Screen blank and system freeze

  • Thread starter Thread starter Corey
  • Start date Start date
C

Corey

This is really weird. A few days ago I sat down at my XP Pro computer,
that I hadn't used in several hours, to find the system frozen on a
blank screen. Key presses and mouse movements were ignored. No
ctrl-alt-del response or anything. I guessed that there had been a
power spike or some transient and didn't really worry about it. This IS
windows, after all. I forced a power shut down, rebooted, and
everything seemed normal.
A couple days later the same thing happened, when I had only been away
for the computer for a few minutes. This started to concerned me but I
put it off as I had other fish to fry at the time.
A few minutes ago it happened again, but this time while I was using the
computer. I had just visited an innocuous page that I have visited
before and I was reading it when the page went blank. I could get no
response from keys or mouse. I could see that the power light on the
computer and the monitor will still on (but blank). I could open the CD
drive and close it, but no drive reading went on. I could hear the hard
drive and fans still spinning. The box was completely unresponsive.
I called a friend who is also a tech and told him what was going on. He
was a little shocked. He said the same thing had happened a couple days
ago to his new laptop and he had written it off (as I did the first
time) as a fluke, but he had gotten a call this morning from a client
describing the same thing. He hadn't put it together with his problem
earlier in the week until I called him and described my problem.
This is really weird and making me uncomfortable, as it is him. It is
concerning me that there may be some unrecognized malady or pest out
there that is just starting to make the rounds. Have any others here in
this group seen or heard of something like this going on in the last 4
or 5 days? It is too early to say if this is really a random thing or
if there is something triggering it. If there is a trigger I don't have
any idea what it is. My system has up to date AV, AT, multiple AS tools
and has generally been functioning well.
Any thoughts?
 
Corey said:
This is really weird. A few days ago I sat down at my XP Pro
computer, that I hadn't used in several hours, to find the system
frozen on a blank screen. Key presses and mouse movements were
ignored. No ctrl-alt-del response or anything.
A couple days later the same thing happened, when I had only been away
for the computer for a few minutes. This started to concerned me but
I put it off as I had other fish to fry at the time.
A few minutes ago it happened again, but this time while I was using
the computer. I had just visited an innocuous page that I have
visited before and I was reading it when the page went blank. I could
get no response from keys or mouse. I could see that the power light
on the computer and the monitor will still on (but blank). I could
open the CD drive and close it, but no drive reading went on. I could
hear the hard drive and fans still spinning. The box was completely
unresponsive.
Click to expand...

(snip long and extremely hard to read post)

Please, next time use paragraphs with white space between. Many people
will have simply skipped over your post because it was too hard to
read. I'm not saying this to hurt your feelings but rather to help you
maximize your chances of getting an answer.

That said, it sounds like you are experiencing hardware failures and not
a software problem. Here are some general hardware troubleshooting
steps:

1) Open the computer and run it open, cleaning out all dust bunnies and
observing all fans (overheating will cause system freezing). Obviously
you can't do this with a laptop, but you can hear if the fan is running
and feel if the laptop is getting too hot.

2) Test the RAM - I like Memtest86+ from www.memtest.org. Obviously, you
have to get the program from a working machine. You will either
download the precompiled Windows binary to make a bootable floppy or
the .iso to make a bootable cd. If you want to use the latter, you'll
need to have third-party burning software on the machine where you
download the file - XP's built-in burning capability won't do the job.
In either case, boot with the media you made. The test will run
immediately. Let the test run for an hour or two - unless errors are
seen immediately. If you get any errors, replace the RAM.

3) Test the hard drive with a diagnostic utility from the mftr. Download
the file and make a bootable floppy or cd with it. Boot with the media
and do a thorough test. If the drive has physical errors, replace it.

4) The power supply may be going bad or be inadequate for the devices
you have in the system. The adequacy issue doesn't really apply to a
laptop, although of course the power supply can be faulty.

5) Test the motherboard with something like TuffTest from
www.tufftest.com. Sometimes this is useful, and sometimes it isn't.

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 professional
computer repair shop (not your local equivalent of BigStoreUSA).

Malke
 
sounds like the exact same thing happened to me... i bought a new computer
(refurb) from future shop and the first time everything froze, and the screen
went blank I completely disregarded it... thought maybe I hit a power cord or
something, but it has happened at least 2 or three times since now, it never
seems to happen at a certain time, its always random, I was doing something
different at each time... or sometimes, not even near the computer. I cannot
figure out what it might have been, I will take your suggestions into
consideration, but I thought I would post so that corey knows it might in
fact be happening more than people know...
 
Also have a look through the background services and programs that you have
running
eg Start > Run > msconfig > Startup (and/or > Services)
as well as Control Panel > Administrative Tools > Services

You may have a particular program or service running that causes the freeze

Jon
 
check under device manager sound and audio devices if you have a
realtek sound card try updating the drivers, i had this for 2 years
before i found a microsoft KB article (can't find it now) that told me
that this was a realtek sound driver issue.
 
sounds like the exact same thing happened to me... i bought a
new computer (refurb) from future shop and the first time
everything froze, and the screen went blank I completely
disregarded it... thought maybe I hit a power cord or something,
but it has happened at least 2 or three times since now, it
never seems to happen at a certain time, its always random, I
was doing something different at each time... or sometimes, not
even near the computer. I cannot figure out what it might have
been, I will take your suggestions into consideration, but I
thought I would post so that corey knows it might in fact be
happening more than people know...
Click to expand...

Blank screen lockups with no error messages and nothing in event
viewer would indicate a hardware problem with the video card.

The quickest way to determine this is to swap the video card for a
known good one.

Nick Goetz
 
check article 833846 on support.microsoft.com

i have seen this problem a lot, and SURPRISINGLY it may be the sound
card and not a video card problem.
 
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