windows 2000 freezing up intermittently

[bellins1]

I have a problem with my windows 2000 machine always freezing up intermittently, sometime it stays on 2 hours, sometimes, it can't even get past the logon screen without freezing...not sure if it's a hardware or software issue though.... AMD K7- 1333 MHz cpu, 60 GB ibm IDE drive, ECS-K7S5A motherboard, with an older 52x cdrom drive, and generic floppy drive, AGP ATI Radeon 7500 dual monitor, integrated SIS NIC and audio, and a secondary 3COM NIC(3c905B)......
I gave it a clean install of windows 2000, updated all the patches that the windows updater found, all the patches that norton updater found, checked for viruses with the latest virus definitions, changed the hd,cd config so, hd=prim,Master, and cd=sec,slave...

I gave up when I took it to bestbuy and they looked at it and $30 later told me that there's nothing wrong with it...they couldn't tell if it was a hardware or software problem, but did suggest that I might want to try a new BIOS flash update. It didn't crash on them once... ARRGGGHHH...

Does anyone know why this problem is happening? It crashed/froze on me about 15 times in 2 hours... I would start it up, and then about 2 minutes after the ctrl-alt-del screen appeared to log on, i would see the floppy drive led light up for a second, then immediately the hard drive led would light up...it would freeze most often at this point, before I even logged on... just by moving the mouse..it would freeze...Not sure why, anybody else have this problem.

The temperature in the bios seems fine, and the fan is running(1 month old)... The whole thing has got practically all new parts in it because this continues to have problems....................Any ideas?


Thanks in advance... Steve .. bellins1@yahoo.com

 

[Guest_imported]

I just ran across this discussion through a question to googol, since the whole situation is very familiar, though not quite so serious: the freezing is wholly unpredictable but not incessant. I just found that I have a 300 watt system - would anyone think that this might be the problem in this case?

In an earlier version of Norton Systemworks, there was a utility called "crash-guard" that would generate reports on the number of instances in which it apparently prevented one. This feature is not in the Systemworks 2002 for WIndows 2000, presumably because W2K is not supposed to crash. Has anyone installed the older version anyway and did it do any good.

 

[stevepaff]

One thing I have come accross once, one of my workstations had a similar fault locking in the same way as you all mention. I changed all the components within it apart from the hard drive and reseated everything, performed a clean install (of NT4) but still had the same problem, You could hear the HD spin up and then you could sometimes hear a strange click, the system would then lock for a few minuites and then carry on as if nothing was wrong.

As soon as I put a different HD in the system worked without a problem.

Just my thoughts from past experience but could mean something.

Steve

 

[bellins1]

Well I reseated all the cables, video card, cpu and fan. And I updated the video driver, and in the bios, I disabled the configuration "IRQ to PCI", since it is an AGP card.

The CPU had this red gummy material on it from the factory, and the cpu is strange in that it's not flat all the way across, instead it has this little square plate about 1/4" each side protruding from the top of the cpu and one pad on each corner... That little plate had either burned through the gummy material, or it had just detached when I removed the fan from the cpu... no sure... but I scraped it off with a blade, and cleaned it with alcohol, and put clean thermal paste on it.. Monitoring...

Still waiting on the pwr sply and case...

Steve

 

[bellins1]

Steve,

Check the voltage in your plugins in the house (it's not likely in the power supply or it would hav crashed at best buy) and try some different RAM (it's cheaper to borrow some from a buddy's computer just to test it). If that doesn't work check for IRQ conflicts with your NIC and another device in the system. You can do this through the device manager in the control panel under system. I can't think off of the top of my head how exactly to check the IRQ's in Win2k but in 95/98/me you double-click on Computer which is the very first thing in the list in the device manager. If it is an IRQ conflict then move the network card to a different slot on the mainboard until it's not sharing an IRQ with anything (this is tricky sometimes and takes a few card swaps).

Ken B.

 

[keithinuk]

I think sabreBill is right. The key to this whole problem is the AMD processor.
I did a clean upgrade from Win98SE to W2K Prof yesterday and I'm getting the same intermittent problems. I have a 3 month old AMD 1.2 GHZ processor. I hadn't had any problems with it until yesterday. Some of the other forums I've looked at all reference AMD processors. Spooky or what.
As MS recommend looking for a BIOS upgrade before upgrading to W2K I would save your money looking at power supplies etc. (send it back bellins1) and contact AMD to see what they have available. I'm doing that today !!!!!!!
I'll post again once I get an answer/update.
Good luck
Keith

 

[bellins1]

i found the bios for the ECS K7S5A motherboard... I'm going to try to flash the bios and see what comes of it...

http://www.ecs.com.tw/download/k7s5a.htm

Steve

 

[bellins1]

Also,

I notice that just before the computer locks up, it will sometimes give me a warning by clicking excessive amounts of data through the hard drive. You actually hear it clicking a lot of data through, as if it's getting choked up. It's a brand new 60gb IBM hd, and the c partition was just recently formatted with a clean install. Then it will just freeze up when I'm either trying to open a window, or move a window.

Steve

 

[Guest_imported]

Is your power supply AMD Approved? Those processors suck back the voltage.

 

[keithinuk]

I contacted my hardware supplier and got a very aggressive brush off. I then went to the AMD web (

http://www.amd.com)

and found a Windows 2000 patch (a registry key) in Utilities, Drivers & Updates. It is something to do with the AGP graphics adapter. I've applied it and rebooted.
So far I have been running without freezing !!!!!!!!!!!!
Will keep you informed.
Keith

 

[Guest_imported]

Did you check to see if the CPU fan is running. It might be on it's way out. I know you checked the temp but sometimes they slow down and then speed up. AMD has a heat problem. You just need to get a bigger heat sink and a good fan to cure the issue though. If you go to

http://www.amd.com

they have a list of certified fans and heatsinks. Yes it could very well be your memory aswell. Intermintent problems are worst ones to diagnose. You need to find the problem before you fix it. Just some thoughts. Good Luck

 

[bellins1]

Ken,

I was curious if it might be an IRQ problem also... but was never very successful in the past in troubleshooting IRQ problems... plus, I thought windows 2000 took care of that issue, instead of leaving it up to the BIOS... not sure though..

This is what I have when I click on the DevMgr, view, resources by type:
ISA 0 system timer
ISA 1 stnd 101/102 kybd or ps/2 mouse
ISA 3 com2
ISA 4 com1
ISA 6 stnd flpy dsk controller
ISA 8 sys cmos/rtc
ISA 9 ms acpi compiant system
ISA 10 mpu-401 compatible midi device
ISA 12 Microsoft PS/2 Mouse
ISA 13 Numeric Data processor
ISA 14 prim ide channel
ISA 15 Sec ide channel
PCI 11 SiS 7001 PCI to USB Open Host Controller
PCI 11 SiS 7001 PCI to USB Open Host Controller
PCI 11 SiS Audio Driver
PCI 11 SiS 900 PCI Fast Ethernet Adapter

All the IRQ 11's say the following:

"This device is working properly.
If you are having problems with this device, click Troubleshooter to start the troubleshooter."

And the only difference btw the two PCI 11 SiS 7001 Open Host Controllers is on the General Tab:
PCI bus 0, device 2, function 2
PCI bus 0, device 2, function 3

I wonder if one of these should be disabled?

Also, I checked the voltage coming out of the wall on this pc, the other one, and out of the power strips... they're all btw 125-130v AC... Sounds good to me. Although, right now, it's been having a good day and hasn't crashed yet, going on 1 hour now. No heavy appliances are running or excessive lights are on either. I'm going to try testing the voltages when it starts having a little hissy fit also and freezing up... to see if the voltages are the same at that time too.

I'll try checking the memory again later tonight.

Thanks

And PC4Me,

I do have a new fan, heat sinc, and cpu... and I just reseated it with a new coating of thermal paste..Since I've been waiting for the new ps and case to come in, I guess I'll try t/s the Memory sticks once more...

Thanks,

Steve

 

[bellins1]

I just installed the MS Windows 2000 AGP Patch last night from the AMD site... It's been about 12 hours, I've been using the computer on and off and haven't seen it crash more than once. But that was before I restarted it from the patch install. So, technically... it hasn't crashed since the Patch was installed.

Let's see what happens.

http://www.amd.com/us-en/Processors/TechnicalResources/0,,30_182_869_1039^871^2367,00.html

and i thought this might help someone also:
Builders Guide for Desktop/Tower Systems

http://www.amd.com/us-en/assets/content_type/white_papers_and_tech_docs/26003.pdf

Steve

 

[bellins1]

Ok,

It was about 24 hours... and it froze once. Then, next day I turned it on and probably froze about 5 or 6 times... But it seems like it is or was a little more stable this time ...

I'm going to try to reapply the new Video Drivers again. See what that does.

I'm still trying to figure out this Administrator problem though... I can't use Windows Update to update all the drivers because I'm not being logged in as an administrator for some reason...
see below:
---- thread616-291983 ----

Man this thing has got some problems!!!

Steve

 

[bellins1]

Well guys,

I went the drastic route, which I think was about my only choice at this point... I deleted all my partitions, formatted the whole thing as one big partition, then restarted with the win2k cd, deleted that partn, and created the partitions that I wanted during setup...

I logged in ok, renamed the administrator as the username that I wanted, and now have full access... I can use windows update, etc... That was the biggest problem along with crashing every other minute... I don't know what went wrong last time, but I think it was a bad install(maybe something to do with partitions and the boot record), because this time, everything installed in less than 1/2 hour, and it hasn't crashed after several hours...(that was a big problem, along with protected system files being overwritten)...

I still haven't even installed the new 400W power supply yet, although I'm going to do that asap. It's still working well.

Anyway, I'm going to monitor it for a while and see if all goes well, but so far she's looking good ... The best part about this new install, is now I can log into windows update to update the needed drivers, etc. Earlier it was giving me crazy problems about needing admin logon..

Thanks a LOT for all your help...

And I have to say a cool saying that I saw:

"In a World without walls and fences, who needs Windows and Gates?"

Anyway, Good Luck...............

Steve


Note:

What I did differently this install:
1. deleted all partitions, formatted, then created the desired partitions.
2. used NTFS
3. Have not installed the video drivers yet... I'm going to see if that's the issue with why it's been crashing...

Any comments?

Thanks... Steve

 

[Guest_imported]

I have more or less the same problem. I have an AMD Thunderbird 900, on an ASUS A7V motherboard. I've been using the PC without a problem with Win98 before I installed W2K last week. The PC just freezes (only reset helps) after a while. Sometimes it takes 5 minutes, sometimes I can use it for an hour. The only time it does not crash is when playing a game. I can play NeverwinterNights for 10hours without having the PC freeze a single time. Is anyone else experiencing this? Only when I'm browsing the web or use an application that doesn't run in fullscreen it seems to freeze.

Tonight, I'm gonna try some of the things mentioned in this thread and see if it helps.

Cheers

 

[anonymous1]

Just out of curiosity, did you try updating your motherboard chipset drivers?

 

[bellins1]

I think the chipset drivers have a big part in it also... but I'm also wondering if it doesn't have something to do with either the video drivers or Norton System Works 2001...

I'm using the ati radeon 7500 dual monitor video card and i also downloaded the registry fix under utilities on the ati website...

Any way, I've been through this thing a long time... after the last format(rem/rest partitions)..it worked great ... until I installed norton system works... someone had emailed me thinking that norton was causing the problems... and after the format, it was great until i installed norton... i've been running with freeze ups since then... i uninstalled norton, but it might have messed up something bad enough to need another format because it slowed down the freezing, but still freezes... so, about to reformat and see what happens... this time without norton.

good luck with yours,

steve