I might suggest swapping out RAM as well. Any way you could borrow some sticks from another machine and run it for awhile? Or, if you have 2-3 sticks, take one out at a time and see what happens. Or, physically reseat them, or move them to different slots.

But this suggestion might not have any relevance to that network message you're getting. My guess there is to start turning off XP's services one by one until you discover the problem. Find a good XP tweak site for guidance.

But I'm only a mid-level geek. Might take a real expert to diagnose this one.

Good luck.

G

Could be a bad hard drive too... have you tried checking it for errors?

Thanks for all the thoughts. Seems like you all think it's memory? Is what I am experiencing symptomatic of pending memory failure? I am using all four slots at (256, 256, 64, 64). The 2 64s came with the computer and I just got the 2 256s about 6 months ago.

The only thing that makes me wonder is that I took a surge about two weeks ago that knocked out my monitor (even though I'm behind a surge suppressor). Went from a NEC to a ViewSonic plug-n-play. Just wonder if the surge may have zapped some memory? Is there any way to run a diagonistic against memory other than taking it out?

TomG

TomG,

Just saw this post from Doug Graham in a nearby "XP Tweaks" thread:

A more thorough way to test memory is to download the shareware DocMem from http://www.simmtester.com

Regards,
Doug Graham

I don't think its the memory. The best way to rule out memory problems is by substitution. If you have access to memory sticks of the same type or even a different type your system supports try switching out and see if the problem goes away. If that isn't a option download one of the many memory testers (got to be run outside of Windows) and let it go at least overnight. If nothing shows up, it probably isn't your RAM.

The more common reasons for system hangs are buggy video drivers, a system that is overheating, a damged Registry or installing a new driver or some new software that is now causing a conflict. You need to try to isolate WHEN your system hangs.

Only during boot? After boot while loading Windows, only after Windows is loaded? Randomly during all of the above, only when a certain application or combination of application are runinning, etc.. Since you have XP, look in the Event logs with Event Viewer you can get at from Control Panel under Administrative Tools and see what if anything Windows is saying about the hangs. While not always logged, Windows is pretty good at reporting events in three different logs. One for application events another for the OS and the third for security. For example the other day I had one for Excel:

"Faulting application excel.exe, version 8.0.0.3515, faulting module excel.exe, version 8.0.0.3515, fault address 0x0017837a." You can also setup Dr. Watson (part of Windows, help tells you how to use it) and it will capture a more detailed dump when many things go wrong.

Its worth pursuing Billboy's question about overheating (along with his other thoughts). Not long ago I had a CPU fan with problems on an AMD (which run pretty hot). When the CPU got hotter than a threshhold I set in the BIOS, it would spontaneously reboot and/or freeze (can't remember which).

See if there's a heat monitor utility built-in to your mobo's BIOS, or download one of many free utilities to check system temp.

G

Thanks for all the thoughts... Believe it or not I removed and reinstalled V4 yesterday and have not had a hang since. I mentioned that I reinstalled V4 earlier but all I really did was reinstall 4.0c (did not uninstall first) DUMB! DUMB! DUMB!

So I am hoping that everything else is good....

Thanks again,

TomG

> Has anyone experience these problems

Yep, we are in the same boat. I have a Dell 8100 P4 1.7Ghz that I just upgraded to XP Home (from WinMe) and I get random lockups. I did overnight memory tests, burn-in tests, swapped half the memory out, swap the other half out, and nothing seemed to work. So I removed all my cards and USB devices and formatted the hard drive and reinstalled XP Home with just a video card. I then added my cards back one at a time and when I added my Pinnacle Studio Deluxe AVDV card the lockups started. When I removed the card the lockups stopped. The Pinnacle Deluxe AVDV card does not have WHQL certified drivers despite being listed on the Microsoft site as windows XP compatible.

Both Dell and Microsoft assured me that these lockups are a driver problem. I ran several hardware diagnostic programs and found no hardware problem so I tend to believe them. You may want to remove all your cards and their drivers and see if the lockups continue. Then add each card back one at a time to find the culprit. You may have to add only one card a day since this is really random. This upgrade has taken me 2 weeks so far but my system seems stable now without the Pinnacle capture card. Pinnacle is one of the worst software companies in the world so I’m not surprised.

~jr

Thanks for sharing, jr

Now that is bizarre and sounds like the same thing that is (or I hope was) happening to me. Anybody who maintains that computers are just like common household products (as some vendors would like you to believe) ought to have their heads examined. I've been in the IT business for over 30 years and the care and feeding of a viable home system is still outrageous!!!!

Regards,
TomG

FWIW and all...

Might try running a few monitoring prog so you can see memory usage, temps, that sort of thing, and if any patterns emerge.

Might try physically disconnecting from the internet and see what happens, and might try removing the firewire card - it's there in your networking setup & alas, removing the card or the networking for the card will usually only last till next reboot, so you can do it in software, but have to do it every time windows starts until you verify if there is a difference or not.

On the subject of memory, there are several memory testing apps out there, but they won't necessarily show anything if the problem is intermittant.

SP1 has been known to cause quite a few problems on Dells... Might want to go the restore route, especially if you've done SP1, going back to the way Dell shipped it. If it solves the prob., slowly update the machine to see when it starts occuring.

Unfortunately haven't found a great substitute for good ol' trial and error. You can try safe mode, selectivly load drivers, follow through all the diagnostics in windows, log everything, and in the end find something no one ever thought of. Best example that comes to mind is one SIS chipset caused crashes if you added a fan to the chip heatsink that came on the board.

jr,

Re: your upgrade from WinMe to XP, many sources maintain that a fresh install is much better than an upgrade. I think you mentioned after reformatting you did a fresh install, so I hope this is helping.

G

Another strange thing is that V4 is asking me to insert a disk in my Pioneer A6 burner when it starts up while reloading the previous project. There is no reference made to any files on the DVD drive in the media library, explorer is not open in V4, and it just recently began doing this. Although I don't believe it was coincidental with my freeze-up problems. STRANGE DAYS!!!!

TomG

When you get everything working correctly, Ghost your main OS & Program partition. I do this on all my computers as a backup precaution, but am more particular about my Video Editing Rigs.

I have had weird stuff develop from time to time and cannot figure a way to get things back to norm. By going back to a known working Ghost backup, I get all of my working settings back. This has literally saved me hundreds of hours over the course of several years.

In the event of a HW problem, going back to a known good configuration reassures you that it is a HW problem and not a recent SW change.

Greg,

Actually… if the truth be told… I did this 3 times! The first time I wanted to format the hard drive because I know that upgrading an existing OS is asking for trouble, but if you start the XP install from WinME, it won’t let you format. It does give you the option of doing a “clean” install or upgrade but it doesn’t format the drive and it doesn’t even clean out your Windows directory. There were subdirectories and junk from my previous WinMe install left behind. Not my idea of clean.

Then I found out you must boot from the CD in order to be able to format the C: drive. So I did that next but I left all my cards in and USB devices attached and just let XP do its thing. Finally the third time was when I removed all the cards and USB devices and just installed XP once again on a newly formatted hard drive. If I were paid for the time I’ve wasted on this XP upgrade I could have just bought a new PC.

mikkie ,

That’s an interesting remark about a Firewire card and the Network Adapter drivers. The Studio Deluxe card has two firewire ports. I think I’m gonna put my old firewire card back in so I’ll see if that causes lockups too. If so I’ll try and disable the network adapter drivers.

TomG,

V4 prompts me to put a disk in my DVD drive if I start it with an AVI file. Right now, I can right click on an AVI file and select Open With… Vegas 4 and Vegas will load the file and prompt me to put a disk in the drive. If I just click on the Vegas 4 icon on my desktop it doesn’t do this.

Rino,

I gotta get a copy of Ghost. It sounds like a great insurance policy.

~jr

Wishful thinking, I'm freezing up again (in August, besides!!!)

I'm beginning to think it might have something to do with the NVidea GForce card. But I'm at a loss on how to test it. I can't yank it out and then see if has any problems since I won't be able to see anything, right? I've used both the XP driver and the (non-Windows blessed) driver from NVidea for XP dated February 2003. Makes no difference. Anyway to test it without just taking a chance and replacing it? I've looked at the CPU with cpuz and tested the memory with DocMem and just can't find a hint.

Now the only thing in V4 that is different is that I'm working on a project that has a timeline of 2.5 hours (can't wait to render this puppy). But the length shouldn't have anything to do with performance, should it?

Regards,

TomG

I had suspected my nVidia GeForce card as well but it locked up with both the Detonator 40.73 drivers that came with the card and the 44.03 drivers, which I’m now using. Both are WHQL certified. I have DirectX 9.0a installed but I noticed there is a 9.0b available.

What you have to do is try and figure out what you changed about the system that started the lock-ups. Did you change display drivers? Did you upgrade DirectX? Did some software you installed add anything to msconfig startup?

For me at least I know it was upgrading from WinMe to WinXP. But you already had XP Pro running fine so you must have changed something. Strange we both have Dell's and are both expericing lock-ups.

~jr

You mentioned ghost above. Is that any better than XP recovery? I was under the impression that XP could recover from checkpoints the system settings. Does that include all drivers (before they may have become corrupted)?

TomG

P4's run very warm (Only during render) and I would really jump on the cooling fan but
then again drivers or hard drives lossing sectors could be doing it.

JJK

P4's shouldn't run 'very warm' during rendering or any other high demand task. Of course it depends on how your define warm. Mine even overclocked, under load runs at a very cool 104-106F degrees after rendering several hours straight with the DEFAULT heatrsink and CPU fan.

I had a situation with XP where I was changing a number of setting in Norton anti-virus. The machine became unbootable. I tried the XP state restore and still couldn't boot the box. Fortunately I had a Drive Image save from 2 days earlier which got me back and going.

Beware.

Larry

OK, I think my only recourse now is to reformat my HD and reload XP Pro. Once I do this, what software should I use to be able to restore my OS and all related drivers? What do you all use to recover all the components of your system configuration?

TomG