OT: random PC crashes

Erk wrote on 8/20/2004, 7:21 PM

For quite some time I've been getting fairly frequent, apparently random crashes on my XP system (specs below), not Vegas related. On 3 occasions in the past year, upon reboot a hard drive is corrupted (data loss). Most often, I get a blue screen that mentions everything from "IRQ not less or equal" to unspecified driver problems to other gibberish. After rebooting, everything seems fine (except for those 3 drive deaths.....) These problems can happen with different software open, alone or multitasking (Media Player, Vegas, Outlook express, Word, whatever).

The one thing these crashes seem to have in common is that they occur at the moment I click a button. In other words, just sitting there reading an email, looking at a web page, Word doc, Vegas screen, whatever, it won't crash. But if I click a button, zap! Clue?

Recently, I installed another 512 MB DDR Ram, bringing me up to 1 gig Ram. Just now I got a blue screen, and upon rebooting noticed that my swap file (on my C drive where XP is installed) had been reduced from 1.5 gigs to 274,504 MBs. I've noticed this one other time; rebooting again will restore the swap to 1.5 gig (I'm letting Windows manage the swap size).

Does this swap file change provide a clue as to what's happening? Here are a couple things I suspect:

- bad RAM. I'm gonna yank my older stick out and see what develops.

-Fat32 vs. NTFS. I've had several NTFS drives combined with one or more that are still FAT32 (XP is on an NTFS drive;the FAT 32s have all been data drives only, no apps). Lately I've read that this is a no-no. Comments on that? The only good reason I've still got a FAT32 drive is because those are still recognized by DOS, which I need to use to copy any remaining data on those corrupted drives.... arghh.

-heat. I"ve been more closely monitoring my CPU heat, but it doesn't get close to the danger point recommended for an AMD XP2000+ . I know AMDs generally run hotter than Pentiums.

I'm quite sure all my drivers are the latest available, but then again, sometimes newer drivers create problems where none existed.

Any and all comments very welcome. Thanks,
Greg

Windows XP home
AMD 2000+ CPU
1 gig MB PC 2700 DDR ram (2 different brands; problems existed before the introduction of the 2nd ram stick)
Asus A7V333 mobo
SB Live value
Echo Gina20
nVidia Geoforce MMX 420 video card
several Maxtor hard drives
Pyro basic firewire card
some USB stuff (printer, exterior modem) off a USB port and a little USB external hub.

Comments

Erk wrote on 8/20/2004, 7:28 PM

update: just checked XP's Event lister. There are no events, warnings, errors or anything listed at any time near the time of lastest crash (no security, application, or system events of any kind....)

Greg

Orcatek wrote on 8/20/2004, 7:37 PM

You just added memory, so I would suspect that. There are plenty of memory testor programs around.

Of course you can just try swapping the memory around. Or running with just old or just new.

Erk wrote on 8/20/2004, 7:59 PM

Thanks, I will try swapping memory around, but as I mentioned, I've been having these kind of crashes for quite some time, long before I recently added the new memory stick.

Greg

mrjhands wrote on 8/20/2004, 8:29 PM

"...and upon rebooting noticed that my swap file (on my C drive where XP is installed) had been reduced from 1.5 gigs to 274,504 MBs..."

count with me...997MBs, 998MBs, 999MBs, 1000MBs (or 1 gigabyte)

Is that a TYPO?? looks to me like your swap file has been INCREASED drastically to 274 gigs!, which aint right ...

Is it beyond the realm of practicality to just REFORMAT your drive (and lose everything, start over to factory fresh), backup all your stuff and re-install?(not in that order of couse)
Sounds like maybe your system hardrive is BROKE, bad...maybe VIRUS??
sounds like you aint gettin much done STATUS quo anyway :-)

Good luck with ALL that...John

Erk wrote on 8/20/2004, 9:07 PM

mrjhands,

Oops, yeah, typo, should have been KBs not MBs....

Reformat, reinstall: probably headed that way! I should just bite the bullet and get that all over with...

Virus? I guess that's possible. I have been using Norton to regularly scan the whole system, and updating my virus definitions, but I understand nothing can catch everything out there.

Thanks,
Greg

riredale wrote on 8/20/2004, 10:01 PM

Okay, some things to check, in order:

(1) Take off the side panel and run the computer with it open. If it now works fine, your problem is heat-related. If so, it could be anything, but the simplest solution is to add a fan to exhaust the hot air faster.

(2) If you have two memory sticks, remove one for a while. If you still get crashes, swap sticks. If everything's now fine, you had a bad memory stick.

(3) Buy some ribbon cables and replace the ones you have, or swap what you have around.

(4) Get a replacement power supply (they're cheap) and swap it out.

(5) Go back to an earlier backup of your system (you have been doing backups all this time, right?)

In my own experience since buying my first PC in 1998 (a K6 350 Compaq), I have found two bad memory sticks, one bad ribbon cable, one defective power Y-adapter, and two sick cooling fans. I've gotten into situations where my 98se or xp system would act sick in various ways, and in a few cases I've been able to cure it, but in most cases the only recourse has been to go back to an earlier backup (a full disk-image backup, like DriveImage), into which I would then bring over my current files such as email, photos, music, and such.

The whole point is to see whether the problem is hardware or software.