularly filesystem/partition table ones. Basically it's a pretty good litmus test/recovery suite.