If this is your first visit, be sure to check out the FAQ by clicking the link above. You may have to register before you can post: click the register link above to proceed. To start viewing messages, select the forum that you want to visit from the selection below. |
|
|
|
Thread Tools | Display Modes |
#1
|
|||
|
|||
Compaq Presario 5000 Freezes
OK...how about an old [maybe not that old] computer problem? I am
prepping a Compaq Presario 5000 [700 MHz, 256Mb RAM, Win2K Pro] for my son-in-law. Everything runs good, all loaded with all the needed Win2K updates, Office 2K, IE/OE6, etc]...but it has a problem!! After about an hour using the Internet, it freezes...no Mouse, no Keyboard, no response at all...last screen fully visible, PC fans and power supply still running. Strangely, it is apparently NOT a thermal/time problem as it can sit for hours downloading Internet updates, but only seems to happen with changing screens, pages, clicking links, etc. The only problem that I seem to have noted is that a lot of the PC functions are using the same IRQ11 [a problem?]. Any ideas on what to look for and how to identify the problem? TIA...John |
#2
|
|||
|
|||
Compaq Presario 5000 Freezes
John the WebTV Man wrote:
OK...how about an old [maybe not that old] computer problem? I am prepping a Compaq Presario 5000 [700 MHz, 256Mb RAM, Win2K Pro] for my son-in-law. Everything runs good, all loaded with all the needed Win2K updates, Office 2K, IE/OE6, etc]...but it has a problem!! After about an hour using the Internet, it freezes...no Mouse, no Keyboard, no response at all...last screen fully visible, PC fans and power supply still running. Strangely, it is apparently NOT a thermal/time problem as it can sit for hours downloading Internet updates, but only seems to happen with changing screens, pages, clicking links, etc. The only problem that I seem to have noted is that a lot of the PC functions are using the same IRQ11 [a problem?]. Any ideas on what to look for and how to identify the problem? TIA...John How old is the hard drive? It might be wise to do a surface test if you have the software to do it. RAM is another suspect. Try removing the sticks and cleaning the contacts with a pencil eraser or alcohol. |
#3
|
|||
|
|||
Compaq Presario 5000 Freezes
|
#4
|
|||
|
|||
Compaq Presario 5000 Freezes
John the WebTV Man wrote:
OK...how about an old [maybe not that old] computer problem? I am prepping a Compaq Presario 5000 [700 MHz, 256Mb RAM, Win2K Pro] for my son-in-law. Everything runs good, all loaded with all the needed Win2K updates, Office 2K, IE/OE6, etc]...but it has a problem!! After about an hour using the Internet, it freezes...no Mouse, no Keyboard, no response at all...last screen fully visible, PC fans and power supply still running. Strangely, it is apparently NOT a thermal/time problem as it can sit for hours downloading Internet updates, but only seems to happen with changing screens, pages, clicking links, etc. The only problem that I seem to have noted is that a lot of the PC functions are using the same IRQ11 [a problem?]. Any ideas on what to look for and how to identify the problem? TIA...John Where did you get the video drivers? If you're answer is Microsoft (or Win2K just recognized my card) or Compaq/HP, go and get the drivers from the card manufacturer. If you're using onboard video, use the drivers from the motherboard manufacturer. This is only one possibly thing that could have gone wrong, but it's easy enough to try, and I've seen it fix that exact problem before. |
#5
|
|||
|
|||
Compaq Presario 5000 Freezes
John the WebTV Man wrote:
OK...how about an old [maybe not that old] computer problem? I am prepping a Compaq Presario 5000 [700 MHz, 256Mb RAM, Win2K Pro] for my son-in-law. Everything runs good, all loaded with all the needed Win2K updates, Office 2K, IE/OE6, etc]...but it has a problem!! After about an hour using the Internet, it freezes...no Mouse, no Keyboard, no response at all...last screen fully visible, PC fans and power supply still running. Strangely, it is apparently NOT a thermal/time problem as it can sit for hours downloading Internet updates, but only seems to happen with changing screens, pages, clicking links, etc. The only problem that I seem to have noted is that a lot of the PC functions are using the same IRQ11 [a problem?]. Any ideas on what to look for and how to identify the problem? TIA...John You could test the processor and memory with Prime95. When prompted to "Join GIMPs" or "Torture Test", select the Torture Test option. You can stop and quit the program, if no errors are detected in a few hours of usage. The program stops on the first error it finds, and if it stops rather quickly (couple minutes), then you'd suspect a processor or memory problem. http://www.mersenne.org/gimps/p95v255a.zip 256MB seems a relatively small amount of memory. I have Win2K on a machine with 1GB of memory, and at bootup, Task Manager shows 260MB in use. (With an AV program running in the background.) I expect with a smaller amount of memory available, Win2K won't be quite as wasteful. You could leave Task Manager open, while surfing the Internet, and see what the free memory looks like as time passes. Some motherboards that use Slot 1 processor modules, have a problem with the connector. Sometimes, pulling the processor and reseating it, then securing the processor in place, will provide temporary relief. You can try that, and see if it runs better for a few days. For a video card test, you could try the demo loop on 3DMark2001SE. But with 256MB of memory available, I don't know if that would load OK or not. If Prime95 is passing, I'd want to find something to load up the video card, and see how sensitive it is to a workout. http://www.majorgeeks.com/download99.html There are some older video card benchmarks, but they don't sustain a test for very long, and I don't think they can be set in a loop. When a computer appears to freeze, one test you can do, is try pinging it from a second computer. You can use "ping ip_address" from a DOS window (command prompt), to see if the frozen computer is really frozen. If the machine answers a ping, then you know the processor is in fact still running. That may tell you the problem is just with the video, and a frozen display subsystem. Paul |
#6
|
|||
|
|||
Compaq Presario 5000 Freezes
Here's the latest..
The problem still is that the computer will run normally for a period, then "stall" and not espond to either Mouse or Keyboard. By pulling the Power Plug and then reconnecting and restarting right away, it will again run normally for a period of time. AVG will provide a pop-up Threat Alert for a Trojan Horse Generic4.TAB detected in the "smss.exe" file. If I click "Ignore", the computer may continue to run. I have made online downloads where the computer ran for over an hour without stalling/freezing. The "Beast" is a Presario 5000 with a 900 MHz AMD Athlon CPU, 256 Mb RAM, 30 Gb Quantum Fireball HD, Windows 2000 Pro SP4 with ALL the upgrades, 56K PCTEL Platinum v.90 Compaq modem, SMC 10/100 Compaq LAN card, gForce nVidia Compaq Video card, CDROM, CD-RW, 3-5" 1.44Mb FD. Installed s/w includes... AVG 7.5 Anti-Virus, MS Office 2000, SpyBot S&D, Ad-Aware, and some lesser applications. I have spent the best part of yesterday and this morning playing with the computer and have tried a number of things to no avail. Here are some of the things I did, that made no difference to the problem: [1] Ran a complete Anti-Virus scan using AVG 7.5 with latest updates...it found nothing....made no improvement. [2] Ran SpyBot S&D new update install and it picked up 12 items...removed them and rebooted....made no improvement. [3] Ran new instal and updaatel of Ad-Aware and it detected 56 Cokies items which I deleted...made no difference [4] I replaced the2 256Mb RAM sticks with 2 new known good ones....made no difference, still had the Freeze condition. [5] Removed 2 USB Flash Drives [that both share IRQ 11] I had installed and that made no difference as I still got a Freeze. [6] I have rechecked and installed ALL the Microsoft Win2K Updates....all 65 of them and it made no difference afterward...still got the Freezes. [7] I ran the defrag [even tho it didn't really need Defrag] and after restart, that made no difference as a stall happened about 20 minutes later. In GOOGLE checking the "smss.exe". I found that a problem was a sign of a Trojan infection. Said that the SMSS.EXE file should be located in the C:\WINNT\system32\config folder...and if not, that was a sign of the Trojan problem. I have not found a "fix" to correct that problem and any help or suggestions are ost welcome and appreciated. Sorry for the long post....TIA....John |
#7
|
|||
|
|||
Compaq Presario 5000 Freezes
On Sat, 19 Apr 2008 01:21:13 -0400, Paul
wrote: For a video card test, you could try the demo loop on 3DMark2001SE. But with 256MB of memory available, I don't know if that would load OK or not. If Prime95 is passing, I'd want to find something to load up the video card, and see how sensitive it is to a workout. http://www.majorgeeks.com/download99.html There are some older video card benchmarks, but they don't sustain a test for very long, and I don't think they can be set in a loop. It may not matter if it's a loop, if the video card were failing enough that it locks up in 2D, running one pass in 3D should be enough to raise temp. 3Dmark2000 would be more appropriate if it's integrated video (and that old a board/memory tech) though 2001 should run on 256MB. |
#9
|
|||
|
|||
Compaq Presario 5000 Freezes
John the WebTV Man wrote:
Here's the latest.. The problem still is that the computer will run normally for a period, then "stall" and not espond to either Mouse or Keyboard. By pulling the Power Plug and then reconnecting and restarting right away, it will again run normally for a period of time. AVG will provide a pop-up Threat Alert for a Trojan Horse Generic4.TAB detected in the "smss.exe" file. If I click "Ignore", the computer may continue to run. I have made online downloads where the computer ran for over an hour without stalling/freezing. The "Beast" is a Presario 5000 with a 900 MHz AMD Athlon CPU, 256 Mb RAM, 30 Gb Quantum Fireball HD, Windows 2000 Pro SP4 with ALL the upgrades, 56K PCTEL Platinum v.90 Compaq modem, SMC 10/100 Compaq LAN card, gForce nVidia Compaq Video card, CDROM, CD-RW, 3-5" 1.44Mb FD. Installed s/w includes... AVG 7.5 Anti-Virus, MS Office 2000, SpyBot S&D, Ad-Aware, and some lesser applications. I have spent the best part of yesterday and this morning playing with the computer and have tried a number of things to no avail. Here are some of the things I did, that made no difference to the problem: [1] Ran a complete Anti-Virus scan using AVG 7.5 with latest updates...it found nothing....made no improvement. [2] Ran SpyBot S&D new update install and it picked up 12 items...removed them and rebooted....made no improvement. [3] Ran new instal and updaatel of Ad-Aware and it detected 56 Cokies items which I deleted...made no difference [4] I replaced the2 256Mb RAM sticks with 2 new known good ones....made no difference, still had the Freeze condition. [5] Removed 2 USB Flash Drives [that both share IRQ 11] I had installed and that made no difference as I still got a Freeze. [6] I have rechecked and installed ALL the Microsoft Win2K Updates....all 65 of them and it made no difference afterward...still got the Freezes. [7] I ran the defrag [even tho it didn't really need Defrag] and after restart, that made no difference as a stall happened about 20 minutes later. In GOOGLE checking the "smss.exe". I found that a problem was a sign of a Trojan infection. Said that the SMSS.EXE file should be located in the C:\WINNT\system32\config folder...and if not, that was a sign of the Trojan problem. I have not found a "fix" to correct that problem and any help or suggestions are ost welcome and appreciated. Sorry for the long post....TIA....John So with that processor, it probably isn't based on a slot 1 Intel processor :-) I notice in the Crucial.com memory list, there are many sub-models of Presario 5000. What I would do, seeing as you could potentially be facing two problems at the same time, is boot Knoppix (knopper.net) or Ubuntu (ubuntu.com) Linux LiveCDs. These are versions of Linux, where you don't need to install anything on disk. You can even leave your hard drive in the computer while testing (if it is NTFS formatted, then it probably won't be mounted in Linux automatically - NTFS capability exists, but if available in a distro, may be read only). http://www.knopper.net/knoppix-info/index-en.html "What are the minimum system requirements? 32 MB of RAM for text mode, at least 96 MB for graphics mode with KDE (at least 128 MB of RAM is recommended to use the various office products)" Both of those distros are a 700MB download. You need a CD burning program that can take an ISO9660 image and burn it to a CD. The first time I did it, I actually had to purchase a new burner, because the archaic one I had previously, wouldn't even do 700MB. I used the Nero that was bundled with the new burner, to prepare the CD. Once you boot from the CD, and the Linux desktop appears, you can use Firefox (browser) and go to mersenne.org and find the Linux version of Prime95. Download the executable package to your home directory. Then run Prime95, to see if there is a processor or memory stability problem. (The nice thing about Linux, is you can run multiple copies of Prime95 if you want, as long as each copy has its own directory to play in.) You download each time you boot into Linux, because if using a LiveCD, there may not be any permanent file space to save stuff. Prime95 may be too big to keep on a floppy (although I've put other test programs on a floppy, for testing via this method). So Linux can be used as an independent verification of a hardware problem. For example, on my 440BX box, I was having problems with graphics freezing when more than 512MB of memory was present. I thought the problem was with Windows, until one day on a lark, I booted the Linux CD. Within 10 seconds or so, Linux froze too. Which told me there was a problem with the hardware (as both OSes were doing it, and there would be no virus present in the Linux bootup). If I only installed 2x256MB on that machine, it was as stable as a rock (I could run Prime95 for 16 hours). The instant I used 3x256MB or 4x256MB, it would freeze in no more than a minute or two after the desktop appeared. So the only potential limitation with a technique like that, is the minimum amount of memory that will work with those boot discs. It would seem you meet the minimum, but I've never tested on a machine with less than 512MB. Paul |
#10
|
|||
|
|||
Compaq Presario 5000 Freezes
Well, at 2am this morning events dictated a new approach as things had
gotten to the point that the PC would no longer boot windows before freezing. I threw in the towel....wiped and reformatted the hard drive and did a clean install of Win2K Pro. All seems OK now...I need to install Win2K SP4 [a 130Mb download] and then all my protective stuff...AVG 7.5, Ad-Aware, Comodo and SpyBot S&D. When that is stable and working OK, then I will install all the applications software. The problem was definitely Malware of the "Downloader" or "Backdoor" Tojan type that spoofs the Windows "SMSS.EXE" and takes over the PC. From the GOOGLE search, it is detectable but apparently not "fixed" by many [if any??] anti-virus programs. It displays a variety of symptoms including the stall/freeze of the Mouse and Keyboard as I first saw. None of the protective applications I had installed [AVG 7.5, Ad-Aware and SpyBot] detected it on full scans...only AVG came up with periodic "Threat Alerts" regarding trouble with the "SMSS.EXE" file. Here's hoping my problems are all behind me now. Thanks for all your thoughts, emails and postings....it was a great comfort to know that there are others interested enough in a [my] problem to offer their help. |
|
Thread Tools | |
Display Modes | |
|
|
Similar Threads | ||||
Thread | Thread Starter | Forum | Replies | Last Post |
Compaq Presario 5000 | playstation60[_2_] | Compaq Computers | 5 | October 28th 07 12:55 AM |
Compaq Presario 5000 Problem | PatETC | Compaq Computers | 1 | October 29th 05 02:57 AM |
Compaq Presario 5000 lockup | QTarana | Compaq Computers | 9 | November 7th 04 03:30 AM |
Compaq Presario 5000 | Maureen Aubertin | Compaq Computers | 3 | February 29th 04 03:34 PM |
Compaq Presario 5000 | Sean Maloney | Compaq Computers | 0 | November 8th 03 03:27 PM |