Occasional problem with XP freezing or spontaneously starting from standbye

[Robin Bignall]

My system is based on an ASUS P5E3 Deluxe board with SP3; built a
couple of years ago, works perfectly, Except:

-- Occasionally it freezes on booting. This is indicated by
SmartDoctor's activity bars just stopping moving. Normally,
SmartDoctor is one of the first programs whose splash screen appears,
and this splash screen is usually the last to vanish, after everything
else is loaded. A look at the icon area at the time of the freeze
shows everything to be loaded except SmartDoctor and Kaspersky IS. The
freeze is total: no keys work and a hard reboot is required, which
ALWAYS works perfectly. Event viewer shows nothing.

-- after it's been put into standbye I often return to find windows
running. I know that this ASUS board is impossible to set to ignore
interrupts from USB devices: in fact I depend on that, usually, to
return from standbye by tapping the space bar or moving the mouse. But
then it always presents the Windows logon screen. These errant
returns from standbye when I'm not present seem to bypass the logon
requirement.

Comments, anyone?

 

[Flasherly]

My system is based on an ASUS P5E3 Deluxe board with SP3; built a
couple of years ago, works perfectly, Except:

-- Occasionally it freezes on booting. This is indicated by
SmartDoctor's activity bars just stopping moving. Normally,
SmartDoctor is one of the first programs whose splash screen appears,
and this splash screen is usually the last to vanish, after everything
else is loaded. A look at the icon area at the time of the freeze
shows everything to be loaded except SmartDoctor and Kaspersky IS. The
freeze is total: no keys work and a hard reboot is required, which
ALWAYS works perfectly. Event viewer shows nothing.

-- after it's been put into standbye I often return to find windows
running. I know that this ASUS board is impossible to set to ignore
interrupts from USB devices: in fact I depend on that, usually, to
return from standbye by tapping the space bar or moving the mouse. But
then it always presents the Windows logon screen. These errant
returns from standbye when I'm not present seem to bypass the logon
requirement.

Comments, anyone?

Could be software in related OS conflicts. Apart from kludge and hair-
pulling, binary backups of the OS can be useful to test for those
types anomalies. A sort of restore concept but in absolute terms,
ground zero being the first backup known for a good install (without
potential internet interference or subsequent additions/installs). I
keep three such, and try and build on them carefully as program
selections evolve. It's obvious hardware isn't likely a culprit if
something that's been installed causes newly-surfaced problems that
weren't there. Hardware and related driver problems *can* tend to be
more direct, cut-&-dry in a spontaneous sense of disregard for
whatever else is going on the CPU registers. Questionable qualify and
ill-matched power supply issues have been the longest lingering in my
experience. Most other hardware since W95, a reasonable expectation
for names like ASUS, is gratefully electrically sound engineering.

 

[John Doe]

Could be software in related OS conflicts. Apart from kludge
and hair- pulling, binary backups of the OS can be useful to
test for those types anomalies.

Keep backup copies of drive C.

A sort of restore concept but in absolute terms,

Because it is no different than saving changes to a file.

ground zero being the first backup known for a good install
(without potential internet interference or subsequent
additions/installs). I keep three such, and try and build on
them carefully as program selections evolve.

Keep incremental backup copies of drive C.

It's obvious hardware isn't likely a culprit if something that's
been installed causes newly-surfaced problems that weren't
there.

You can test for that by making a current copy of important data
and restoring the most recent backup copy of drive C.

Even though that might not help the original poster's immediate
problem... I cannot sing enough praises for keeping backup copies
of drive C. By keeping backups of drive C, your current
installation becomes a perfect laboratory. After you install a new
piece of software or change some settings, you sit back and enjoy
the new functionality. By observing how everything is going, you
not only validate your most recent changes, you also continue
proving all of the installations and configurations you have done
in the past. It is a marvelous way to do Windows.

Good luck and have fun.
--

 

[Robin Bignall]

Could be software in related OS conflicts. Apart from kludge and hair-
pulling, binary backups of the OS can be useful to test for those
types anomalies. A sort of restore concept but in absolute terms,
ground zero being the first backup known for a good install (without
potential internet interference or subsequent additions/installs). I
keep three such, and try and build on them carefully as program
selections evolve. It's obvious hardware isn't likely a culprit if
something that's been installed causes newly-surfaced problems that
weren't there. Hardware and related driver problems *can* tend to be
more direct, cut-&-dry in a spontaneous sense of disregard for
whatever else is going on the CPU registers. Questionable qualify and
ill-matched power supply issues have been the longest lingering in my
experience. Most other hardware since W95, a reasonable expectation
for names like ASUS, is gratefully electrically sound engineering.

I'm grateful for the detail. I've got an Antec Truepower 650 watt PSU,
which shouldn't be too highly stressed with 3 HDD and a graphics card
GEForce 8800 GT. Everything else is USB.

As to software, I've long had all I need to do the little computer
stuff that I do. I'm not a gamer or an MP3 downloader, so it's mostly
Usenet plus letters, personal finance and that sort of thing. I keep
everything up to the latest level of updates.

As to the freezing, it's maybe one in ten or fifteen boots, and with
nothing in event viewer it's hard to know what, but I suspect that
something as complex as Kaspersky might just hang on boot that sort of
often. I dunno!

Why I spelled Stand By as 'standbye' previously must be one of those
senior moments I've read about... But starting up without a logon is
puzzling. I do not have Powertoys set to bypass logon.

 

[Flasherly]

Even though that might not help the original poster's immediate
problem... I cannot sing enough praises for keeping backup copies
of drive C.

That's right, John: Square 1, before going anywhere, doing anything,
learn first always to back it up. Least that's how I interpreted the
second thing I learned about computers; . . . after a shirtpocket
Tandy PC-7 Scientific Computer, (by my elbow and still working),
presumptuously a better "calculator" that caused no end to continued
logical challenges, in a disarray such as I found myself, upon
discovering its subset of BASIC programming language. Pre-MSDOS, I'd
imagine, just sweetly stuck on revealed logical intrigues, like any
other boy who gravitates to chess as if it were candy.

 

[TVeblen]

I'm grateful for the detail. I've got an Antec Truepower 650 watt PSU,
which shouldn't be too highly stressed with 3 HDD and a graphics card
GEForce 8800 GT. Everything else is USB.

As to software, I've long had all I need to do the little computer
stuff that I do. I'm not a gamer or an MP3 downloader, so it's mostly
Usenet plus letters, personal finance and that sort of thing. I keep
everything up to the latest level of updates.

As to the freezing, it's maybe one in ten or fifteen boots, and with
nothing in event viewer it's hard to know what, but I suspect that
something as complex as Kaspersky might just hang on boot that sort of
often. I dunno!

Why I spelled Stand By as 'standbye' previously must be one of those
senior moments I've read about... But starting up without a logon is
puzzling. I do not have Powertoys set to bypass logon.

Network activity has been known to cause the wake-up symptoms. Check
your network settings and play with both the "WAke on LAN" and "allow
this device to wake up the computer" settings and see if that helps.

As for the freezes, a good diagnostic is to go into Run > msconfig and
on the startup tab uncheck one program at a time and test to see if
stopping that program solves the problem. This can be hard in a case
like yours when the freezes do not occur with regularity.

 

[Robin Bignall]

That's right, John: Square 1, before going anywhere, doing anything,
learn first always to back it up. Least that's how I interpreted the
second thing I learned about computers; . . . after a shirtpocket
Tandy PC-7 Scientific Computer, (by my elbow and still working),
presumptuously a better "calculator" that caused no end to continued
logical challenges, in a disarray such as I found myself, upon
discovering its subset of BASIC programming language. Pre-MSDOS, I'd
imagine, just sweetly stuck on revealed logical intrigues, like any
other boy who gravitates to chess as if it were candy.

I use ShadowProtect, which takes an incremental backup each hour and
full backups each Sunday. I could, of course, set it to incrementals
every 5 minutes and fulls each day, but for my needs that'd be
overkill.

 

[Robin Bignall]

Network activity has been known to cause the wake-up symptoms. Check
your network settings and play with both the "WAke on LAN" and "allow
this device to wake up the computer" settings and see if that helps.

This board is set to wake up on nothing except power on, (wake up on
LAN is disabled) but it doesn't have any settings to avoid waking up
on USB. A tap on the space key or minor movement of the mouse will
wake it up even after shutdown. I have the latest BIOS.

As to shutting things down in MsConfig one at a time, I agree it's
sound advice, but it'll take so long, with only an occasional freeze
happening, that I might die of old age before it's finished!

 

[TVeblen]

This board is set to wake up on nothing except power on, (wake up on
LAN is disabled) but it doesn't have any settings to avoid waking up
on USB. A tap on the space key or minor movement of the mouse will
wake it up even after shutdown. I have the latest BIOS.

As to shutting things down in MsConfig one at a time, I agree it's
sound advice, but it'll take so long, with only an occasional freeze
happening, that I might die of old age before it's finished!

LOL. That's for sure!

I recall there are some settings in Power Management relating to waking.
You might take a look at them all and play with toggling them on and off.

Like so many computer issues, it's never nice and easy. Always a
detective novel!

 

[RayLopez99]

My system is based on an ASUS P5E3 Deluxe board with SP3; built a
couple of years ago, works perfectly, Except:

-- Occasionally it freezes on booting.  This is indicated by
SmartDoctor's activity bars just stopping moving.  Normally,
SmartDoctor is one of the first programs whose splash screen appears

Comments, anyone?
--

Has it ever occurred to you that "SmartDoctor" is the culprit?
Uninstall that malware and see if that helps.

RL

 

[Robin Bignall]

Has it ever occurred to you that "SmartDoctor" is the culprit?
Uninstall that malware and see if that helps.

It may well be, but I don't know of any other software that will
monitor my graphics card.

 

[Robin Bignall]

It may well be, but I don't know of any other software that will
monitor my graphics card.

After having said that I had a look for alternatives to SmartDoctor,
and there don't seem to be many alternatives for monitoring graphics
cards. I installed NVidia's own suite and found that my card, an 8800
GT I bought a couple of years ago, does not have its temperature or
fans monitored by this suite. I'm not looking for overclocking
control -- just monitoring with audible alarm if something is not
working.

 

[Chris S.]

It may well be, but I don't know of any other software that will
monitor my graphics card.

After having said that I had a look for alternatives to SmartDoctor,
and there don't seem to be many alternatives for monitoring graphics
cards. I installed NVidia's own suite and found that my card, an 8800
GT I bought a couple of years ago, does not have its temperature or
fans monitored by this suite. I'm not looking for overclocking
control -- just monitoring with audible alarm if something is not
working.
--
Robin Bignall
(BrE)
Herts, England

GPU-Z?

 

[Robin Bignall]

On Mon, 20 Dec 2010 16:31:34 -0500, "Chris S."

Graphics card monitoring]

GPU-Z?

Interesting, but doesn't do what I want. Thanks.