Is my system hang caused by H/W or S/W?

[Peter Pundit]

My Sony VAIO PCG-FXA48 came with Win XP Home and has worked well except for
intermittent hangups. By "hangup", I mean the system will freeze whatever is
on the screen at the time and the keyboard or mouse will not work. The only
thing that will work is holding down the power key until the system shuts
off. Then when I turn the PC back on, it boots up like nothing ever
happened. It never recognizes that the OS froze. The PC will hang up in any
application at any time, whether in Word, Excel, Acrobat, Media Player, etc.
And it did it whether C: had 3+ GB remaining or the current 700MB.
I restored the harddrive to the factory default loadset that came on CDs and
the machine went for over a day without hanging up. But as I reinstalled
software, the machine started hanging up again. The software I use either
came with the PC, or Microsoft Office.
Can anyone tell me if this smells like a hardware or software related
problem?

Thanks

 

[D.Currie]

My Sony VAIO PCG-FXA48 came with Win XP Home and has worked well except
for
intermittent hangups. By "hangup", I mean the system will freeze whatever
is
on the screen at the time and the keyboard or mouse will not work. The
only
thing that will work is holding down the power key until the system shuts
off. Then when I turn the PC back on, it boots up like nothing ever
happened. It never recognizes that the OS froze. The PC will hang up in
any
application at any time, whether in Word, Excel, Acrobat, Media Player,
etc.
And it did it whether C: had 3+ GB remaining or the current 700MB.
I restored the harddrive to the factory default loadset that came on CDs
and
the machine went for over a day without hanging up. But as I reinstalled
software, the machine started hanging up again. The software I use either
came with the PC, or Microsoft Office.
Can anyone tell me if this smells like a hardware or software related
problem?

Thanks

Is there anything in the event viewer?

 

[Malke]

Is there anything in the event viewer?

It is probably hardware. A good way to test is to boot with Knoppix, a
Linux distro that runs from cd (www.knoppix.net). If you experience the
same problems in Linux, then you know this is hardware. Here are
standard hardware troubleshooting steps (I don't know if your model
Sony is a laptop or desktop; if a laptop, of course opening the
computer is not going to be possible, but you could feel it to see how
hot it is getting and listen carefully to hear if the fan is working):

1) open the computer and run it open, cleaning out all dust bunnies and
observing all fans (overheating will cause system freezing); 2) test
the RAM - I like Memtest86 from www.memtest86.com - let the test run
for an extended (like overnight) period of time - unless errors are
seen immediately; 3) test the hard drive with a diagnostic utility from
the mftr.; 4) the power supply may be going bad or be inadequate for
the devices you have in the system; 5) test the motherboard with
something like TuffTest from www.tufftest.com. Testing hardware
failures often involves swapping out suspected parts with known-good
parts. If you can't do the testing yourself and/or are uncomfortable
opening your computer, take the machine to a good local computer repair
shop (not a CompUSA or Best Buy type of store).

Malke

 

[Jerry N]

Peter
Don't know if this is a coincidence, but after I installed SP2 on my Dell
Dimension 4500 running XP Pro, the same thing started to happen to me two or
three times a day. No mouse, no keyboard, no Cont-Alt-Delete, just a frozen
screen and nothing responds except powering down. I believe that I was using
Internet Explorer during every freeze. Like your computer, mine reboots
like nothing happened. This never happened before SP2 installation. It
doesn't matter whether Windows firewall is on or off; same applies to Norton
firewall
Jerry