OT: XP randomly sails off into outer space...

[RJK]

in XP Home SP3+ Windows Normal mode, my old :-
Asus M3N78 (no suffix to mb model no.)
Athlon 64 x2 6000 Windsor cpu + Arctic Cooler heatpipe job
2x1gb Crucial Ballistix
3xSataII hd's (connected to mobo Sata ports),
1xIDE LG dvd-rewriter connected to motherboard IDE port,
1xPCIe x1 SIL3132 Sata card with a dvd-rom drive connected to it.
Camera card reader connected to internal USB pin header,
....in Antec Solo case + Antec modular psu with no dust bunnies in there, no
temp. problems btw !

running lovely for over a year, probably 2 years, ..or more,
During the past couple of weeks in Windows Normal mode, PC stops responding,
and ignores me, and I have to reboot.
Last night, swapped out memory for 2x512mb Crucial ddr2 667 modules,
and this morning changed set swap file size to min. 1536 and max. 2048, and
offline defragged with PerfectDisk 10,
rebooted to Windows Normal mode and started a PerfectDisk defrag, and after
a few minutes - PC sailed off into outer space again !

Booted up with bootable Spinrite 6 cd and started a full hd scan (Spinrite 6
mode "4"), and after it had scanned a few sectors - PC sailed off into outer
space again !

....am I looking at a new motherboard ?

regards, Richard

 

[RJK]

in XP Home SP3+ Windows Normal mode, my old :-
Asus M3N78 (no suffix to mb model no.)
Athlon 64 x2 6000 Windsor cpu + Arctic Cooler heatpipe job
2x1gb Crucial Ballistix
3xSataII hd's (connected to mobo Sata ports),
1xIDE LG dvd-rewriter connected to motherboard IDE port,
1xPCIe x1 SIL3132 Sata card with a dvd-rom drive connected to it.
Camera card reader connected to internal USB pin header,
...in Antec Solo case + Antec modular psu with no dust bunnies in there,
no temp. problems btw !

running lovely for over a year, probably 2 years, ..or more,
During the past couple of weeks in Windows Normal mode, PC stops
responding, and ignores me, and I have to reboot.
Last night, swapped out memory for 2x512mb Crucial ddr2 667 modules,
and this morning changed set swap file size to min. 1536 and max. 2048,
and offline defragged with PerfectDisk 10,
rebooted to Windows Normal mode and started a PerfectDisk defrag, and
after a few minutes - PC sailed off into outer space again !

Booted up with bootable Spinrite 6 cd and started a full hd scan (Spinrite
6 mode "4"), and after it had scanned a few sectors - PC sailed off into
outer space again !

...am I looking at a new motherboard ?

regards, Richard

SmartFan / S.M.A.R.T. reports the boot hd as healthy, though I can't help
suspecting ST380815AS boot drive is the culprit,
....or the SATA mobo controller ! ...think I'll try imaging boot drive onto
another hd first

regards, Richard

 

[Jose]

in XP Home SP3+ Windows Normal mode, my old :-
Asus M3N78 (no suffix to mb model no.)
Athlon 64 x2 6000 Windsor cpu + Arctic Cooler heatpipe job
2x1gb Crucial Ballistix
3xSataII hd's (connected to mobo Sata ports),
1xIDE LG dvd-rewriter connected to motherboard IDE port,
1xPCIe x1 SIL3132 Sata card with a dvd-rom drive connected to it.
Camera card reader connected to internal USB pin header,
...in Antec Solo case + Antec modular psu with no dust bunnies in there, no
temp. problems btw !

running lovely for over a year, probably 2 years, ..or more,
During the past couple of weeks in Windows Normal mode, PC stops responding,
and ignores me, and I have to reboot.
Last night, swapped out memory for 2x512mb Crucial ddr2 667 modules,
and this morning changed set swap file size to min. 1536 and max. 2048, and
offline defragged with PerfectDisk 10,
rebooted to Windows Normal mode and started a PerfectDisk defrag, and after
a few minutes  - PC sailed off into outer space again !

Booted up with bootable Spinrite 6 cd and started a full hd scan (Spinrite 6
mode "4"), and after it had scanned a few sectors - PC sailed off into outer
space again !

...am I looking at a new motherboard ?

regards, Richard

The crystal ball called in sick today.

What is your definition of sailed off into outer space?

System lock ups can be sometime be quickly diagnosed by forcing a blue
screen of death when the system is hung and then examining the crash
dump file.

Is there some reason you are focusing on hardware? Have you tested
your RAM or just replaced it? Why not test it:

Run a test of your RAM with memtest86+ (I know it is boring and will
cost you a CD).

Memtest86+ is a more up to date version of the old memtest program and
they are not the same.

The memtest86+ will not run under Windows, so you will need to
download the ISO file and create a bootable CD, boot on that and then
run the memtest86+ program.

If even a single error is reported that is a failure and should make
you suspicious of your RAM.

If you have multiple sticks of RAM you may need to run the test on
them one at a time and change them out to isolate the failure to a
particular single stick. Always keep at least the first bank of RAM
occupied so the test will find something to do and there is enough to
boot your system.

Sometimes, reseating the RAM in the slots will relieve the error but a
failure is still cause for suspicion.

The file and instructions are here:

http://www.memtest.org/

Why are you changing the paging file size? Do you suspect that is an
issue and why? Not letting Windows manage it adds a another variable
into the troubled equation. Unless you know more about managing
memory than XP, I would leave it alone.

To eliminate questions and guessing, please provide additional
information about your system.

Click Start, Run and in the box enter:

msinfo32

Click OK, and when the System Summary info appears, click Edit, Select
All, Copy and then paste the information back here.

There will be some personal information (like System Name and User
Name), and whatever appears to be private information to you, just
delete it from the pasted information.

Perform some scans for malicious software, then fix any remaining
issues:

Download, install, update and do a full scan with these free malware
detection programs:

Malwarebytes (MBAM): http://malwarebytes.org/
SUPERAntiSpyware: (SAS): http://www.superantispyware.com/

They can be uninstalled later if desired.
Look in the Event Viewer for clues around the time of the incident

Here is a method to post the specific information about individual
events.

To see the Event Viewer logs, click Start, Settings, Control Panel,
Administrative Tools, Event Viewer.

A shortcut to Event Viewer is to click Start, Run and in the box
enter:

%SystemRoot%\system32\eventvwr.msc /s

Click OK to launch the Event Viewer.

The most interesting logs are usually the Application and System.
Some logs may be almost or completely empty.
Not every event is a problem, some are informational messages that
things are working okay and some are warnings.
No event should defy reasonable explanation.

Each event is sorted by Date and Time. Errors will have red Xs,
Warnings will have yellow !s. Information messages have white is.
Not every Error or Warning event means there is a serious issue. Some
are excusable at startup time when Windows is booting. Try to find
just the events at the date and time around your problem.

If you double click an event, it will open a Properties windows with
more information. On the right are black up and down arrow buttons to
scroll through the open events. The third button that looks like two
pages on top of each other is used to copy the event details to your
Windows clipboard.

When you find an interesting event that occurred around the time of
your issue, click the third button under the up and down arrows to
copy the details and then you can paste the details (right click,
Paste or CTRL-V) the detail text back here for analysis.

To get a fresh start on any Event Viewer log, you can choose to clear
the log (backing up the log is offered), then reproduce your issue,
then look at just the events around the time of your issue.

 

[Paul]

in XP Home SP3+ Windows Normal mode, my old :-
Asus M3N78 (no suffix to mb model no.)
Athlon 64 x2 6000 Windsor cpu + Arctic Cooler heatpipe job
2x1gb Crucial Ballistix
3xSataII hd's (connected to mobo Sata ports),
1xIDE LG dvd-rewriter connected to motherboard IDE port,
1xPCIe x1 SIL3132 Sata card with a dvd-rom drive connected to it.
Camera card reader connected to internal USB pin header,
...in Antec Solo case + Antec modular psu with no dust bunnies in there, no
temp. problems btw !

running lovely for over a year, probably 2 years, ..or more,
During the past couple of weeks in Windows Normal mode, PC stops responding,
and ignores me, and I have to reboot.
Last night, swapped out memory for 2x512mb Crucial ddr2 667 modules,
and this morning changed set swap file size to min. 1536 and max. 2048, and
offline defragged with PerfectDisk 10,
rebooted to Windows Normal mode and started a PerfectDisk defrag, and after
a few minutes - PC sailed off into outer space again !

Booted up with bootable Spinrite 6 cd and started a full hd scan (Spinrite 6
mode "4"), and after it had scanned a few sectors - PC sailed off into outer
space again !

...am I looking at a new motherboard ?

regards, Richard

A computer doesn't always "lock". For example, I've had computers where
the desktop display stops responding (giving the impression the computer
is locked). Yet, if I go to a second computer, and issue the "ping"
command from an MSDOS window, pointed to the frozen computer, the
frozen computer manages to return a response. And that tells you the
OS is still running, and just the GUI is broken.

If you see an actual blue screen, the computer might have stopped
executing code at that point. I haven't tried a ping test against
a blue screen computer, because I don't get them here often enough
to test.

If the disk or the SATA interface to the disk were to hang up,
and the disk was your C: drive, it would be pretty hard for the
disk to have any Event Viewer entries added. In that case,
you might be in pretty bad shape, with respect to collecting
information as to what has failed.

Another note. I've noticed here, that SATA drives do not have
a guaranteed reset capability. When you push the reset button
on the front of the computer, there is no guarantee that a
hung drive will recover. I've had one instance here, where I
needed to turn off the power on the computer, before one
of my SATA drives would again communicate with the computer.
So the path from the reset button to the drive, doesn't actually
work. It means whatever info that travels over the SATA cable,
is not guaranteed to achieve control over the drive. With the
engineers I've worked with, this would earn you a "fail" when
your design is reviewed. I've never had that happen on an
IDE drive, so the parallel ribbon cable must have a better
scheme to guarantee the drive can be reset.

And when we look here, pin 1 of the IDE interface is called
"RESET", which is why you'll always have control of an IDE
drive. There is no "RESET" wire on a SATA cable.

http://pinouts.ru/HD/AtaInternal_pinout.shtml

Of course, a drive shouldn't hang up in the first place.
But I find it interesting, that one of my drives, did do that,
and the drive continues to function perfectly well. It isn't
a bad disk or anything. SMART is still good, and no other
complaints.

It could be a problem with your disk interface on the motherboard.

It could be a problem with the driver for that interface.

If I were you, I might try a Linux LiveCD, and do some testing
with entirely different software. And see whether there are
still problems or not. A modern Linux LiveCD can access NTFS
and FAT32 drives, so you shouldn't have a problem browsing the
disk. Examples of Linux LiveCDs are Ubuntu and Knoppix. There
are actually a lot more LiveCD distros now, but those are popular
ones. You can boot a LiveCD, without needing to install any software.
All the executed code comes right off the CD, and the CD stays
in the tray until you're finished with running the OS.

To read a lot of data off the hard drive in Linux, you can use "dd".
For example, this test will read an entire hard drive, and
discard the read data. The "dev" naming convention, varies with
disk interface type, so the name of the drive is unlikely to be
guaranteed to be "hda". That is just an example. I have some
here that are "sda", "sdb" etc.

dd if=/dev/hda of=/dev/null

When that command is running, you'd see the disk light on most
of the time. To stop that test, press <control> C.

HTH,
Paul

 

[Terry R.]

On 3/1/2010 12:29 AM On a whim, RJK pounded out on the keyboard

in XP Home SP3+ Windows Normal mode, my old :-
Asus M3N78 (no suffix to mb model no.)
Athlon 64 x2 6000 Windsor cpu + Arctic Cooler heatpipe job
2x1gb Crucial Ballistix
3xSataII hd's (connected to mobo Sata ports),
1xIDE LG dvd-rewriter connected to motherboard IDE port,
1xPCIe x1 SIL3132 Sata card with a dvd-rom drive connected to it.
Camera card reader connected to internal USB pin header,
...in Antec Solo case + Antec modular psu with no dust bunnies in there, no
temp. problems btw !

running lovely for over a year, probably 2 years, ..or more,
During the past couple of weeks in Windows Normal mode, PC stops responding,
and ignores me, and I have to reboot.
Last night, swapped out memory for 2x512mb Crucial ddr2 667 modules,
and this morning changed set swap file size to min. 1536 and max. 2048, and
offline defragged with PerfectDisk 10,
rebooted to Windows Normal mode and started a PerfectDisk defrag, and after
a few minutes - PC sailed off into outer space again !

Booted up with bootable Spinrite 6 cd and started a full hd scan (Spinrite 6
mode "4"), and after it had scanned a few sectors - PC sailed off into outer
space again !

...am I looking at a new motherboard ?

regards, Richard

Hi Richard,

I have to figure that "PC sailed off into outer space" means that it
locked or froze.

I had a workstation that XP started randomly freezing. I tried
EVERYTHING. I even removed the XP partition and installed XP clean to
no avail. I have 5 OS's on this workstation and none of the others
froze. In the last 2 weeks, I have unplugged 2 external USB modems that
this workstation uses to answer 2 phone lines and faxes. It hasn't
locked up once. I believe I finally found the answer (have no idea why
the other OS's didn't lock).

So in your t-shooting, also disconnect any devices that may be connected
to it and see if it still locks up.


Terry R.

 

[smlunatick]

SmartFan / S.M.A.R.T. reports the boot hd as healthy, though I can't help
suspecting ST380815AS boot drive is the culprit,
...or the SATA mobo controller !  ...think I'll try imaging boot drive onto
another hd first

regards, Richard

Do not rely on third part SMART tools. Get the manufacturer's
diagnostic (STxxxx = Seagate)

Mother would not be the only cause. Causes:

-- Wrong RAM type
-- Wrong RAM speed
-- Bad drivers
-- "Virus"
-- Spyware
-- HiJacked system
-- Bad PSU or "under powered" PSU
-- Defective cables
-- Poor quality power
-- Bad / Missing "grounding" on power outlet
-- Corrupted XP files

 

[philo]

in XP Home SP3+ Windows Normal mode, my old :-
Asus M3N78 (no suffix to mb model no.)
Athlon 64 x2 6000 Windsor cpu + Arctic Cooler heatpipe job
2x1gb Crucial Ballistix
3xSataII hd's (connected to mobo Sata ports),
1xIDE LG dvd-rewriter connected to motherboard IDE port,
1xPCIe x1 SIL3132 Sata card with a dvd-rom drive connected to it.
Camera card reader connected to internal USB pin header,
...in Antec Solo case + Antec modular psu with no dust bunnies in there, no
temp. problems btw !

running lovely for over a year, probably 2 years, ..or more,
During the past couple of weeks in Windows Normal mode, PC stops responding,
and ignores me, and I have to reboot.
Last night, swapped out memory for 2x512mb Crucial ddr2 667 modules,
and this morning changed set swap file size to min. 1536 and max. 2048, and
offline defragged with PerfectDisk 10,
rebooted to Windows Normal mode and started a PerfectDisk defrag, and after
a few minutes - PC sailed off into outer space again !

If it sails off to outer space

maybe NASA would be interested.

But seriously
Are all fans working?

CPU?

video card?


Also have a close look at the mobo

are there any leaky capacitors?

 

[RJK]

....thank you all for some very useful pointers.

I think I just needed some moral support, and you were all most kind after
my
"XP randomly sails off into outer space" OP, (which of course was a daft
thing to say - result of utter frustration with the darned thing I think
....which is what it felt like after PC locked up, several times with mouse
arrow / Windows eventually freezing up completely, and [Alt]+[Tab] not
cycling through open apps, and [Ctrl]+[Alt]+[Del] not bringing up Task
Manager etc.

I should have mentioned that during the past couple of months, more often
than not, after selecting Shut-Down, there was the "normal," almost constant
hd activity, for 5 - 10 seconds, and instead of a normal "power-down,"
system box kept running, hd led blinks briefly three times in a row, then a
longish pause with no hd led activity, and it would keep repeating that led
activity pattern i.e.
3 blinks and a longish pause, and repeat. I've been hunting for a software
fault for several months now - now that I stop and think about it -
rummaging through event viewer - Spinrite 6'ing drive C:\ etc !!

Anyhow, to cut a long, and doubtless; very boring story short :-

I've rearranged hard-disks, including Ghost 14.0 restoring yesterdays drive
C:\ backup, from my "data" 160gb hd, onto the other 160gb hd, and made that
the boot drive, and have pulled out the 80gb drive which was occasionally,
and with increasing frequency, "sailing off into outer space," ...oops, I
mean suffering a complete Windows freeze !

I've never had a hard-disk go faulty in such a fashion, before this one !
....now I'm wondering if it was simply a SATA cable at fault. Whilst
rummaging around in there and rearranging things, I noticed that one Sata
cable connector didn't seem to have a very tight fit. Threw it away, and
fitted a new one.
.....mmm... Seagate ST380815AS 80gb date code 09066 corresponds to 2008
August 14th.

Goodness me, the more I think about it, the more it seems like it was simply
a SATA cable on the boot drive, i.e. poor interference on connector contacts
!
I'll refit it tommorrow and run Seagate diagnostics on it !

anyhooooo, thanks to you all.

regards, Richard

 

[RJK]

A computer doesn't always "lock". For example, I've had computers where
the desktop display stops responding (giving the impression the computer
is locked). Yet, if I go to a second computer, and issue the "ping"
command from an MSDOS window, pointed to the frozen computer, the
frozen computer manages to return a response. And that tells you the
OS is still running, and just the GUI is broken.

If you see an actual blue screen, the computer might have stopped
executing code at that point. I haven't tried a ping test against
a blue screen computer, because I don't get them here often enough
to test.

If the disk or the SATA interface to the disk were to hang up,
and the disk was your C: drive, it would be pretty hard for the
disk to have any Event Viewer entries added. In that case,
you might be in pretty bad shape, with respect to collecting
information as to what has failed.

Another note. I've noticed here, that SATA drives do not have
a guaranteed reset capability. When you push the reset button
on the front of the computer, there is no guarantee that a
hung drive will recover. I've had one instance here, where I
needed to turn off the power on the computer, before one
of my SATA drives would again communicate with the computer.
So the path from the reset button to the drive, doesn't actually
work. It means whatever info that travels over the SATA cable,
is not guaranteed to achieve control over the drive. With the
engineers I've worked with, this would earn you a "fail" when
your design is reviewed. I've never had that happen on an
IDE drive, so the parallel ribbon cable must have a better
scheme to guarantee the drive can be reset.

And when we look here, pin 1 of the IDE interface is called
"RESET", which is why you'll always have control of an IDE
drive. There is no "RESET" wire on a SATA cable.

http://pinouts.ru/HD/AtaInternal_pinout.shtml

Of course, a drive shouldn't hang up in the first place.
But I find it interesting, that one of my drives, did do that,
and the drive continues to function perfectly well. It isn't
a bad disk or anything. SMART is still good, and no other
complaints.

It could be a problem with your disk interface on the motherboard.

It could be a problem with the driver for that interface.

If I were you, I might try a Linux LiveCD, and do some testing
with entirely different software. And see whether there are
still problems or not. A modern Linux LiveCD can access NTFS
and FAT32 drives, so you shouldn't have a problem browsing the
disk. Examples of Linux LiveCDs are Ubuntu and Knoppix. There
are actually a lot more LiveCD distros now, but those are popular
ones. You can boot a LiveCD, without needing to install any software.
All the executed code comes right off the CD, and the CD stays
in the tray until you're finished with running the OS.

To read a lot of data off the hard drive in Linux, you can use "dd".
For example, this test will read an entire hard drive, and
discard the read data. The "dev" naming convention, varies with
disk interface type, so the name of the drive is unlikely to be
guaranteed to be "hda". That is just an example. I have some
here that are "sda", "sdb" etc.

dd if=/dev/hda of=/dev/null

When that command is running, you'd see the disk light on most
of the time. To stop that test, press <control> C.

HTH,
Paul

Boy oh boy, you ARE intuitive, (as well as brilliant of course!),
re: my "thankyou" to all responders, on this thread, ...amidst my
ramblings - I wondered if it was simply a bad SATA connector - contacts had
got weak - hence poor interference etc.

....many thanks,

Richard

.....I must be getting old, ..why it didn't occur to me to swap them out
...eludes me, ...though as in my other post I did, eventually notice a "not
very" titgh fitting Sata connector.