Frequent PC Crashes

Abhishek Reddy's picture

He has: 3,348 posts

Joined: Jul 2001

This is a problem I've been having on my new machine for some time now.

The Problem:
Often my computer just freezes up for no apparent reason. I'm usually in the middle of browsing stuff (online or off), and the screen locks up. All windows/menus/bars get unusable, but the cursor is movable. If any audio is playing, it normally just carries on.

Machine Specs:
P4 1.8GHz,
256MB DDR, usually about 40% to 60% free,
several gigs of free hdd space,
nVidia GeForce 2 400MX w/ 64MB, <-- primary suspect
54X cdrom. <-- secondary suspect
OS: Win XP Pro

Some History:
When I bought this, I found a lot of errors happening with the video card and cdrom.
The cdrom came down to simple wiring problems, but when it was acting up, crashes happened very similar to how they happen now.
The video card was a little buggy in its display of Win XP objects (scrollbars, menus) so I updated the drivers to the latest and that solved that problem. But then I saw new things happening like funky colors while rendering pages and images, "black holes" appearing on screen etc. Then the crashes started.

Any ideas? Need more info?

Thanks.

He has: 1,016 posts

Joined: May 2002

From my experience it could be any piece of hardware, but mainly your graphic card or memory. I suggest you again update all your drivers (graphic, network, sound, etc) and also update WindowsXP. If it still doesn't help, you could do a search for error. For example, disconnect the CD-ROM and use the computer for a while without it, if that didn't help, try another graphic card (if you have another one available) and so on.

Abhishek Reddy's picture

He has: 3,348 posts

Joined: Jul 2001

I'm pretty sure it ain't the cdrom so I guess I'll try another graphics card... should be able to borrow one from someone for a day. Sticking out tongue

Thanks for the reply. Smiling

He has: 1,016 posts

Joined: May 2002

If you can, borrow a memory block as well so that you can try it with a working block.

Abhishek Reddy's picture

He has: 3,348 posts

Joined: Jul 2001

Yeah... I'll try that and the network card as well. Now that I think of it, I was having some driver problems with that at the start too, but I updated and those stopped.

PS, zollet: I tried sending you a PM, but I get a "user's inbox is full" message.

mjames's picture

They have: 2,064 posts

Joined: Dec 1999

Do you run ZoneAlarm 3.1, possibly? I had some problems on 2K with it and upgraded and those problems have been reduced. What about updates, have you gotten all patches that might increase stabability? Particularly XP SP1.

Abhishek Reddy's picture

He has: 3,348 posts

Joined: Jul 2001

The problem appears to be with the graphics card - I've tried a swap. I guess I'll have it exchanged. Smiling

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