frustrated with freeze ups

[Guest]

I have a ECS K7S5A 1.0 mb with an amd xp 1800 cpu and 512mb memory. I'm
running winxp home. Inside is a maxtor 60g hard drive, cdrw, cd, floppy and a
zip drive. Video card is nvidia tnt 64 pro and a sound card along with a few
fans. The psu is an x-case 400 watt. when ever i try to burn something it
always freezes, sometimes when printing it freezes and sometimes just doing
nothing when screen saver is on it freezes. But when it does freeze it seems
to start a pattern of continual freezing unless left off for some time. The
psu has been tested (under load also) and is good. The memory has been
switched and made no difference. Looked over the mb carefully and see no
evidence of bad (leaking or domed) capacitors. My cpu temp runs at approx 96F
under load so seems very cool. I keep the system maintained as far as defrag
etc.
For software i have office 2000, quicken 2005, Roxio cd creator, Norton
system works 2005, HP printer and camera software, adobe reader 6.0, Iomega
tools and all windows updates are installed. Can anyone suggest what I can
try next to find the problem? I'm pretty much at witts end and ready to carry
to 2nd floor for a drop off. lol.
Any help or suggestions will be greatly appreciated.

 

[Rich Barry]

Try Motherboard Monitor. It gives you a good idea on what your Temp and
Voltages are doing. You can get it here
http://www.pcworld.com/downloads/file_description/0,fid,7309,RSS,RSS,00.asp

 

[Guest]

I have motherboard monitor installed. All temps and voltages look good. Just
not sure of 1 area, the -5v shows all zeros in the hi/low readings. Is that
normal?
--
Thank you,
Phil

Try Motherboard Monitor. It gives you a good idea on what your Temp and
Voltages are doing. You can get it here
http://www.pcworld.com/downloads/file_description/0,fid,7309,RSS,RSS,00.asp

 

[Rich Barry]

Phil, when looking at Motherboard Monitor for me the -5 volt reading does
not show up. I would be concerned if the +
3.3, 5 and 12v readings dropped below 5% of their normal indicators. Do
you have a lot of programs running in the background? Try going to
msconfig>Startup and uncheck many of the ones you can do without. Also, rt
click on MyComputer>select Manage>System Tools>Event Viewer>Apps and System.
Look for errors that might give you a clue.
Check Task Manager>Processes. See if anything is using alot of CPU
resources except for System Idle which usually reflects 99.

 

[Guest]

Not much showing in task manager, very little running in backround just
Nortons, adobe, HP etc. maybe like 10 things total. I could turn them all off
and start fresh. Just not sure what i need to keep running. As far as the
viewer and log i see some errors and warnings but not sure what to look for.
--
Thank you,
Phil

Phil, when looking at Motherboard Monitor for me the -5 volt reading does
not show up. I would be concerned if the +
3.3, 5 and 12v readings dropped below 5% of their normal indicators. Do
you have a lot of programs running in the background? Try going to
msconfig>Startup and uncheck many of the ones you can do without. Also, rt
click on MyComputer>select Manage>System Tools>Event Viewer>Apps and System.
Look for errors that might give you a clue.
Check Task Manager>Processes. See if anything is using alot of CPU
resources except for System Idle which usually reflects 99.