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Intermittent failures
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Posted by: Javahulk
I’m not sure how much if this is useful information, but Ill throw it all out just in case.
My computer is
400 wat power supply
Abit IS7 motherboard P4 2.6GHZ 800FSB
2x512 DDR3200 ram
GeForce5600 256meg
1 Sata Raptor drive (OS)
1 WD 120gig (Data)
XP Pro
I run Zone Alarm firewall and Norton Antivirus
Ill be playing a game, or sometimes doing nothing at all, and the computer will completely fail. The monitor will blank and act like its gone into sleep mode, the mouse and keyboard wont respond, though if I have music running from a game or winamp, the music still runs. If I hit alt-tab it will EVENTUALLY minimize the game, ending the music, it just takes at least 2 minutes.
This happens, as far as I can tell, 100% randomly. It’s happened while it had nothing running, just sitting there on the desktop, but it seems to happen more when I’m playing a game or doing something important. Its been happening for a while now, but its doing it far more often lately. Iv been to LAN parties and it has had the same problem there, so I doubt it is my house electricity. I borrowed a power supply from a friend and installed it, but it did not help.
I leave my computer downloading all night, and shut it down in the morning. Unless I have forgotten, its always been up and running fine in the morning. Iv run as many stress testing programs as I could find trying to find the faulty piece, but they all passed just fine.
I have recently replaced my OS hard drive with the SATA Raptor drive, but Iv been having this problem since before I got that drive, and I still have the problem even after reinstalling my OS fully.
If anyone could suggest what part may be the problem, or what program to run to test my system from top to bottom to try and find it, I would deeply appreciate it.
Posted by: redwench
could be software or hardware. at least you ruled out the power supply and hard drive. scandisk and defrag the system drive, then disable the xp services you dont need.
run sisoftsandra, see if there are any warning flags on the various units. if not, run the cpu and ram burn ins.
there is also a memory test at www.memtest.org
Posted by: Javahulk
Where should I get info in disabling services, is www.blackviper.com still the best place?
and where can I download that sisoftsandra?
Posted by: redwench
yes, blackviper is fine. most of the large download sites have it. just google sisoftsandra download and itll pop up.
Posted by: Javahulk
SiSoftwareSandra had no issues with my hardware, the burnintests worked just fine (9 cycles), only thing it said was off was the "ATA/ATAPI Information" and some features were disabled like power up ins tandby, acoustic management, nothing that sounded important. I cant run the memtest because I dont have my more CDRs LOL, no floopy drive either, going to look into getting more disks tomorrow.
Posted by: Javahulk
confermed, it is still having the problem =(
Posted by: redwench
try running with individual ram sticks.
it is possible that its software, both antiviruses and firewalls can have issues. try turning one off at a time.
Posted by: Javahulk
cant be the firewall/antivirus because I run a twin copy on my other comp and its got no such probs
Posted by: redwench
do you have the same OS and games, and identical motherboard on the other comp?
Posted by: Javahulk
no tghe other comp is an old P3, Iv discoverd a pattern with the freezing though. While it has happend just on desktop, and while I play UT2k4, or counterstrike, it happens atleast 20 times more while playing warcraft3, its almost guaranteed it'll crash every hour and a half at the max. Could this mean that warcraft uses a fuction of my graphics card that has problems that decay over time?
Posted by: AOTY2KB
What is a CPU and RAM burn in?
Posted by: taco_fox
Burn in tests basically run the CPU and RAM at full capacity to test their stability
Posted by: redwench
not necessarily. it might not even be graphics related. if its guaranteed to happen during warcraft, shut down all your other programs, including firewall and AV, and go romp through the game.
Posted by: Javahulk
last night I was trying to edit my boot screen and I sorta forgot how to do it, so I ended up using my XP disk to recover, and redooing the MBR and the Boot sector, and after that Warcraft 3 ran fine all day, well, for about 8 hours then it crashed again. Im going to call it coincidence that it seemed to help, I dont see what it could have done.
Tomorrow im going to kill all my startup files and see how that goes, hopefully thatll find the problem
Posted by: The-AoD
If nothing else works, try taking the side of your case off for a few hours while playing Warcraft 3. It "could" be a heat issue that's so close to causing a lockup, the slightest increase in ambient room temperature could set it off and cause the crash. If you have no problems with running while the side is off the case, you have a heat issue showing itself in a discrete way. It's possible, so give it a try. 
Posted by: Javahulk
Iv been running a system monitor to check my temps and my FSB temp does get around 45 befor a crash, but it also seems to get up there normally anyway. Starts at around 25 from being off all night then runs around 39 most of the day. So if it runs without the side of the case fine then it has a prob? Thats actually where my exaust fan is
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