merlin

I'm trying to fix a friends computer. It was running Win98 with a Celeron 433 - no overclocking. The only cards installed were an internal modem and graphics card. The problem is that sometimes the computer screen locks up completely. No mouse movement, no ctrl-alt-delete - nothing. This can happen after 30 minutes or 2 days and seems to happen more often than not when surfing the web. The only way out is a power off. This started happening after a memory upgrade although it may not be related because when I reinstalled the old memory the lock ups still happened. I checked the processor fan and it's definitely doing something.

So far I've tried the following to fix it with no success:

- Checked for viruses - nothing
- Ran a health check - nothing reported.
- Ran a couple of stress tests - no crashes after 3 days but as soon as I opened IE it had crashed within 30 minutes.
- Removed the internal "modem" that relied on the processor to do its work. Replaced with a network card to get the PC on my home network.
- Tried a 2nd graphics card.
- Installed XP Pro
- Had a different problem with ACPI causing crashes. Tried to update BIOS - no BIOS upgrade available so switched XP to use the "Standard PC" rather than "ACPI PC". This solved ACPI crashes.
- Switched off all graphics hardware acceleration.
- Ran with the case off incase overheating is the problem.
- Disabled various bios options (onboard audio, USB, CPU external cache, video ram cache, IDE posting, video bios shadow...)

I'm tempted to strip it down and rebuild incase there's a faulty connection somewhere. After that I'm thinking maybe a faulty motherboard but that's maybe expensive to replace when you cost in processor and memory.

Any suggestions on what to try next?

Bal

I purchased a Tiny laptop about a year ago.
1 gig chip blah blah..win me
It to started locking up at random periods.
I installed Win 2000, and still the same.
So it went straight back to the manufacturer and I got the laptop back after a week (flippin quick!!) and they had replaced the memory.
And since then no lock ups.

Bal

bioforger

iTrader: (1)

Merlin try another RAM dimm.

orbv

Replace Windows with Linux

MrDeference

and be shocked when after the 3 month learning curve, and the pain of installing a whole new OS, nothing has changed.

HHxx

Two things I have come across is memory corruption, bad memory, or the cpu over heating. Either the fan stopped working or the heatsink is not attached properly.

H

merlin

orbv - I've run both Windows and Linux in the past (RedHat 4.0 thro' 7.0) - on the desktop Linux is nothing special unless you want to spend all your time battling through howtos and obscure command line parameters and/or system files... The guy who owns the faulty computer is in his 70s and has enough problems with Windows point and click. If I put Linux on I would need to give up my day job just to support him! Now if Linux had a decent UI then it might be a different story. Last time I looked Gnome and KDE just didn't cut it. Before you get the wrong idea, I'm not anti-Linux - in a server environment it would be my preferred solution.

Maybe we can continue this conversation on slashdot...

suba

have a look at the BIOS and maybe set everything back to default. take the SIMM out and re-sit them again. do the same with any PCI/ISA cards.

as HHxx mentioned, definitely check that the heatsink/case/PSU fans are all working, and the case got a good airflow.

merlin

Thanks suba. I tried setting the bios options back to default but it still crashed. It was then that I started disabling various BIOS options in the hope that one of them was the source of the crash eg disable USB.

I haven't tried re-seating the SIMM but last night I started a memory test (docMemory) which runs from a dos floppy and basically continually writes/read test patterns to the memory. So far it hasn't detected any failures.

I've checked the processor fan is working and at the moment the case is off so it shouldn't be getting too hot. All the cards have been out during the last week. If the memory test shows nothing, then I'm going to try a different PSU.

merlin

Thanks everyone for replying. The PC now seems ok. I ran the memory test for 3 days without a failure. I then booted back to XP and have had no more crashes since then.

I'm not sure what was causing the screen to lockup. My best guess is that the PSU is marginal and by having the PC switched on continually for over a week somehow it has settled down. If it starts crashing again then the PSU will be replaced.