Systems Halts randomly

  • Thread starter Thread starter Chuck
  • Start date Start date
C

Chuck

Recently my WinXP home has been randomly freezing.
Everything just stops, except the fan. The mouse and
keyboard are completely unresponsive, while the monitor
is frozen on the last image. Sounds stop. I can still
hear the fan running, though. The only remedy is to
force a shutdoen by holding the power button or pulling
the plug. When it restarts it wants to do a scandisk,
but not always on the same partition. There seems to be
no corelation to any particular program running or time
on. I've left it overnight with no input and nothing
running and it has frozen, and it has not frozen under
the same circumstances. The only consistency in freezing
is WinXP Home. It has not shown any indication of
freezing while operating under MSDos. Please help. This
is really annoying. Thanks.
 
Hi Chuck,

Suggestions:

By default when WinXP encounters a system failure, it reboots without
warning. The setting that controls this can be changed:

Control Panel/System/Advanced/Settings (Startup & Recovery)/System
Failure/Uncheck-Automatically Restart.

You can use Event Viewer to view and manage the event logs, gather
information about hardware and software problems, and monitor Windows
security events.

To view the event log: Administrative Tools/Event Viewer or
Start/Run/eventvwr.

To review Shutdown Event Tracker data, Open Event Viewer. Click System Log,
scroll to the Event column, and find entries with the number 1075.

HOW TO: View and Manage Event Logs in Event Viewer in Windows XP
http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;EN-US;q308427

And also:

Go to Start/Run/Msinfo32/Hardware Resources, Components/Problem Devices and
Software Environment/Windows Error Reporting.

Go to Help and Support/Pick a Task (left side)/Use Tools to view.../(left
pane)My Computer Information/(right pane)View the status of my system
hardware and software/Hardware/Update and Troubleshooters.

How to Troubleshoot Hardware and Software Driver Problems
http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;Q322205

Try running the DirectX Tool: Start/Run/Dxdiag, Lower Hardware Acceleration
(Display/Settings/Advanced/Troubleshoot/Hardware Acceleration).

/top10faqs.htm
 
Back
Top