PC Freezing

Hi All
Soltek MBO, 256MB SDRAM, 13.5GB HD, 500MHz CPU, OS WINXP Pro SP2.

PC behaving queerily when pc boots up to Windows and left unattended for more than 1 minute, the PC freezes . Ctl-Alt-Del not working, HDD spinning and cpu fan working under this condition. After switching off and rebooting, I found out that by running WMP10,PC will work normally.Any ideas anyone.

 

Hi, carlos4.

Since you have only 256MB RAM, you might benefit from setting a higher minimum Page File size.

To increase the size of the Pagefile.sys file:

1. Click Start.
2. Right-click My Computer, and then click Properties.
3. Click the Advanced tab.
4. In the Performance section, click the Settings button.
   (This will open the Performance Options window.)
5. Click the Advanced tab.
6. In the Virtual memory section, click the Change button.
7. Set the initial size of the page file that exists on the same partition as the operating system to be one and a half times the size of the amount of RAM installed in the computer.

I might be inclined to suggest setting the minimum to a size even greater that 1.5 x 256MB (i.e., setting the initial size of the Page File to 512MB).


Event Viewer might shed some light on what is causing the freezes.

Instructions About How to Access and Use "Event Viewer ":

• Click Start.
• Right-click My Computer.
• Select "Manage" to open the "Computer Management" window.
  (Event Viewer will be displayed under the "System Tools" directory item.)
• Expand "Event Viewer" and then select "Application ", "Security ", and "System" to view the logs.
• Look for "error" events that occurred around the time your problem occurred. These events will be displayed as icons with either a white X on red background or a black exclamation point on yellow background. In the security section of Event Viewer, events of possible concern are ones that display a padlock icon instead of a key icon.
• Double-click on an individual event to open the "Event Properties" window which shows details about the event.
  • You can use the up/down arrow buttons in the "Event Properties" window to move your focus to other events in the list.
  • Use the button below the up/down arrows to copy the details for an event to your clipboard for pasting elsewhere.
  • Click on the "http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/events.asp" link in the "Event Properties" window to view more information from Microsoft about the event.

Alternatively, Event Viewer may be accessed as follows.

• Click Start > Run...
• Type [FONT= "Courier New"][SIZE= "3"]eventvwr.msc[/SIZE][/FONT] in the "Open:" field.
• Click the OK button.

 

The 13.5GB hard drive makes me wonder how much free space you have on the drive and whether it has been defragmented recently or not.

I'm guessing Windows might have trouble dynamically managing the page file. I would think it's best for Windows to have a contiguous (non-fragmented) page file space reserved for use (hence my suggestion in my first post above).

 

Hi all, re freezing pc, fault traced to bad MBO. Tks all for your help