Occassional freeze

My system has started to occassionally freeze. It may be freezing more
often now. Seems like it at first it was freezing every couple days,
recently maybe daily. When it freezes, nothing happens other than the system
is completely frozen - i.e., never had a BSOD. Nothing in Event Viewer. It
has frozen mainly when no one was using the PC and one time when I was using
IE. Ran fine for ~ 3 months after first building.

I'm wanting to confirm the suspects.

System is AMD64 3000. 4 sticks of 256MB - two different brands [not pretty,
but worked for ~ 3 months]. Gigabyte K8NSC-939. PNY 5700VE [with Zalman
heatsink].
Two hard drives - system on SATA, second on primary PATA. Toshiba CD/DVD RW
on secondary PATA. Nexus 400w PS.
MBM says CPU temp is 30c at idle, 35c at full load.
Win XP, SP2, all security updates.

For couple months before the freezing started, the system was overclocked by
20% with Vcore + 0.15v, HT + 0.2v and memory + 0.2v.
For the past several weeks, all setting have been reset to normal - i.e., no
overclocking.

All 4 memory sticks have been reseated; all cables have been reseated.
[Just did this - too early to tell if this is the cause]

Is it possible that the memory [or other component] has been damaged in a
way to cause the freezing? [Prime 95 ran for four hours without a problem].

I've updated the video card to use a 5x.xx version [it was using a 7x.xx
version]. But, it's frozen since the change.

Both hard drives passed chkdsk /r. [Just did this also - too early to tell
if something was fixed even though no error was reported]

The Northbridge fan has some dust in it, but it was still rotating without
any unusual noise.

I'm planning to start memtest next.

Any comments/suggestions welcome!

Thanks

fj wrote:
My system has started to occassionally freeze. It may be freezing
more often now. Seems like it at first it was freezing every couple
days, recently maybe daily. When it freezes, nothing happens other
than the system is completely frozen - i.e., never had a BSOD.
Nothing in Event Viewer. It has frozen mainly when no one was using
the PC and one time when I was using IE. Ran fine for ~ 3 months
after first building.

I'm wanting to confirm the suspects.

System is AMD64 3000. 4 sticks of 256MB - two different brands [not
pretty, but worked for ~ 3 months]. Gigabyte K8NSC-939. PNY 5700VE
[with Zalman heatsink]. Two hard drives - system on SATA, second on
primary PATA. Toshiba CD/DVD RW on secondary PATA. Nexus 400w PS.
MBM says CPU temp is 30c at idle, 35c at full load. Win XP, SP2, all
security updates.

For couple months before the freezing started, the system was
overclocked by 20% with Vcore + 0.15v, HT + 0.2v and memory + 0.2v.
For the past several weeks, all setting have been reset to normal -
i.e., no overclocking.

All 4 memory sticks have been reseated; all cables have been
reseated. [Just did this - too early to tell if this is the cause]

Is it possible that the memory [or other component] has been damaged
in a way to cause the freezing? [Prime 95 ran for four hours without
a problem].

I've updated the video card to use a 5x.xx version [it was using a
7x.xx version]. But, it's frozen since the change.

Both hard drives passed chkdsk /r. [Just did this also - too early
to tell if something was fixed even though no error was reported]

The Northbridge fan has some dust in it, but it was still rotating
without any unusual noise.

I'm planning to start memtest next.

Any comments/suggestions welcome!

Thanks

Just a suggestion- Boot with a Knoppix CD and use it for a few hours to
see if it still freezes. If it does then you probably have a hardware
problem. If not then windoze or your background programs or one of your
drivers may be causing the freeze. Does it freeze in safe mode? You
could also disable your startup programs (run msconfig). If all else
fails try a reformat-reinstall. I'm not saying that it's not hardware
related, but don't rule out software failure just because there wasn't
and event listed in the event viewer. I've repaired many such freezes by
disabling startup programs.

Overclocking the video card will cause this type of freeze also.

"Leadfoot" wrote in message
news:xh30f.80864$ct5.5641@fed1read04...
Overclocking the video card will cause this type of freeze also.
Right. I don't think I'm overclocking AGP. AGP bus is set to 66mhz - which
is normal/not overclocked - yes?

"High" wrote in message
...
fj wrote:
My system has started to occassionally freeze. It may be freezing
more often now. Seems like it at first it was freezing every couple
days, recently maybe daily. When it freezes, nothing happens other
than the system is completely frozen - i.e., never had a BSOD.
Nothing in Event Viewer. It has frozen mainly when no one was using
the PC and one time when I was using IE. Ran fine for ~ 3 months
after first building.

I'm wanting to confirm the suspects.

System is AMD64 3000. 4 sticks of 256MB - two different brands [not
pretty, but worked for ~ 3 months]. Gigabyte K8NSC-939. PNY 5700VE
[with Zalman heatsink]. Two hard drives - system on SATA, second on
primary PATA. Toshiba CD/DVD RW on secondary PATA. Nexus 400w PS. MBM
says CPU temp is 30c at idle, 35c at full load. Win XP, SP2, all
security updates.

For couple months before the freezing started, the system was
overclocked by 20% with Vcore + 0.15v, HT + 0.2v and memory + 0.2v. For
the past several weeks, all setting have been reset to normal -
i.e., no overclocking.

All 4 memory sticks have been reseated; all cables have been
reseated. [Just did this - too early to tell if this is the cause]

Is it possible that the memory [or other component] has been damaged
in a way to cause the freezing? [Prime 95 ran for four hours without
a problem].

I've updated the video card to use a 5x.xx version [it was using a
7x.xx version]. But, it's frozen since the change.

Both hard drives passed chkdsk /r. [Just did this also - too early
to tell if something was fixed even though no error was reported]

The Northbridge fan has some dust in it, but it was still rotating
without any unusual noise.

I'm planning to start memtest next.

Any comments/suggestions welcome!

Thanks

Just a suggestion- Boot with a Knoppix CD and use it for a few hours to
see if it still freezes. If it does then you probably have a hardware
problem. If not then windoze or your background programs or one of your
drivers may be causing the freeze. Does it freeze in safe mode? You could
also disable your startup programs (run msconfig). If all else fails try a
reformat-reinstall. I'm not saying that it's not hardware related, but
don't rule out software failure just because there wasn't and event listed
in the event viewer. I've repaired many such freezes by disabling startup
programs.
Good point. I've restored another hard drive to the state 4 months ago
[i.e., when the system was first built] - well before the freezing started.

Do you know if memory passes memtest, it means the memory is absolutely,
positively good - and I should move on to other possibilities? Since it's
taking at least ~ 24 hours of continous running before a freeze occurs, I'm
thinking it has to be a weakened component that was overstressed during
overclocking - which would be the CPU or the memory. [AGP bus is set
separately and has always been at 66mhz].

In article ,
"fj" wrote:

My system has started to occassionally freeze. It may be freezing more
often now. Seems like it at first it was freezing every couple days,
recently maybe daily. When it freezes, nothing happens other than the system
is completely frozen - i.e., never had a BSOD. Nothing in Event Viewer. It
has frozen mainly when no one was using the PC and one time when I was using
IE. Ran fine for ~ 3 months after first building.

I'm wanting to confirm the suspects.

System is AMD64 3000. 4 sticks of 256MB - two different brands [not pretty,
but worked for ~ 3 months]. Gigabyte K8NSC-939. PNY 5700VE [with Zalman
heatsink].
Two hard drives - system on SATA, second on primary PATA. Toshiba CD/DVD RW
on secondary PATA. Nexus 400w PS.
MBM says CPU temp is 30c at idle, 35c at full load.
Win XP, SP2, all security updates.

For couple months before the freezing started, the system was overclocked by
20% with Vcore + 0.15v, HT + 0.2v and memory + 0.2v.
For the past several weeks, all setting have been reset to normal - i.e., no
overclocking.

All 4 memory sticks have been reseated; all cables have been reseated.
[Just did this - too early to tell if this is the cause]

Is it possible that the memory [or other component] has been damaged in a
way to cause the freezing? [Prime 95 ran for four hours without a problem].

I've updated the video card to use a 5x.xx version [it was using a 7x.xx
version]. But, it's frozen since the change.

Both hard drives passed chkdsk /r. [Just did this also - too early to tell
if something was fixed even though no error was reported]

The Northbridge fan has some dust in it, but it was still rotating without
any unusual noise.

I'm planning to start memtest next.

Any comments/suggestions welcome!

Thanks

You have a Marvell 88E8001 Ethernet chip. You are using a driver
you got from Windows update - v8.35.2.3. Roll back to an older
driver, and the freezing will stop.

Paul

"fj" wrote in message
...

"Leadfoot" wrote in message
news:xh30f.80864$ct5.5641@fed1read04...
Overclocking the video card will cause this type of freeze also.
Right. I don't think I'm overclocking AGP. AGP bus is set to 66mhz -
which is normal/not overclocked - yes?


A friend has a K8NXP-9 board that had similar symptoms. Eventually, his
system refused to even power up, let alone boot. The problem was a faulty
DPS power card. Once removed, the system resumed working.

Dave