winxp keeps crashing

[rudeboymcc]

hi. before anyone asks, yes i have searched, google as well. and i found no solution apart from reinstalling windows, whcih is what i've just done.

when i'm logged on, and the only user on out of the three i have, and log off, the computer crashes. nothing serious, just no taskbar, just showing my background and the mouse still moves. ctrl+alt+del doesn't work. only work around is to restart.

it seems as though there's an application waiting to shut down or windows is just having a very hard time saving my settings, even though it doesnt get to that stage.

can anyone help me?

[cofferscuffs]

systematically uninstall drivers, and then try and log off. but yes it does sound like something is stuck in the memory or something.

[rudeboymcc]

"systematically" uninstall drivers? what do you mean? start uninstalling drivers until i can log off?

if i do uninstall a driver surely winxp will install another one in its place on boot whcih will not be as good becuase all my drivers are the latest from the manufacturers' websites.

[pacohaas]

latest !always= greatest when it comes to drivers.

Sounds like time to reformat to me, start with the drivers installed in the standard XP install and go from there: get all critical updates and service packs first, then start updating from manufacturers as you wish and see what causes the problem. If nothing, then you know it was software, so start installing all your software programs again and see if one of them causes the problem. If still no problems then you know it was just something crappy that happened from some combination of Windows, drivers, software....and then you can be happy that you have a nice clean install.

[rudeboymcc]

i forgot to mention, i only just reformatted my hard drive and reinstalled windows and i did install everything in that order you gave me. but becuase i've just done it i don't know which program or driver it is because i did them all the same time. unless i log off after i install anything whcih will take ages.

is htere no way to tell windows to just close any programs and clear the memory rather than waiting for the program to respond?

[chemmajik]

Maybe you should start all over again with your specs.

Motherboard & CHipset BRAND
CPU GHZ brand
Video Card Brand

PSU Watts?
Ram Brand & PC rating?
Cas timing?
How many other devices plugged into your system besides your boot hd & video card & floppy sheesh, some of us cannot read your minds?

[rudeboymcc]

Motherboard: A-bit KT7-RAID with VIA chipset (not sure which one but i've got the latest 4-in1-drivers for it)

CPU: AMD Athlon 800 mhz (not overclocked)

GPU: Inno3D Geforce4 MX440 128mb DDR (AGPx4)

PSU: 400W

RAM: Crucial, 1x256mb, 1x128mb both SDRAM, CAS 2.5

other devices:
Netdragon 56k modem (used for fax)
D-link network card
creative SB Live! sound card
Philips cd writer
Toshiba DVD drive
IBM deskstar 60gig (boot HD is an IBM Deskstar 15GIG)

that's everything internal, other than that i have an all-in-one HP printer-scanner-copier (USB1.1).

RAID function is turned off compeltely from the BIOS.

[SeeMoreDigital]

If I were you I would create at least 2 boot partitions.

If your playing about with creating Mpeg4 files (DivX, Xvid etc), put all the applications required on this boot drive.

If your playing about with creating RealMedia files, put all the applications required on the other boot drive.

As soon as I started experimenting with RealMedia and installed the Elecard Mpeg2 DS filter for HelixProducer. My DivX and WinMedia9 (VCM) encodes became severely affected.

Sure, I could have sorted out the problem, one way or another. But why bother......... If you've got the hard drive space. Get your monies worth and install WinXP more than once!

[TactX]

@rudeboymcc

Have you had a look at the system logs?

Have a look at the warnings (yellow triangle with a "!") and the errors (red circle with a cross in it). Especially the errors could be interesting. This is what I do when a problem occurs. All these events have an event ID, for which you can search on this site (http://www.eventid.net/) to get some info about them.

Make sure you watch both application and system protocol.

[rudeboymcc]

there are no error messages that come up. it's just my background and the mouse which i can move. cntrl alt del doesn't do anything.

how can i check the system logs??

[TactX]

Originally posted by rudeboymcc
how can i check the system logs??
This might be a problem since I don't use XP I can't tell you exactly :D

But you could look if the executable has the same name in XP. It is in \winnnt\system32\eventwr.exe (or evenwr.msc). Good luck :D

[rudeboymcc]

thanks TactX. i've found the problem. in windows xp the error thing is called eventvwr.exe (event viewer). when i clcik on the application, there are loads of the same error but on different users and the error seems to fit what is happenning.

EVENT ID: 1524

Windows cannot unload your classes registry file - it is still in use by other applications or services. The file will be unloaded when it is no longer in use.

then this is followed by:

EVENT ID: 1517

Windows saved user AMD\xenia registry while an application or service was still using the registry during log off. The memory used by the user's registry has not been freed. The registry will be unloaded when it is no longer in use.

This is often caused by services running as a user account, try configuring the services to run in either the LocalService or NetworkService account.


http://www.eventid.net/display.asp?eventid=1517

from the website one guy said that setting all the services to Localservice would fix everything.

"Just do what windows want. Config ALL services, even disabled or stopped to run in either LocalService or NetworkService account."

this caused many problems with me. no internet connection, themes were gone, and many of the services would not run. so i set every service to local system. restarted and everything was fine apart from one or two services which had to be kept on Networkservice whcih i jsut changed back.

now there's no problem.

thanks guys.

[TactX]

Cool.

eventid.net is like a bible if you're setting up Windows NT/200/XP clients :D

Unfortunately not all failures are logged :(

[rudeboymcc]

if i knew about these event loggers than i wpouldn't have to format so many pc's. i formatted my friend's one a few days ago becuase it kept crashing, but if i knew how to check what had hapenned then i would be able to fix it.


am i right in saying that a stable computer should have any entries in the even logger? under security my one is empty but there are loads in application and system.

are the information ones bad?? or do they just explain what's happening?

[TactX]

The normal events (bubble with an 'i') are simply telling you what's going on (mainly "eventlog", which will happen each time you start your computer) and are definetely not bad.

But some errors are not even bad. For example if you have a broken CD and try to read it, an error event will occur, but your Windows itself is working great.

And if you don't know what a specific event means... eventid.net :D

[rudeboymcc]

k turns out not all is ok. the problem seems to have gone but there are other problems whcih aren't that bad but i would prefer to solve.

everything works, but in the event viewer now i get loads of these events, whcih basiaclly are:

The Human Interface Device Access service terminated with the following error:
The specified module could not be found.

and

The Human Interface Device Access service failed to start due to the following error:
The account specified for this service is different from the account specified for other services running in the same process.

and

The Human Interface Device Access service entered the stopped state.

and

The Human Interface Device Access service was successfully sent a start control.


if only i knew what the human interface device access service was. it says in services.msc that it's for keybaord shortcuts but mine work fine when the service is stopped.

[TactX]

Originally posted by rudeboymcc
if only i knew what the human interface device access service was. it says in services.msc that it's for keybaord shortcuts but mine work fine when the service is stopped.
Is the service on 'manual', 'disabled' or 'auto'?

Set to manual if it is not already and try again.

Have you set other services to disabled? This can be quite a problem.

I don't know what to do else... seems I'm playing too much with Linux :p

[rudeboymcc]

http://www.apus92.dsl.pipex.com/services.jpg

those are the only programs set to disabled for security reasons. i found a website which specifically said it's safe to disable them. i have set human interface to manual and will tell you if it works.