Help Ghost in the Machine!

[CyberGenX 0]

I recently built a machine for my brother. Biostar nForce 2 MB, 512PC 2100 DDR, 1.4GHz Athlon T-Bird, and Radeon 9200 SE, 40Gig 7200 ATA 133 Drive. 350Watt Supply.

 

Everything seemed to go smooth, XP Pro installed fine, all the programs and games installed and worked fine. So I just let it sit and defrag after all that loading. It locked up tighter than a frog's a$$. So I rebooted it and ran a scan disk, played around with a few memory settings, made sure there was no heat issues, yada yada. The motherboard and power supply are new. The video card, cpu, hard disk and memory were all from a working system that had it's motherboard go out on it.

 

I let it defrag again and it went through all the way. Then after another 10 minutes of sitting there it locks up again. I turned down video acceleration, disabled USB, onboard sound, onboard nic. It would still lock up after 10 or so minutes. I checked power savers, screen savers, stand by, hibernate, etc. All were OFF in both bios and windows.

 

Here is the kicker...I played Max Payne 2 for an hour, Ran the Serious Sam 2 demo for 2 hours, and played a couple other games. Opened 100 MS words, 30 MS excels, and a dozen other apps while playing music and web browsing. NO FREEZE. WTF! So I let the machine sit again and sure as $h*t it locks up everytime it is idle.

 

What could be causing this computer to freeze ONLY when it is NOT being used? This is after a fresh install of WinXP pro SP1, latest nForce drivers and latest ATI Catalyst. I also tried taking out the ATI and putting in a GeForce 3 Ti, same freeze after ten minutes.

[ViolentGreen 0]

Edit: ..nevermind. Missed something in your post

[sapiens74 0]

Is it going into standby mode?

 

 

Could it be a power setting?

[thatsteveguy 0]

Quote:

Is it going into standby mode?


Could it be a power setting?

that is what I was thinking as well. I know he mentioned going into the power settings but check to see if the something there is going into sleep mode.
I have 20 computers with XP on them in my classroom and at least half do the same thing if the power setting aren't all set to 'never'

S

[CyberGenX 0]

Yes all the settings say never. I only defragged once, it freezes just sitting there. You could play games for 10 hours and leave the computer for a minute at desktop and it will freeze.

[jmmijo 1]

Just out of curiosity which make/model mouse are you using and if it's a Microsoft or Logitech are you using their Mouse software ?!?

[CyberGenX 0]

Logitech wheel mouse. No software installed. PS/2.

[dave.green1 0]

Have you tried playing with the services? Maybe the Indexing Service or the Background Intelligent Transfer are locking the machine....

 

Also, did you install a sound card? Or is it just on-board sound?

[CyberGenX 0]

I disable a butt load of services, just the bare minimum is running. Neither of those are enabled or running. We thought about the sound card, so we took it out. It was a SB 128 PCI. With the onboard sound enabled or disabled it still locks up.

[dave.green1 0]

Have you ran a thorough Scandisk on the HD yet? Maybe you had a bad sector or cluster somewhere on the machine.....

 

EDIT: It is possible that one of the IDE cables is shot....I have seen something similiar to your problem at work many times....replacing the cables solved the issue.....

 

Edit #2: I just re-read our original post and you did mention the scandisk....(sorry it's 2 am and I am tired)

[CyberGenX 0]

I will try a new cable then... Gotta try something. But would a faulty cable allow the computer to work fine for hours on end as long as someone was actually moving the mouse or joystick? Then lock up when it is not actually in use?

 

Yeah it's late here too. :x

[dave.green1 0]

Does the lock happen while connected to the internet? You could have something running somewhere that is accessing the net continously (just a thought...)

 

Have you tried un-installing the nForce drivers for the Mobo?

 

I really think that it is the actually HD that is giving you your problem.....sounds like something is screwed on the physical disk and when the OS tries to access it, it dies.

 

What apps did you install on the machine? Or did it start right from the get go?

 

And what file system did you use?

 

(Sorry for the questions but this problem has always fasinated me....the sulution we have at work is to ship it away and get it fixed....I'd really like to find a solution to the problem so I can save some money before I ship this stuff out....)

 

EDIT: You don't happen to have a scanner attached to the machine do you?

[CyberGenX 0]

Yes I tried uninstalling and reinstalling nForce. No it is not connected to the internet. The only program installed is Norton Anti-Virus Corporate, Office XP, Adobe Photoshop, Max Payne, Dirt Track Racing, Serious Sam2 and Nascar. No scanner is attached and I am using all onboard devices now save the video card. File system is NTFS.

 

 

It started locking up as I was finishing with it, defrag. Yet I can play on it for hours...

[CyberGenX 0]

Yeah, I am not running SETI. THis is my brother's machine and the less on it the better. He is not a heavy computer geek like me, he doesn't even know what SETI is... He is a race car driver and like to use the computer for racing games when he is not actually on the track.

[dougall27 0]

May not be of any use, but I had the same problem a while ago..

PC was freezing with no process running etc, fine when using games and stuff..

 

I found the problem to be a dodgy Windows XP driver for my Netgear NIC card, got a new version from the website, and voila, problem sorted..

 

Hope this helps