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#1
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Strange behaviour...
On Thu, 08 Jan 2004 00:07:14 +0000 Sat down laughing as it's habit to
keep on crying then S.B. sb@ach wrote : I'm suddenly getting strange behaviour by my computer unassociated with any particular activity: 1. It freezes, the mouse pointer will not respond and whatever was displayed remains in view but static ie. no blank screen or BSOD. 2. The hard disk activity light on the front of the case becomes permanently on though there's no audible or other indication of disk activity 2. The only thing that will recover it is to reboot and then I find that my CD-RW has disappeared. 3. If I switch the computer off by holding in the power button for a few seconds after 30 seconds or so it spontaneously restarts. 4. Removing the battery for several minutes (there is no 'Clear CMOS' jumper) restablishes the CD-RW and all seems to be well until the next freeze which may be hours or minutes away. I'm quite sure that this isn't an overheating problem and I'm at a loss to know the cause. Does anyone know what it is from those symptoms? My best guess is a failing PSU or motherboard. GA-7VAX AMD XP2400 not overclocked Crucial PC2100 Enermax 350W Asus CD-R on IDE 1 Plextor CD-RW on IDE 2 Seagate Barracuda on Promise TX2 Ultra/100 Controller IDE 1 Seagate Barracuda on Promise IDE 2 MSI G4Ti4200 Win98SE All latest drivers, firmware etc and problem doesn't follow from a driver update or installation of a new program Good processor and case cooling Components reseated and connections checked AVG, ZoneAlarm, Spybot etc. Does it do this in,"Safemode"? -- Free Windows/PC help, http://www.geocities.com/sheppola/trouble.html email shepATpartyheld.de Free songs download, http://www.soundclick.com/bands/8/nomessiahsmusic.htm |
#2
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S.B. sb@ach writes:
I'm quite sure that this isn't an overheating problem and I'm at a loss to know the cause. Does anyone know what it is from those symptoms? My best guess is a failing PSU or motherboard. Those are a royal pain to debug, but I'd have to agree with the suspicion on a motherboard component. Perhaps the IDE controller. I might try to reproduce the problem on a fresh new different hard disk though just to rule something subtle out there. Does Win98 have an equivalent to win2k's Event Viewer where you might be able to see any possible errors? I had random freezing problems similar to that on a machine I never could debug despite the thing passing all hardware tests and exhaustive hardware tests with flying colors and never locking up under the DOS mode the diagnostics ran under. In my case, the box I wanted to throttle was an AMD Athlon 800 on an Abit KT7-RAID motherboard. I replaced it with newer faster Intel/Asus system and haven't seen a similar problem since. But I wouldn't draw much conclusion from my single datapoint. Good luck in your debugging quest. -- Todd H. http://www.toddh.net/ |
#3
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On Thu, 08 Jan 2004 00:48:37 +0000 Sat down laughing as it's habit to
keep on crying then S.B. sb@ach wrote : On 08 Jan 2004, Shepİ wrote: (snipped) S.B. wrote : I'm suddenly getting strange behaviour by my computer unassociated with any particular activity: 1. It freezes, the mouse pointer will not respond and whatever was displayed remains in view but static ie. no blank screen or BSOD. 2. The hard disk activity light on the front of the case becomes permanently on though there's no audible or other indication of disk activity 2. The only thing that will recover it is to reboot and then I find that my CD-RW has disappeared. 3. If I switch the computer off by holding in the power button for a few seconds after 30 seconds or so it spontaneously restarts. 4. Removing the battery for several minutes (there is no 'Clear CMOS' jumper) restablishes the CD-RW and all seems to be well until the next freeze which may be hours or minutes away. Does it do this in,"Safemode"? Dunno - when the problem appears it's too late to go into Safe Mode. If I reboot into Safe Mode I can't use my computer properly or afford to wait the possible hours before it freezes. The CD-RW doesn't appear anyway in that mode. I've been reading about bad capacitors but they seem to cause failure to boot or random reboots. Mine starts fine but at some random time, sometimes not at all, it just freezes. Install the free Ms tweakUI, http://www.geocities.com/sheppola/tweakui.html In it's paranoia Tab enable the faultlog.txt Use this to see if you can track down a specific fault call as it's not always a hardware issue. Also disable the APM in the BIOS if possible. -- Free Windows/PC help, http://www.geocities.com/sheppola/trouble.html email shepATpartyheld.de Free songs download, http://www.soundclick.com/bands/8/nomessiahsmusic.htm |
#4
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On Thu, 08 Jan 2004 00:07:14 +0000, S.B. sb@ach wrote:
I'm suddenly getting strange behaviour by my computer unassociated with any particular activity: 1. It freezes, the mouse pointer will not respond and whatever was displayed remains in view but static ie. no blank screen or BSOD. I suppose it's implied, but just to confirm, there's no response at all from keyboard either? These are USB or PS/2? 2. The hard disk activity light on the front of the case becomes permanently on though there's no audible or other indication of disk activity Is it possible the system had been on for long enoough that the drives had spun down, gone into sleep mode? Try disabling the HDD power-dwon setting, in bios and windows. 2. The only thing that will recover it is to reboot and then I find that my CD-RW has disappeared. Have you tried shutting off the system, leaving it off for at least 10 seconds, then restarting, and the CDRW is still missing, you've found no way to get it back except resetting CMOS? 3. If I switch the computer off by holding in the power button for a few seconds after 30 seconds or so it spontaneously restarts. How long has it been doing this? How long had it been working properly, previously? Might be the power supply. If you have a voltage meter you might check the 5VSB and power on (PS_ON) power supply leads. They should be very nearly 5V. 4. Removing the battery for several minutes (there is no 'Clear CMOS' jumper) restablishes the CD-RW and all seems to be well until the next freeze which may be hours or minutes away. I'm quite sure that this isn't an overheating problem and I'm at a loss to know the cause. Does anyone know what it is from those symptoms? My best guess is a failing PSU or motherboard. Check the larger capacitors to the left of the northbridge. for signs of venting, bludging, leaking, residue on top or bottom. The power supply may be marginal capacity for that system on it's 5V rail... is the 5V reading low OR the 12V high? A voltage meter would be much more accurate but a bios reading would be a good start. GA-7VAX AMD XP2400 not overclocked Crucial PC2100 Enermax 350W Asus CD-R on IDE 1 Plextor CD-RW on IDE 2 Seagate Barracuda on Promise TX2 Ultra/100 Controller IDE 1 Seagate Barracuda on Promise IDE 2 MSI G4Ti4200 Win98SE All latest drivers, firmware etc and problem doesn't follow from a driver update or installation of a new program Good processor and case cooling Components reseated and connections checked AVG, ZoneAlarm, Spybot etc. I also suspect an IDE device. You might try running wihtout one, then the other, CDRW, see if that resolves it, and run the Seagate Diagnostics test on the drives. Unfortunately the power supply could damage a drive, it's possible you could need replace the power supply AND then keep the drives disconnected, reconnect one at a time to verify proper operation. |
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