Freezing computer!

Drunkenmassacre

Drunkenmassacre

Drunkenmassacre

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Moray, Scotland
ok, I've had this problem for a while now, tried various fixes etc but nothing seems to work.

Every now and then my computer will freeze. Doesn't matter what i'm doing on it, listening to music, playing games, sometimes nothing, but it will still freeze. Only for a few seconds, but it's still happening. The screen will stick to what ever was being shown at the time, and the sound will stutter like a broken record.

I've updated all of my drivers, and I have minimal stuff on my computer as i've only just re-installed XP.
I know my rig isnt brand new, other than this it's been working great. Please help?!
 
Can you post your full PC specs..

Freezing can happen for various reasons, bad memory, Video RAM, HDD problems and so on.

The first place to look when this happens is to give the event viewer a browse through looking for erroneous entries, warnings and logs etc. Google anything your not sure about. This can give a good idea as to what's going on.. Like a faulty HDD controller which I had yesterday.

The next phase is process of elimination.

Try downloading and running memtest86+. It's the standard utility for checking your memory. Run this and check for errors. It will soon tell you if there's a problem.

If you know the manufacturer of your HDD, the visit their website and download their disk diagnostic tool and run. This will check for disk faults..

Also you can try running a CHKDSK from windows.. Start > My Computer > Right Click > Properties > Tools> tick the Disk checking options. This will start a surface scan next time you reboot.

Come back to us what you have found so far.
 
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No the 360MHz sound like the bus speed of the system not to be confussd with the memory speed. PC8500 is rated 266 MHz so you need to head into your BIOS and make sure the DRAM Frequency is no more than this. Change the VDIMM while your there to 2.1v to give your DDR2 some extra juice. See how that goes.
 
Admiral Huddy said:
No the 360MHz sound like the bus speed of the system not to be confussd with the memory speed. PC8500 is rated 266 MHz so you need to head into your BIOS and make sure the DRAM Frequency is no more than this. Change the VDIMM while your there to 2.1v to give your DDR2 some extra juice. See how that goes.
Click to expand...

and possibly worth running memtest to check there are no errors
 
AAARRRGGGHHH!!!!! tried to restart my computer to get into BIOS but when it started up, all was normal but the mobo didn't beep. it's taken two hours just to get the bugger to boot, had to set my BIOS to default to boot properly, so now I've lost my overclock. In fact, CPUz is telling me the cpu is running at 1.6ghz, not the normal 2.6. God damn computer!!!
 
gv_of_e said:
AAARRRGGGHHH!!!!! tried to restart my computer to get into BIOS but when it started up, all was normal but the mobo didn't beep. it's taken two hours just to get the bugger to boot, had to set my BIOS to default to boot properly, so now I've lost my overclock. In fact, CPUz is telling me the cpu is running at 1.6ghz, not the normal 2.6. God damn computer!!!
Click to expand...

gutted, did it point you anywhere nearer your initial problem, has it stopped freezing?
 
could have been a bad install, dodgey windows update, corrupt driver.......could be many things. like you say, all you can do is start again and see if the problems arises again.
 
gv_of_e said:
AAARRRGGGHHH!!!!! tried to restart my computer to get into BIOS but when it started up, all was normal but the mobo didn't beep. it's taken two hours just to get the bugger to boot, had to set my BIOS to default to boot properly, so now I've lost my overclock. In fact, CPUz is telling me the cpu is running at 1.6ghz, not the normal 2.6. God damn computer!!!
Click to expand...


This is most likely speed step reducing the clock multiplier. I think reseting the CMOS is a good idea at this point. I would see how things go with stock settings for a bit. However, I'm still convinced that running your RAM @ 2.1v is a good idea so pop back in and change this now..

If things are ok for awhile, then try increasing the FSB in increments of say 33MHz at a time and making sure the memory frequency remains under 266MHz. Then stress test your system between each.

How to stress test your Overclock


It's alway a good idea to keep a journal of your changes as you go along, so that we any problems can be easily deduced.

Keep us posted
 
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