Screen Freeze Problem Solved

[Chuck Coty]

I want to report a solved screen freeze issue that has been going on for
approx 3 months. Every time I would leave the computer unattended for more
than 25 minutes I would come back to a complete locked up PC. I would have
to turn the computer off using the power button. However, as long as
something was running in the background (I ran the TV player from the ATI
All-In-Wonder) the screen would not freeze.

Here's what I had tried to solve the problem:
No screen saver installed
No power management, ACPI is unchecked in BIOS
Complete RAM check
Deleted all temp files
Registry scan & clean up.
Hard Drive diagnostic scan
Ran Check disk
Defragged the hard drives
Installed current mouse & keyboard drivers
Made certain that this was not a cooling issue - numerous fans installed
Installed current drivers for all components
Eliminated hybernation
Ran msconfig and did a clean boot troubleshoot
Deleted all virus scan software

Not one of the above was successful in terms of halting the lock-ups.

Here are the major components in my system:
Asus P4b266 mb
p4 1.8 gig
(2) 120 gig Western Digital HD's on Primary IDE channel (NTFS)
(1) 200 gig Western Digital HD on Promise Ultra100 tx2 controller card
ATI All-In-Wonder Radeon AGP graphics card
Running XP Pro

Problem finally solved:
1. updated the bios Ultra TX2 BIOS Ver. 2.0.0210.2, November, 2002 on the
controller card obtained from the Western Digital
(http://support.wdc.com/download/index.asp#promisesite). Doing this stopped
all the Delayed Write fails that I was having when moving or copying large
blocks of data.

2. Update the driver on the Promise Ultra100 tx2 from the Windows driver to
the one that is available on the Promise web site @
http://www.promise.com/support/download/download2_eng.asp?productId=11&category=driver&os=0.
The correct driver is v2.00.0.39.

Now the screen no longer freezes and I am a happy man. Hopefully this might
help someone with a similar problem. I have done research for months and
this was never mentioned as a solution.

Thanks for all who attempted to help in the process.
Chuck

p.s. I'm going to post this on two other newsgroups.

 

[Shan]

I'm having similiar problem. I haven't yet tried upgrading BIOS or GFX/HDD drivers. I was wondering if anyone knows what exactly causes this.

My setup:

ASUS P4PE2-X Motherboard FSB 800
Intel P4 2.4GHz HT Processor
Radeon 9800 Pro 256Mb (Club3D)
Samsung HDD
1Gb Kingston 400MHz RAM
ViewSonic VA902 LCD Display
Windows XP Pro

Odd thing is that this started occuring after i switched from CRT to LCD. It's not huge problem as i rarely leave my computer unattended if i'm home, however my roommate also uses it and doesn't sometimes shut it down and then i have to hardboot.

I didn't have screensaver, i haven't yet tested if having a screensaver fixes this problem (Since there is then some activity on the screen), but if this is HDD problem then that most probably doesn't help.

 

[cathello]

Same problem as Shan

hello,

i seem to be having the same problem as shan, on a similar system.
Last week i bought myself a new LCD screen, after 2 year using dual CRT.
Initially no problem with LCD (DVI) and CRT connected on a Radeon 9800 pro
but after some days, pc stalls and or even screen going blank while pc kept running. Now i even have the problem when im effectively doing something on the pc.

Has anyone found a solution yet?

greets

 

[Shan]

I managed to fix it, but I simply can't remember to death how I managed to fix it. Either it was because I cleaned all spyware with both Spybot and Adaware (Unlikely, because this was the first thing I did before posting here) or then it was because I reinstalled XP from scratch (With SP2). It might be possible that it's an error in XP Plug and Play system. Maybe it doesn't know how to shut down LCD well after being "used to" CRT. It wasn't caused by monitor shutting down after 20 mins (Default for XP, under Screensaver/PowerMngmt settings) because now it works fine ..

Obviously we have different problem though (Similiar but different) because mine only stalled after computer was idle for 20mins+. Screensaver didn't help though so most likely it was HDD Idle problem ..

If I'll remember anything I'll reply further.

Best shot is to re-install your Operating system.