Random locking

I'm having random (almost immediae to hours later) lockups and restarts of my computer. When it lockes, it sometimes freezes what is on the screen, sometimes goes black with no message. Occasionally will reset the computer which then restarts. I noticed in the last couple of times it did it, that XP was trying to send a report back to Microsoft, and the window opened saying that it was a "Problem caused by a Device Driver." But it doesn't seem it should be, because as shown below, I've not recently added a new device.

Here is recent history of my P4 computer:

-- Added two memory sticks to go from 1 --> 2 gig memory (Jan 07)
-- Added new sound card and switched from on-board sound system (Jan 07)
NOTE: no problem indicated from these installations.

-- I have two hard drives, C: and D: About 3-4 weeks ago I changed my D: drive from a 200gig Western Digital SATA to a 750 gig Seagate Sata. Transfered data.

-- Last weekend: Shut down and plugged old 200gig hard drive into a spare power lead, plugged in the D: drive SATA cable to 200 gig drive, erased, formatted, used security program to write zeros to it (took a long time, and side of computer was open with fan blowing on drive and into computer).

-- Shut down and plugged SATA into 750 drive and restarted. Since then have experienced intermittent shutdowns and lockups as described above (sometimes with video remaining, sometimes going to black screen without any message).

Troubleshooting so far:

-- Swapped out original and new memory individually, almost convinced myself that problem was tied to old memory, but got fooled. New memory also showing problem.

-- During one of these memory swaps, I lost the BIOS configuration to turn on the SATA drive support and had to reset that.

-- Reseated memory and checked to be sure all the cables in the case were okay and properly seated.

-- checked cables coming out rear of computer to be sure they were strained or that power blocks for accessories (like powered USB port) were okay.

-- Wondered if it might have gotten confused between the hard drives. Seagate says the new drive doesn't need a driver. However, Device Manager lists the specific model for my Western Digital C: drive, but on the new D drive it just says ST3_INVALID_STM, but reports it is working okay.

It just locked again. Luckily I'd saved this message before it locked up (separately on the computer), so I didn't have to retype.



Unfortunately I don't have a system restore from before the last time I was fooling with the hard drives, because after I turned reformatted the old drive, I had to turn off system restore to get rid of that function on my D: drive, and it cleared all restore points before that. I do have a backup of both C and D from before then, but I don't know where old System Restores might be saved there, or how to reinstate them.

Any ideas on what is the best way to troubleshoot this problem?

Terry

 

I'd be suspicious of the SATA cable since the trouble started after you unplugged and replugged it on those two drives. I've had data cables go bad under similar circumstances. They're cheap so try a new one.

Good luck.

ps. Check in your Start > Run > (type) Eventvwr.msc (click OK)for any system report happening at the time of the lockups.

 

Problem deteriorating

Superdude, I'll try your suggestions, but at the moment I'm I'm in much more serious problems now than I was before and cannot get back to that point.

When I went back to the computer this morning, for the first time the video was just a few random pixels on the screen. I reset the computer and it came back to the same problem. On second reset, it momentarily came up to a Bios screen, giving a message that said something about "DRAM timing" but it reset again before I could read all of it. (This screen came up once when I was swapping out memory. That happened the second time I had tried to start with a single dram stick. The tech from the memory company had recommended that I try one each of my four 512k memory sticks in the computer to see if I could isolate a bad stick. It was only after I got this screen on the second one of those that that I re-read the mainboard manual and it said that the computer should always have two sticks at least. But when I put two sticks back in, I never got that screen again until now. Note also that this screen is a different Bios screen than the one talked about below).

I tried 3 more reset attempts, and each time I got further along in the boot up process, but it would never make it back fully to the windows logon screen without locking up with a few random pixels on a black screen.

Reset and hit the delete key to get into the AMBIOS settings screen. Text only, but the video was stable here. I walked through it all, but I didn't really know what I was looking for. Only two things I found were that the on board AC'97 audio was still enabled, and since I have a sound card in the computer now, I disabled that. The other thing I found was a system monitor showed the 3.3v nominal voltage was at 2.86-2.88. All other voltages were closer to nominal.

I saved the new setting with the AC'97 audio, it restarted and came back to the video problem.

I shut it off.

I'm in deep doo now. I'm thinking about disconnecting the D: drive SATA cable, since I don't need the D: drive to boot. I'd also like to hunt down the problem indicated by the DRAM timing message, but not sure how to get back to that screen.

Any other suggestions?

Terry

 

(I'm obviously posting these messages from another computer).

After disconnecting the SATA cable to the D drive, the computer did start up cleanly. However it had also been sitting shut off for a few minutes, perhaps cooling down. I'm going to let it run today while at work, and see if it is stable when I get back with only the C drive running.

If the computer is still stable then, I'll try another SATA cable as suggested. I have one.

If that doesn't fix it, I'd like to uninstall and reinstall the D drive relative to XP, but I obviously want to do that without reformatting it, since I have a lot of unbacked video data there. Originally swapping the 200gb and 750gb D drives seems to be where all my problems started, and indications right now are that without the D drive in, the problems seemed to have gone away.

I'd appreciate suggestions on the best way to "dismount" and "remount the 750 gb D drive relative to XP without losing data on it.

Terry

 

Unfortunately I'm still in doo.

Even with the D drive disconnected, I went to the event viewer like you suggested, and saw a few errors (atapi and something else).

So I went to save the results of the view to a text file, and while doing that, the computer locked up again.

So it probably isn't the SATA cable because that isn't even in the circuit. The fact that it came back after sitting for 5 minutes and now locked does suggest that a short cooldown might have helped.

Now I'm really looking for suggestions.


Terry

 

Suggest you install motherboard monitor and watch the data it collects.

 

Possible cause found

I think I have the problem. Failing power supply. I'll report more when I'm sure.

 

Problem was power supply

My problem was solved by the replacement of the power supply. I noted even as I was diagnosing the problem that the 3.3 volt output, as read by the BIOS setup program, was only putting out 2.8 volts.

Later I ran a memory test and the computer locked very quickly. I checked that nominal 3.3 voltage, and it had dropped to 2.6.

I installed a new power supply, and all problems have been solve for a couple of days now.

Terry

p.s. In the past, I've always tried to live by a rule that when a problem with the computer occurs, focus on the last thing you did, which in this case was the exchange of the hard drives, or the recent memory addition. In this case, the rule failed me, because the problem was unrelated to those.

tq

 

That rule has served me well most of the time but on the few occasions that it has failed, it's been awfully misleading and painful.

I came within a whisper of posting that your problem was possibly PS but the rule kept me from mentioning it. When you put it forth 3 days ago, I was glad to see that you were considering it.

PS voltages should always be within 5% of spec. so the 12 V. line should never go below 11.4 V. and the 3.3 V should never be below 3.14 V.

Thanks for posting back your results and confirming once again that no rule is perfect.