What cause PC to suddenly hang

Hi friends

I am a guy still using old pc eg Pentium 4 2.8G with an 2G memory, they can go quite fast for my purpose, not too good in multi-tasking though. This is my little contribution to save our PC polluting environment, i hope or is it trying to save a buck here and there?

From what i have experienced this pc will hang ie mouse freeze for the following reasons

1. Bad connections on all cards eg memory, PCI sound card, etc
2. Bad power connections to device eg IDE or SATA drive
3. Bad memory sticks
4. Faulty hard disk
5. Fluctuating power sources

Is there any good way or generic application that can help to point the above problems, i relay on swapping with similar devices and do serious scrubbing of the contacts to try to fix it.

 

Hi FuzMic, a little more info would help. What OS are you using? Neil.

 

Hi Neil - retiree or is it?

The OS is also old, xpwin.sp3 for this old pc, i have two slightly younger laptops (vista time) running on win7.sp1 and win8.1.sp1.

I am looking for generic solutions. I have fixed these hang ups before but the device swapping takes time. I also do take ghost image of the c: drive in case all else failed.

I also know a little that mother board have problem of temperature issues and bloated capacitors or even the chip gets faulty.

I look for tell tale signs on boot up, resolve to safe mode to try to fix the old guy like me.

I use one oldish app 'everest' to dig for sensor info. I have tried some that are mother board specific, i would prefer generic app. I do not like hard disk checking / fixing that goes on forever. I would like an app to flag me the slightest problem, then ask if it should try to fix it.

Hope you have give me so guidance on these. Thanks

 

The comp in question is running XP SP3. What AV are you using? If you've cleaned/blown out everything, it may be time for a fresh install. Neil.

 

Avast (free of course) .

For your info, my latest hanging episode (last nite) after all the swaps it still hang. This happens within few minutes of booting; not moving or moving mouse around.

Then i finally swapped the power supply, lol is stopped, still keeping my fingers cross.

I was not having such problem for months until last nite.

Just learn how to use Memtest86+ bootable disk to check memory issues.

What's your take on this Neil? Michael.

 

So your PSU went South? I've had them fail completely and partially. Nice to know you've fixed your problem.
Thanks for letting us know the cause of your hanging. Neil.

 

Please enter your System Specifications. How To Add System Specifications To Your Profile

 

ELL JAY, he has more than 1 comp!

Too many to list? Neil.

 

Neil thanks for enlightening Jay on my case, you are truly right [emoji7]

 

Just before i close this thread

Beside swapping device to try to fix the old guys, i use

For Memory: A bootable cd with memtest86+ to test the memory stick up to test 8,
For temperature: use cputhermometer_setup.exe or RealTemp_370.zip or hwmonitor_1.28.zip depending on the processor
For voltage:hwmonitor does quite good job

 

Thanks for Posting your Test Medium. May be helpful for others with a little care. Neil.

 

Not Resolved yet!!

Neil

Bad news, the power supply did not solve the problem. The hanging appears, it get worse, then window don't start. Safe mode fail to continue. It got to a point that bootable (dos) memtest86+ hang after a very short while.

All other working hard disks that had started before also don't start at all.

I think something really bad is happening at the mother board since it is happening at very low resources ie in memtest.

Will keep trying to find the culprit. Will report if i find it.

 

Try just 1 HDD connected and minimum hardware/externals. See if it runs OK as bare unit. You may have a m/b problem beginning to manifest itself. Neil.

 

Neil tried your idea with bare minimun and a working harddisk, window only run up to white line or safemode stop a last line. I will tell you what happen, i have someone checking the motherbd.

 

What cause PC to hang II

Hi friend

Start this thread to continue with the saga.

I have a friend to look at it, he found that certain driver for some device was causing it. But i doubt that this is the cause as I did nothing to change any driver and there is no new device.

Have another plan to check for the real cause, come back latter.

 

Thanks for the update. Neil.

 

My pc is back; my friend found that the sound card ESS1969 driver is giving the problem.

For few months i was using the driver ess1969.sys dated 2002 it never hang. I still can't find the cause of it changing to be unstable. It could too clear contacts exposing the driver as incorrect.

All in all, when i install vinyl_700b Deck, a new driver ess1969.sys dated 2001 & different size replaced the earlier. With this, the system seems really stable and every thing works perfectly. Keep fingers double cross.

Care to comment.

 

My new build comp in 2004 ended with a fried m/b after 9 years - you've had a good trot after 13 years. Time to move on. Neil.

 

Neil what i just wrote is not really correct. (ESS1969 driver has no problem). There was something odd bugging me, why there is a new driver required. So i recheck, following is what really makes sense.

I have an on board sound card vinyl AC 97 (normally deactivate in BIOS), while ESS1969 PCI was plugin that I use instead. What my friend did was he activated the onboard, then he noticed there is no driver (yellow ! error). He then install new driver through the V-Deck installation,

Once this sound card is installed for some stupid reason system becomes very stable.
So my solution is simple, remove ESS and use the on-board sound.

Moving along with the junk: This 2.8GHz pentium 4 with 2G ram is good enough for most of my work and it goes very fast. So i live with it until in finally kick the bucket. Meanwhile i have 2 laptops (Vista time) that is installed with win7 & win8.1. I also use old apps such as VB6 and had solved legacy issue in spite of warning from Ms. I found old is fast not slow.

Cheers to the old things.

 

I have four: Den: Desktop, Kitchen: Laptop, Living Room: Laptop, Basement: Business Laptop. My Sys. Specs lists the Living Room: Personal Use Laptop. All the aforementioned machines are running Windows 7 Ultimate 64bit. My personal use computer I swap HDDs between Windows 7 Ultimate & Windows 8.1 Professional Operating Systems.