computer locks up

[bolke]

My brother has a computer that tends to lock up after starting it up. It's an older model, AMD 1400.

It starts up, you can see the desktop, all programs are running and then within seconds\first minute it freezes. This doesn't always happen, but very often and that's really annoying. Because there is no error message I have no idea what could be wrong. I have changed OS (2000\XP), anti-virus programs,. memory stick, but nothing helps at all.

Any suggestions anyone? And I don't mean: buy a new PC. :p

[Sharktooth]

look at the CPU temperatures. i remember the athlon 1400 cpus where heating up like hell.

[Sirber]

1) Look for heat
2) Look if no HW piece is overclocked
3) Boot linux (knoppix live CD) and see it it jam again
if not, reisntall windows

[bolke]

Thanks for the replies.

I don't think heat can be causing this problem. It locks up almost immediately after starting up, also when it wasn't running before (so it was "cold").

I'll give that Linux option a try. See what it does.

[Sirber]

Knoppix is a "linux on CD". It loads whitout insatlling anything.

[Axed]

look at the CPU temperatures. i remember the athlon 1400 cpus where heating up like hell.

I still use one, and your right. My average temp (by mb monitor, i know these can be inaccurate) is 68 degrees! The computer will generally lockup at around 78-80 degrees, but since im in Australia and dont have an air conditioner, i underclock this system. Try that yourself, might help a bit.

Another good thing to try would be Memtest, its on a few linux distro cds i believe (i've only used gentoo, thanks sirber ;))

[em64t]

It can also possibly be the hard disk drive is failing.

Download the HDD Regenerator (http://www.dposoft.net) and test out the HDD. You will need to install the software on a floppy disk or CD and boot from it.

[Sirber]

Smells like a prank :|

http://www.dposoft.net/images/logo.gif

A one-man compagny? How can algorithms can restore dead sectors? How can algos regenerate word files :|

BS

[em64t]

Well I guess you will never know until you try.

I can write of my experience.

I bought a Seagate 6.0 GB HDD and no sooner than the warranty expired, I began having issues with it. Using Norton Disk Doctor, it marked over 90 MB as bad clusters! I thought as some have recommended, I will reinstall Windows. After over 12 hours running the format/c command, it finished. Now more than the 90 MB was still marked as bad sectors.

I thought that is fine, if the computer is not using the bad sectors, it should be reliable. That was almost the furthest thing from the truth. I tried many other "remedies" that was not helpful. Then I came across the software I am recommending above. Using Partition Magic to retest the "bad sectors", PM actually stated that the sectors were good. Now more than four years later, the Seagate is not having any problems. Guess what I recommended when a coworker was have problems with his Seagate 6.0 GB HDD?

Now as a computer technician, I have used this software over many times and it has been well worth its money. In the days of old, one customer was having problems with a WD 1.6 GB HDD and I can hear the noise the HDD was making over the conversation on the phone. I told him it was a dying HDD. He wanted to upgrade the HDD and "preserve the data if possible". Not hoping for miracles, he was surprised to find all the data intact. Of course the WD 1.6 GB HDD was fixed.

The latest I have successfully repaired a Maxtor 13.6 GB HDD that had more than 900 MB marked as bad clusters after a power failure while the computer was running.

[Sirber]

Power cut made bad sectors? Isn't that corrupt file system? Nothing "physical" was domaged.

I currently having a dying maxtor 40GB. Read error, DMA errors, SMART failure. I highly don't think a little soft can fix it and recover all my files.

[dragongodz]

Smells like a prank :|
from what i have read it does actually work somewhat. that is it will restore some of the bad sectors etc to a working order. HOWEVER if the hd is actually dieing it is only a temporary thing. basically that tool is meant to try and make as many of the bad sectors useable as possible so you can try and recover as much of you data as possible to another hard drive etc.

it is NOT a permanent fix for dieing hard drives. if you hard drive is permanently fixed after using it then it was not dieing in the first place but just had some regular errors caused by corrput writing etc.

sorry for going a bit OT.

bolke - definatly try underclocking the cpu(in bios) and see if that helps or not, that is if knoppix also freezes.

[dbloom]

My brother has a computer that tends to lock up after starting it up. It's an older model, AMD 1400.

It starts up, you can see the desktop, all programs are running and then within seconds\first minute it freezes. This doesn't always happen, but very often and that's really annoying. Because there is no error message I have no idea what could be wrong. I have changed OS (2000\XP), anti-virus programs,. memory stick, but nothing helps at all.

Any suggestions anyone? And I don't mean: buy a new PC. :p

Do you smell the wonderful scent of hydrogen around the case? :)

If so, I'm almost certain this is the problem: open the case, and look at the capacitors on the motherboard. If they look like these (http://cquirke.mvps.org/badcaps.htm), or in any way unusual, then they are causing your problem. Unless you're soldering iron ninja, you'll need to get a new motherboard. ABit now uses higher-quality Japanese capacitors exclusively on their boards, and Intel boards (as in motherboards actually made by Intel, not just Intel processor boards) use pretty high quality components, especially the higher-end versions of each model.

Unfortunately, the chances of the manufacturer replacing an out-of-warranty board, even with this problem, are very low. This is a very widespread motherboard, especially with motherboards of the Athlon XP era. I had two motherboards die this way (a Gigabyte Athlon XP board and a random AT K6-2 board I forgot the brand of), so it's definately something you should check.

[dbloom]

Power cut made bad sectors? Isn't that corrupt file system? Nothing "physical" was domaged.

I currently having a dying maxtor 40GB. Read error, DMA errors, SMART failure. I highly don't think a little soft can fix it and recover all my files.

Back in the old days, drives would actually come with a dot-matrix-printed list of bad sectors that the user would have to manually input and disable. Nowadays, it's programmed in and the drives are made of a slightly higher capacity than advertised so that it doesn't affect the drive size for the user. The data is not stored in the filesystem, it is stored in a special section of the drive platter used exclusively for this purpose. It's not "physical", but it still can make the drive do the bad-sector-marking. As I'm sure someone else has already pointed out, I'm sure utilities exist to reverse bad-sector-marking, etc.

[bolke]

Do you smell the wonderful scent of hydrogen around the case? :)

If so, I'm almost certain this is the problem: open the case, and look at the capacitors on the motherboard. If they look like these (http://cquirke.mvps.org/badcaps.htm), or in any way unusual, then they are causing your problem. Unless you're soldering iron ninja, you'll need to get a new motherboard. ABit now uses higher-quality Japanese capacitors exclusively on their boards, and Intel boards (as in motherboards actually made by Intel, not just Intel processor boards) use pretty high quality components, especially the higher-end versions of each model.

Unfortunately, the chances of the manufacturer replacing an out-of-warranty board, even with this problem, are very low. This is a very widespread motherboard, especially with motherboards of the Athlon XP era. I had two motherboards die this way (a Gigabyte Athlon XP board and a random AT K6-2 board I forgot the brand of), so it's definately something you should check.


Thanks for this information. I'll definitely check that later today.
I suspected it might be a problem with the motherboard, because no software\hardware\bios changes I made helped at all.

[Sirber]

Back in the old days, drives would actually come with a dot-matrix-printed list of bad sectors that the user would have to manually input and disable. Nowadays, it's programmed in and the drives are made of a slightly higher capacity than advertised so that it doesn't affect the drive size for the user. The data is not stored in the filesystem, it is stored in a special section of the drive platter used exclusively for this purpose. It's not "physical", but it still can make the drive do the bad-sector-marking. As I'm sure someone else has already pointed out, I'm sure utilities exist to reverse bad-sector-marking, etc.
Huh? If datas is not stored in the file system, and they are "stored elsewhere", does that mean I can access my datas which were saved on my reiserfs partition from windows? ;)

[em64t]

Power cut made bad sectors? Isn't that corrupt file system? Nothing "physical" was domaged[sic].

Of course there is the possiblity of physical damage. It depends on how active the drive was. Old HDD you had to manually park the head or the HDD will scratch when it quickly moves the head on power up. Newer HDD may have a park feature when the HDD had been idle for a predetermined time. Modern HDD have an auto park feature.

Modern HDD do bad sector marking on the fly as well. So if you look at a disk map like often on a disk defragmentation software you are looking at LCN and not PCN. Of course there are utilities that read PCN and that is how I know that the sectors were damaged.

A good "high-level" utility to check for physically damaged drive is HD Tach (http://www.simplisoftware.com/Public/index.php?request=HdTach). Of course you have to know how to read the data provided. If the read rate is at 0 that may mean the HDD is damaged.

[em64t]

does that mean I can access my datas which were saved on my reiserfs partition from windows? ;)

Sure you can. Over a network. :p As for Windows accessing a local reiserfs partition, all it needs is a file system driver. That probably has not been written yet that is all. That is the same reason people have been able to access local HPFS in Windows NT 4.0 where it was not natively supported.

[Sirber]

The data is not stored in the filesystem, it is stored in a special section of the drive platter used exclusively for this purpose.
Sure you can. Over a network. As for Windows accessing a local reiserfs partition, all it needs is a file system driver. That probably has not been written yet that is all. That is the same reason people have been able to access local HPFS in Windows NT 4.0 where it was not natively supported.
Can you explain that then?

[Nematocyst]

As he said, modern drives are slightly larger than advertised. Ok, slightly smaller if you account for their definition of 1GB, 1MB, etc. But anyway, they have extra sectors that are normally inaccessible. When the drive detects a bad sector, it copies what it can to one of the reserved ones and remaps it to the original sector. Usually this is harmless-- it's just the drive detecting and preventing problems. And from what I understand, it is normal.

Here is a better explaination. (http://users.iafrica.com/c/cq/cquirke/baddata.htm)

[em64t]

Can you explain that then?

As for what I previously wrote, for example, http://forum.doom.org is running Linux, so it is not likely to use FAT/FAT32 or NTFS, yet I can access it via my Windoze eXPired computer.

Some additional links to "supporting" non native file systems
Installable File System Kit (http://www.microsoft.com/whdc/devtools/ifskit/default.mspx)
Adding HPFS support to Windows NT 4.0 (http://www.windowsitpro.com/Article/ArticleID/13711/13711.html)
Adding FAT32 support to Windows NT 4.0 (http://www.sysinternals.com/Utilities/Fat32.html)
Adding NTFS support to DOS 95/98/Me (http://www.sysinternals.com/Utilities/NtfsDosProfessional.html)

Of course there are other resouces such as adding NTFS to Linux. So the idea of adding reiserfs to windows is not impossible. It can be done, but I am not sure if someone has done it yet.

[Joe Fenton]

Back to the original thread... assuming you still have troubles when booting a Live CD, perhaps your memory is too aggressively clocked. Try less aggressive timing. In MY case, I used el-cheapo memory on my computer and found it would normally crash during intensive activity, regardless of the timing. In that case, raising the DRAM voltage a little can often make it stable. I have mine set at 2.65V and it runs 24/7 without a hitch now. This is similar to what overclockers do to get memory running at a higher frequency than rated.

[Sirber]

Reset the BIOS to defaults could do it... easier. Clocking is sometimes hidden and need special key combinaison to access them.

[bolke]

Resetting bios doesn't work, I've already tried that.
The other option is probably too difficult for me.

There is a power switch at the back of the computer. That was always "ON".
When I opened it to check the capacitors (like suggested before), I noticed the interior was warm.
It seems unlikely this has anything to do with the problem, but as some of you mentioned heat (overheating) as a possible cause, it might be a good idea switch the computer OFF completely every time. See what that does.

That's about the last thing I can think off (and that's easy enough for me to do ;) )

[dbloom]

I'm sure you may have already tested some of these, but here are some potential sources of the problem to test quickly:

Keyboard and mouse - especially if they are PS/2, not USB. If these start to fail, they can cause a lot of problems. Try a different keyboard/mouse. Also try using a USB keyboard and/or mouse if you're currently using PS/2. The PS/2 kb/mouse interface components of the motherboard may be failing.
IDE controller - If the motherboard has a second PCI IDE controller (for RAID, etc), try that. Otherwise, if you have a PCI/ISA (if the system has ISA) card with IDE (a lot of, mostly older, soundcards/video cards have IDE headers with an IDE controller onboard), try using that and see if it fixes the problem.
Also, try rearranging the master/slave connectors. I've got a CDRW drive that only works in one system if it is the slave.
Cords - Are the IDE cords in good condition? Are there any big nicks or other flaws in them?
Floppy drive - Disconnect it and see if the system works correctly afterwards. I've seen drives that make systems simply not boot
Video card - this is something to check the capacitors on, too. Whether or not the capacitors/etc on it look fine, try a different card. Be sure to try removing the AGP card and trying a PCI video card as well.
Other cards - take them out, and/or rearrange them.
Motherboard added-value features - go into the BIOS config and disable as many of those PCI on-board motherboard things as possible (e.g. LAN, onboard sound, USB, 1394, SATA, etc...).
Power supply - try another one.
Case - if the case has any components (fans, lights, etc) that conect to the power supply, try unplugging them.
Temperature setting - If the BIOS lets you set a system-shutdown temperature threshold, make sure it isn't too low. Athlon XP's run VERY hot, so the setting should not be below 80 unless you want a lot of false alarms.
Reflash the BIOS - even if your firmware's up to date, maybe something just messed up. Another thing to try would be removing the battery on the board and waiting a few hours, so that you can wipe out all the settings and start from scratch. By the way, is the battery on the motherboard still good? Couldn't hurt to replace that if you're running short on options.
Get a new board - Here's a good deal on an Athlon XP board (http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications/SearchTools/item-details.asp?EdpNo=1043672&CatId=179). That's not an affiliate link or anything, I just think it's a good deal ;).


By the way, one suggestion I would have is to completely disassemble the system, then rebuild it, using alternate components (power supply, cords, cables, etc...) whenever available and possible. It might reveal the problem along the way.

[*.mp4 guy]

I had stability ptoblems when I used a generic power supply, I would recommend getting an Antec psu, I used to get insta-restarts with my old tbird computer, after I gave it a decent psu it worked much better.

[em64t]

There is a power switch at the back of the computer. That was always "ON".
When I opened it to check the capacitors (like suggested before), I noticed the interior was warm.
It seems unlikely this has anything to do with the problem, but as some of you mentioned heat (overheating) as a possible cause, it might be a good idea switch the computer OFF completely every time. See what that does.


If overheating is the issue, have you tried dusting the fans? In one recent experience, I had a computer running 24/7 for about 9 months straight. There was so much dust in the fans, that the computer would power down about 5-10 seconds after I turn on the computer ... much too short time before Windows even loads.

I opened the box and dusted every fan and now the computer has started again with no heating issues.

[bolke]

Thanks for that suggestion. I'll check that, just like the other possible causes that were mentioned. It will take some time, because;
- it will have to be done one step at a time
- my brother doesn't use his pc all that much, so with every step it will take at least a few days to see whether the problem is gone or not.

[bolke]

At the moment it seems that switching of the computer completely (using the switch at the back instead of just shutting down) has done the trick. Not switching it of results in a warm "interior", even without using it. So, perhaps heat was causing the problem after all. We're keeping our fingers crossed.

Thanks for your help everybody and for pointing me in the right (probably) direction.

[Doom9]

if the problems reocurr, you may want to test your hardware with tools from the ultimate boot cd: http://www.ultimatebootcd.com/

I've had my share of freezes.. 3 computers affected now.. it was the MB in one case, memory + MB in the second and the results of the third will come in shortly.

Having gone through the procedure of stripping the PC and replacing component by component only to find out the problem was caused by the last one, here's the order in which I'd try things:

disconnect every non essential component (PCI cards, drives that you don't need)
if the problem reocurrs, switch out memory, GFX card and mainboard (obivously the mainboard is the most annoying to change but has a rather high probability of failure and locking up your PC). I'd not expect a failing HD to freeze the system.. rather you should see I/O errors in the event viewer.. it might still crash windows but those errors should be logged, unlike stuff like memory faults. In a bare system (mb, cpu, ram, hd, case) I'd switch the PSU last.. I've been assembling PCs for some 13 years now and never had a PSU die on me (but HDs, MBs and RAM has happened).

stuff like I used to get insta-restarts with my old tbird computer,will likely already be gone if you start with a stripped down config.. it's usually overload generated by use of all components.. instant restart could mean the output of the PSU abruptly drops thus restarting the PC (this is basically how the reset button works.. it cuts power).. I don't think psu overload should cause your PC to freeze.. reboot sounds much more likely in that case (or not boot at all if you have 5 HDs and if they're all drawing a lot of power when spinning up at the same time, that could cause trouble).