Systems hangs every 24 hrs after converting to NTFS

[rblue]

ECS K7VZA Rev.1
AMD Athlon T-Bird 900
128 MB RAM
WD 20 GB HDD
LG 12X CD-RW
LG 52X CD-ROM

Was running Win2k SP3 on FAT32 volume, converted to NTFS. Now system hangs for no apparent reason at least once every 24 hours.

Ran chkdsk with /R /F no edisk errors found. What gives?

Thanks,
Rob

 

[wolluf]

Did you use 2k's convert utility (or something else like partition Magic)?

Is there anything in event viewer after system hang?

Does it just hang completely (so need to reboot)?

No pattern to which apps you're running when it does hang?

 

[rblue]

Sorry, mis-stated my RAM spec, it's 256 MB. My kids' PC has 128 MB.

Anyhow, my wife always has Outlook open, so I'm inclined to believe that Outlook may be causing the hang. The hang is total - no mouse, keyboard - nothing. I have to power cycle the machine to get it back.

I used the Win2k convert utility, BTW. I've never had a system hang since I built this box. The only reason I converted was that I have only 2 gig left on the partition and I wanted more space. It sucks 'cause I only gained about 130 MB in the conversion.

 

[wolluf]

Have you tried reinstalling/repairing Outlook/Office?

 

[rblue]

I ran a defrag after the chkdsk and all seems to be well now. It seems that there may have been some wierdness after the conversion and the system got confused.

Haven't had a system hang in the last 24 hours so I'm hoping it's fixed.

 

[rblue]

System resumed hanging after my last post. Turns out to be a memory leak in Outlook. Why this would occur after converting to NTFS, I have no idea. Maybe hosed an Outlook file or binary?

I'm reapplying O2k SP3. Hopefully that will fix it.

 

[bomag]

I had this on an XP machine, I took of disk caching and everything worked again. I am at loss to know why though.

If you turn off disk cahing it can reduce disk read/write speed (bummer)!

another thought... have you tried reducing the max size of your paging file?, I say this because you have limited HD space.

 

[rblue]

I would sooner wipe the drive and start from scratch than sacrifice performance. (The data is backed up.) As it is, I have an EIDE drive (7200 RPM, ATA100) so performance isn't quite what I'd like it to be. Call it personal budget restrictions. (i.e., Wife, 3Kids, 2 cars, house and a dog)

I looked at it this morning and Outlook seems to be sucking up 2 to 3 MB chunks of RAM at a time, at frequent but irregular intervals. This probably explains why it usually locks up the system around mid-day.

In any case, I haven't checked the size of my swap file, but I don't know how that would affect a memory leak in an application. With 2.3 GB left on my C: drive, and 256 MB of RAM, I would certainly hope that the swap file doesn't exceed 512MB. In any case, I don't really page out all that much unless I've got a bunch of apps open at once.