A7N8X-E deluxe problem

[Ron]

Hello All,

I have a very annoying problem. Every once in a while the system just
randomly "freezes" for a second or two. When it occurs everything stops
working for a moment. When I'm typing for example the typed letters won't
appear until after a few seconds all at the same time, and the mouse doesn't
respond either. It may not happen at all for half an hour and then again it
may occur a few times in a row. The temperature doesn't seem to be the cause
because that reads stable and it also occurs when nothing else happens (not
using the system) A slower CPU speed setting in BIOS didn't have any effect.
I also noticed that Windows Taskmanager shows a temporary spike (100%) in
the CPU usage indicator during the occurence.
Can someone please help me what to do about it? I'm out of ideas what to
try. Thanks in advance!

System;
Asus A7N8X-E deluxe
AMD Athlon XP 2600+
Asus V9520 Magic graphics card
512 MB RAM
Maxtor 6Y160P0 Harddisk
Windows XP pro SP2

 

[Rob]

Hello All,

I have a very annoying problem. Every once in a while the system just
randomly "freezes" for a second or two. When it occurs everything stops
working for a moment. When I'm typing for example the typed letters won't
appear until after a few seconds all at the same time, and the mouse doesn't
respond either. It may not happen at all for half an hour and then again it
may occur a few times in a row. The temperature doesn't seem to be the cause
because that reads stable and it also occurs when nothing else happens (not
using the system) A slower CPU speed setting in BIOS didn't have any effect.
I also noticed that Windows Taskmanager shows a temporary spike (100%) in
the CPU usage indicator during the occurence.
Can someone please help me what to do about it? I'm out of ideas what to
try. Thanks in advance!

System;
Asus A7N8X-E deluxe
AMD Athlon XP 2600+
Asus V9520 Magic graphics card
512 MB RAM
Maxtor 6Y160P0 Harddisk
Windows XP pro SP2

Ron,
I had a similar problem once and went nuts for a week looking for the
cause. After removing all I could from my system and installing a fresh
copy of WinXP and nothing else, the problem was still there. Ended up
that the internals of an optical mouse were going bad. Just a guess,
the list can be long for that symptom. Wish you better luck than I
had! Have you installed anything lately to where you could restore to
an earlier date?
Rob

 

[SpaceAce]

Check your event log and see if there are any disk errors.

 

[Ron]

Thanks for the suggestions Rob and SpaceAce,
The cordless mouse and keyboard have been swapped for cord types to no
avail. There seem to be no disk errors either. I will try to find out
whether it is a software or hardware problem the coming time.
Again thanks!

 

[sd41050]

Dear Ron!

I have to say it is not a motherboard problem. I am using the very old
computer (3.5 years old), and bought new HDD in November. And for a
week now, a have been experiencing the same problem. I have nothing
else in common to your configuration, not even Windows (I am using
Win2000), but for the HDD, which is also Maxtor 6Y160P0. So a simple
reasoning says that the problem is HDD!

So, my problems were:
*) while booting Win2000, it intensively reads HDD for a while (with a
loud sound)
*) freezing - the same as you described - was really oft
*) when Windows was starting, it asked several times for consistency
check (after normal restart!) and found a lot errors (they were of
two types: 1) Windows created directory FOUND.xxx, and there were
loads of files, 2) it converted some folders to files, so the data
was lost)
*) in Windows, I discovered that lot of files and folders were damaged
(filenames were random symbols), so the data was lost again.

And I tried out:
*) first of all, I backed-up the important data ASAP
*) I started my second operating system, Win98, and there I also
experienced one freeze, so I realised that it was not the OS fault
*) as I have 5 partitions of the HDD, I formatted the first one and
reinstalled Windows. Then I formatted all the other partitions too.
The results were not very nice: I still had first two problems
described above, though not the last two. Freezing became really rare
- it was just for 3 times yesterday, for example.
*) I downloaded Maxtor's PowerMax utility and run all the tests
possible (advanced test took an hour to complete) - they all said
it's allright.
*) I typed "Maxtor 6Y160P0 problem" and found this post of you, Ron.

Don't know what to do know, I guess I'll just have to bring the HDD
back to th store...